Recent Developments

Having watched a couple of different movies about Odysseus lately, I've learned something important: Odysseus was just about naked a lot of the time. Last year, Dr. Theresa and I went on a big kick of watching Biblical epics and other movies set in ancient times. One we really liked starred Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus. At the end, I lugged out my hardcover translation by Robert Fagles, like, did such-and-such really happen in the poem? And if I recall correctly, it did, whatever it was I got so worked up about. So then the other day I watched an Italian movie, which I had recorded from TCM, with Kirk Douglas as Odysseus, and it was a lot of fun. They had a good Cyclops. Then I was like, "I should read THE ODYSSEY again. But I am too old and tired to drag out this Robert Fagles edition so many times (twice), and my gnarled, elderly hands and arms like twigs are too frail to hold it up in bed at night. But hey! If memory serves, wasn't there a recent translation I should check out?" So yesterday I went by Square Books and found the recent translation of which I was thinking, by Emily Wilson. It was in paperback, and I bought it with money. Recent! I checked the copyright page and it came out in 2018. That still seems recent to me. When did that happen? When did seven years begin to feel like nothing, really? Like, when I was 16, I didn't go around thinking, "I was recently nine!" But as you get older, things that happened longer and longer ago seem more and more recent. You'll find out! And I suppose, when you're thinking about THE ODYSSEY, everything is recent. But what I really want to say is Athena is there right out of the gate. To mix sports metaphors, she comes out swinging! And you know what I was thinking: "She famously hangs out with owls!" And yes, it isn't too long before she is described as "the owl-eyed goddess." What's more, she "flew away like a bird, up through the smoke." And what did Telemachus think about that? "Watching her go, he was amazed." No kidding! Oh, Telemachus, you crazy kid, when will you ever learn?

Squirrel Expert

I ventured out of the house and appeared on the Thacker Mountain radio program last night. Slade had Band-Aids on several of his fingers because - as Katelyn informed me and Slade later confirmed - he had been attacked by a squirrel. Someone called the hospital and was put in touch with a "squirrel expert" who said "Squirrels in Mississippi don't have rabies." Katelyn and I were like, hmm, maybe consult a second squirrel expert. In any case, Slade played the upright bass in the house band in his usual nimble manner. Maybe even nimbler! I'm not kidding, he was doing some complex runs. Maybe he has squirrel powers.

Literary Matters

Welcome once again to "Literary Matters," which always stink... until now! Big news for Jimmy and Bill, known and beloved by all "blog" readers, assuming they exist. "Blog" readers, I mean. Bill and Jimmy definitely exist. Here's proof! Jimmy just "landed" a two book deal, starting with his novel GOLDELINE, which is about orphans and bandits and magic! I vow to keep you informed. Meanwhile, Bill's novel GRAVESEND will be published by the renowned French press Rivages as the thousandth volume in their noir series. Jim Thompson wrote the first and James Ellroy wrote the hundredth. So Bill is in good company. Rather, Thompson and Ellroy are in good company. And Rivages is ferrying Bill to France, where they're going to parade him around like a king. Do you think I am kidding? I am not kidding. Here's what the French are saying about GRAVESEND: "Désir, fantasme, désespérance et noirceur sont les maîtres mots de ce roman à la profonde humanité." I don't speak French! But who among us doesn't broil nightly in the realms of désir and fantasme, what with all our profonde humanité and so on? Jimmy and Bill: Good Idea Club members. Coincidence? I'm afraid so. Our next "Literary Matters" shall surely stink again, so until then be sure to partake deeply of the healthy fragrance of deserved success. Bill and Jimmy! Jimmy and Bill!

Red Light, Winter Light

Early yesterday I rewatched WINTER LIGHT. It had been on my mind because we talked about it in an ADVENTURE TIME meeting last week. And then when I saw Bill up at the Grocery, he and I talked about it; it's Bill's favorite Bergman film. In the evening, Dr. Theresa wanted to watch a movie so we scrolled through a bunch we've recorded off of TCM. "What's RED LIGHT?" said Dr. Theresa. I didn't remember. RED LIGHT is a George Raft movie, kind of noir, a revenge movie, a crime film... and just like WINTER LIGHT it turned out to be about a crisis of religious faith, with a similarly impassive lead performance. Strange coincidence! George Raft has a big speech in a church, concerned with what WINTER LIGHT calls "God's silence." Of course, George Raft ends it by hurling a candelabra through a stained glass window - a flashier gesture than Bergman's characters are comfortable with. Spoiler alert: God kills Raymond Burr. He's the bad guy in RED LIGHT. Raymond Burr, I mean, not God. Do you think I'm kidding? A cop standing over Raymond Burr's smoking corpse says (I paraphrase), "Well, I guess this proves it: God exists!" So, a fairly big departure from the ending of WINTER LIGHT.

New York Gala

Last night Megan Abbott attended a gala at which our old pal Anthony Bourdain spoke ("old pal" - ha ha! But no kidding, Megan and I were on a TV show with him once and if you don't believe me you can "click" on this "pic" of Anthony Bourdain with part of Megan's face and my empty chair). Last night Bourdain was at a table so far away Megan could never reach him. She also ordered a French 75 that never came. It all sounds so symbolic!

Lone Star Story

John Brandon was working on a book - I can't remember which one - and his editor (Eli Horowitz) said he should watch the great movie LONE STAR to help him out. So John Brandon came over here to the house and we re-watched LONE STAR. And afterward I was like, "Why did Eli want you to watch LONE STAR?" And John thought about it and said, "... I don't know." But it was good! We agreed on that. John just couldn't figure out which part was supposed to fix his book. Here's the thing, though: Maggie Renzi, producer of LONE STAR and so many other truly iconic and truly independent movies, is coming to town. She's one of the last of the independent filmmakers. I mean, she doesn't take no guff from nobody, see. I'm not kidding. She'll show some clips from her distinguished career and talk about how to make good movies at 6:30 on Thursday the 19th, over in the Bryant building on campus (not Overby, as I first dumbly reported). Bryant! That's where to go. I think that's the nice building with the big globe in it. You'll find it! John Currence is making food and drinks for the reception following. Mingle around the big globe with Maggie Renzi! It would be the dumbest mistake of your life to miss it.

He Wasn't Kidding

Hey look that guy wasn't kidding when he referred to "My friend Granville Squiers, who made a study of secret hiding places."

The Costco Experience

Here's a picture Ace took when we went to Memphis today. He called out of the blue and off we went. On the way we talked about John D. MacDonald some. I thought I had detected a single similarity between MacDonald and Charles Willeford, two extremely different writers. But I noticed that they are both willing to stop their plots in what I find to be a really pleasant way, and just dally over some other subject for a whole chapter or two, say: not what you expect necessarily from a "crime novel." I asked Ace - who was a newspaperman in Florida, you know - whether he thought it had anything to do with the fact that MacDonald and Willeford are both considered "Florida writers," as stylistically different as they are. Ace gave me a good history lesson on Florida crime writing and the particular idiosyncrasies of John D. MacDonald, and the ride to Memphis whizzed by. Ace was going there to speak at a branch of the Memphis Public Library. When we pulled in I could not help but notice that people were selling barbecue from a tent in the library parking lot. Because we were in Memphis! So I let Ace go in to "speak" and had some barbecue instead. I was drawn to the welcome sight of baloney. Not your thin Oscar Mayer-style slices. Nice thick honest rounds of real baloney, my friends. And they put two on a sandwich, as I now know from experience. I finished my sandwich - a real bargain at $3! - and was about to walk into the library when I overheard the library security guard say to a bystander, "The slaw is exceptional." I asked if he were referring to the slaw they put on the barbecue sandwiches in the library parking lot and he said yes and I quite agreed with him. So I said that I was almost tempted to go back and try the smoked sausage. He revealed that he had first had a smoked sausage and then gone back for the baloney! So we bonded over that. So did I go back and have a smoked sausage sandwich? It is really none of your beeswax. THAT KIND OF PERSONAL DECISION IS BETWEEN ME AND THE LIBRARY SECURITY GUARD. I saw no signage, so I asked the barbecue guys whether they had a restaurant and the main guy said, "No, we ride around." Then he said that his regular spot is on the corner of Winchester and Elvis Presley Boulevard. Go visit! And tell 'em "Bloggy" the "Blog" Mascot sent you. Finally I went in the library and was very pleasantly surprised to find that Ace's fellow speakers included Scott Phillips and Jedidiah Ayres. We were able to catch up a little bit. Then Ace and I had some Gus's Fried Chicken (SIDE NOTE! When Kent sent me the photo to use in my "Kent Eating Chicken" "post" I promised in return to take him to Gus's next time he visits... and he told me he has already been, of course! He has even been to a second secret Tennessee chicken location that John T. Edge told him about! You can't get ahead of Kent Osborne when it comes to chicken). Over chicken, thinking back on the speaking engagement I had just enjoyed, I speculated that our friend Scott was the first person to use the phrase "a pile of genitals" in the Memphis Public Library and Ace responded, "I THINK NOT." Then Ace said, "Have you ever had the Costco experience?" I had to answer in the negative. Turned out, Ace had to go to Costco and renew his membership and buy one million items from Costco. It also turns out the "Costco experience" is pretty much the same as the "grocery store experience." BUT! Then I passed a whole stack of kayaks in the Costco. Kayaks stacked to the skies! And Ace said, "You know they also sell coffins at Costco." He wasn't kidding! They really do. But the final part of the Costco experience is that when you leave they kind of frisk you! Well, they go through your stuff like you're smuggling uranium. There's your Costco experience. We drove back to town and dropped off the frozen stuff and one of Ace's kids hit me with a light saber. (PS Ace's kids are the best! I am recalling the incident with fondness and good humor!) "Chicken, kayaks and coffins," Dr. Theresa said, summing up my own summary of my day. It sounded like the title of a memoir! Maybe of the founder of Costco! When Ace brought me home we found Dr. Theresa and Megan there. They had just finished watching the old live-action Disney chiller THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS, inspired by Jimmy's thesis defense, in which he cited it, and they were still a little freaked out by the apparently traumatic alternate endings with which the DVD had come supplied. So I gave Megan her first ever belt of rye. A 13-year-old rye! Oh, this day has been coming.

Feel Bad

Gee I feel really bad about all the labels I didn't have room to attach to that last "post."

Kind of a Poet

I was rather grouchy and irritable at the beginning of the night; I asked Megan Abbott to look up querulous in her dictionary because I was pretty sure that's how I was feeling. And I was right! But then we went to see a Frank Sinatra impersonator - Ace, Angela, Dr. Theresa, Megan, and me - and when he sang "Buddy, you'd never know it, but I'm kind of a poet," I believed it! I believed that this computer programmer from the space center in Huntsville, Alabama (as he finally revealed himself to be) WAS kind of a poet! He wasn't kidding around. He had figured out how to express himself. It was like I was hearing the words of that song for the first time. Here are Theresa and I dancing to the dulcet sounds of the Sinatra impersonator (photo by Megan Abbott). I learned something! (PS: The next morning I remembered that he doesn't work for the space center; he works for the army. I thought he was going to finish his sentence with "space center" but he said "army." But my brain erroneously retained "space center.")

A Knack For Conjunctions

Hey! You know when I told you it would be silly for me to keep a list of books I have read that have Jell-O in them? I was an idiot when I said that. Hey so this Adrienne Barbeau autobiography has Jell-O in it. She is great with conjunctions! I mean, she can put a sentence together that has balance and electricity, defining a personality or a moment simply by placing two seemingly unrelated thoughts on either side of an "and." She describes being 15 this way: "I read Ayn Rand and went to ballet class." There's a lot about being 15 packed in there! Of an artsy older guy (he's in his 20s): "He ate cubes of Jell-O with his fingers and wrote everything in lowercase letters." These are economical sentences that really do the trick for me. I guess what I admire is the choice involved, Barbeau's instinct that these details on their own, separated by periods, would be lifeless (except for picking up Jell-O with your fingers; that stands up on its own - "cubes" a nice distinction too), but linked together, without even a comma, they are allowed to spark. Like making a fire with pieces of flint! I guess. It also tickles me that her acquaintances so far (I haven't read much of it) include "Martha Raye's brother-in-law" and "Kaye Ballard's nephew." Now, I know those names mean nothing to you, dear reader, which makes you no more to me than a common gutter punk. Kaye Ballard's nephew "had a gallery of his blown glass pieces and owned a royal poodle who carried his cigarettes for him." A use of the conjunction perhaps lacking the same compact appeal, perhaps utilizing a lower level of contrast, but good, with some satisfying twists. I'm not kidding when I say that it's akin to the old Hemingway line about knowing what to leave out: how exactly the poodle carried the cigarettes. That omission might be what makes the sentence. Here are two pictures of Kaye Ballard - sad Kaye Ballard and happy Kaye Ballard - for you to study until you earn my respect. (See also.)

Product of Belgium

Last night we dropped by the home of John Currence and Bess Reed-Currence and John whipped up a delicious dinner on the spot. He can do that! Afterward, as we sat around talking, John magically produced a Biscoff. That's right: THE GREATEST COOKIE EVER SERVED ON AN AIRPLANE. When he saw how my little eyes lit up and heard my rhapsodic odes to the Biscoff, John said, mysteriously, "Then I have something you're going to love." And he did! Friends, he had a jar of something called BISCOFF SPREAD. It had the appearance and consistency of peanut butter, but PEANUT BUTTER IT WAS NOT. It was as if someone had smashed together thousands of Biscoffs into a single tablespoon of creamy goodness, the way Superman used to squeeze a lump of coal until it became a diamond. (See also.) And bear in mind, dear reader, the Biscoff is no lump of coal. The Biscoff is THE GREATEST COOKIE EVER SERVED ON AN AIRPLANE. And yet my analogy stands and the Biscoff is to Biscoff Spread as the lump of coal is to the diamond. So you can imagine. I checked the ingredients of the Biscoff Spread and I am not kidding, here is the primary ingredient listed: "Biscoffs, 57%." Also on the label: "PRODUCT OF BELGIUM." And that is all I remember. Perversely we spread the Biscoff Spread on the Biscoffs themselves, which I think should have caused the universe to fold up, but we're still here, I guess. (Image from the Silver Age Comics "Blog," natch.)

A Niceness of Touch

No sooner had I asked Burke for some encouragement about reading THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON than here it came, through the ether: "I just flipped through it now" (wrote Burke) "and I couldn't remember why I loved every page - and just today I got the unabridged copy in the mail. No kidding! But here's one thing: I see it as a comedy of hero worship. Johnson IS a pill!" Burke goes on to praise "the funny formal way [Boswell] tries to rationalize Johnson's shortcomings. So that's one of the main things I liked about it... I also liked anything having to do with Johnson's blind female roommate/best friend. That's all the encouragement I have!" And sure enough, just after receiving Burke's email, I reached a point in the book where Boswell is really excited to have tea with Samuel Johnson and Samuel Johnson's friend Mrs. Williams, but then he (Boswell) is grossed out when blind Mrs. Williams, who is serving, appears to stick her finger in his tea to make sure the cup is properly filled. (A footnote informs me that Boswell was mistaken on that point: "She had acquired... such a niceness of touch, as to know, by the feeling of the outside of the cup, how near it was to being full." The same footnote says that Johnson could drink 12 cups of tea in a sitting and claimed to have once enjoyed 25.) And Burke was right: the lift I received from Mrs. Williams propelled me through 22 more pages but I'm slowing down again - Samuel Johnson keeps being a sour old jerk. It's like looking in a mirror! Maybe that's the problem.

Nice Try

"Lord Ingram... seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of blood or vigour of brain." Ha ha ha! Jane Eyre calls 'em like she sees 'em! I guess that's why I love her! What else can I tell you? The novel - like the John Wayne movie EL DORADO and at least one translation of THE IDIOT - contains the word "charivari." I still haven't come across the expected owl, though "the widest-winged condor on the Andes" makes a metaphorical appearance. Nice try, but not good enough, Jayne Eyre! Also, it's getting pretty crazy now. Still not WUTHERING HEIGHTS crazy, but kind of crazy. SPOILER! If you are my sister, don't read this next part. One dude says, "She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart," and he ain't kidding! Pictured, the climactic scene from JANE EYRE. Not really! It's from the live-action Disney film CONDORMAN. My deepest apologies to Jane Eyre and everyone else, everybody in the world.

Little Surprises of Bedtime Reading

So I started this massive LBJ book by Robert Caro (the most recent volume) just like I promised you. Only 72 pages in but I guess so far the indelible image is Bobby Kennedy sending a guy to the hospital by smashing a beer bottle over his head for no good reason. I'm not kidding! Did everybody know about this but me? And then he walks around law school accompanied by these "colossal dogs" that terrorize everybody. And oh yeah, he almost strangles a dude. Here's a quote: "Bobby would have killed him if we didn't pull him off."

News Roundup

Here's a headline I saw in the New York Times today: "Squashed Eyeballs Are a Danger for Astronauts." Now called me old-fashioned but gosh darn it I say that squashed eyeballs are a danger for everybody! I sent Ben Greenman that headline because he likes headlines, and to no one's surprise he had already read an article on the subject some time back, which included the information, says Mr. Greenman, that "prolonged space time also distends your brain. YOUR BRAIN!" So watch out. On the plus side, the article indicates that getting your eyes squashed in space may cure certain cases of nearsightedness. No kidding! Read it. And consult your physician to see if getting your eyes squashed in space is right for you! Side effects may include distended brain and dying in outer space. Ruth Buzzi retweeted an item from a Buffalo, NY, news service, which I found charming for its laconic prioritizing: "It's 73 degrees in Buffalo which set a new record high temperature for this date. Also, a gorilla escaped from the zoo earlier." Finally, this week's LAFA SHOPPER contains a column called "Thoughts On Wind" in which the columnist lists her thoughts on wind.

Grandpa's Big Weekend

Last night I went over to Dent May's house to see Grimes (pictured) play. I had never been over there before and, I don't know, I pictured people scrunched up together in a living room with the furniture pushed back against the wall, but you go down this dark country road and suddenly there's a sprawling compound, no kidding, and Dent's house includes a cavernous room with a nice stage and huge dance floor and I sat on a couch in the corner like a creepy old weirdo as scores and scores (literally!) of young people flooded in. Dent kindly ushered me into a secret room ("The McConaughey Lounge") wherein I thank goodness found Michael Bible who walked around with me thereafter and conferred upon me an air of legitimacy so that no Grimes fan felt threatened by my wizened and stooped figure sulking there alone in the darkness rubbing my hands together. The furnishings were delightfully INLAND EMPIRE and one of Michael's friends expressed surprise that I was drinking out of a pink Solo cup imprinted with a camo motif, but I have never been to Dent's house before and I was not surprised by that so I am not sure where the surprise came from. Dent's house seems like a great place to hear music - it felt like to me maybe the best place in Oxford to hear music - but it was 11:30 and the opening band had not started yet and both toilets were stopped up so I - unlike the youngsters, so rightly undeterred - went home and never saw Grimes, well, I didn't see her play, but I saw her loading in heavy pieces of equipment with her fragile-looking limbs that I feared might break.

Rock and Roll Ghost Problem

Checked out this bio of Jack Kerouac from the library. It's by a guy named Paul Maher Jr. Says Kerouac contacted his agent right before ON THE ROAD came out. Kerouac had thought of a better title! He said they could make a lot more money if they called it ROCK AND ROLL ROAD. Ha ha ha! He wasn't kidding. All right! Jack Kerouac, you're all right. He also had a problem with ghosts. Like one Halloween some ghosts scared his cat and he stood in the yard holding the cat and yelling at the ghosts. I mean, like, real ghosts, not kids in costumes. "I look around, I see ghosts everywhere. I have to do the sign of the cross." The house had "a poltergeist in the dining room cupboard," he said. When he was a kid he lived in a former funeral home. He told his friend Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) "My mother opened a closet door, something white flew at her, she screamed, and the thing whapped her on the head with terrible vehemence." They thought it was a ghost. But it was an ironing board.

This Really Happened

Ace Atkins came over last night to watch his bootleg of BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS. Don't judge him! A man has to find pleasure wherever he can in this horrible world. BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS was a TV show in the 70s. Network stars battled each other on it! ("Click" here to be reminded once again what we thought of as entertainment back then. You'll be surprised, kids!) We watched two episodes, lasting an hour and a half apiece. They were intense! Host Howard Cossell prodded his celebrity guests with searing psychological interviews! I'm not kidding. Cheryl Ladd, in an electric blue terry cloth sweatband, spoke with shocking bitterness about how glad she was to get out of Utah and how everybody who told her she could never make it sure was sorry now! Michelle Phillips from the band The Mamas and the Papas (and apparently a TV show called ASPEN [?]) injured her ankle on the obstacle course yet still made an admirable showing in the relay race ("She didn't even feel it," commented Ace, going on to make a wry observation about the recreational drug use in vogue at the time. DON'T DO DRUGS!). Michelle Phillips's show of determination caused Dan Haggerty from the show GRIZZLY ADAMS to come over and PUT HIS HANDS ALL OVER HER in a very creepy manner by way of congratulations. (GRIZZLY ADAMS was a show about a big hairy mountain man with a grizzly bear friend. Dr. Theresa recalled a schoolyard legend about his beard catching fire with tragic results, and I remembered it too. But I couldn't remember what Grizzly Adams and his friend the bear did on their show every week. "Solved crimes?" I said. Angela [Ace's bride - I hesitated to incriminate her by mentioning her involvement] disagreed: "There were orphans involved," she insisted.) Finally Howard Cossell had just about enough of watching Michelle Phillips trying to writhe out of Dan Haggerty's inappropriate grasp. "If you don't get your hands off her, I'll break your arms," he said. He really said that! Afterward, Dan Haggerty's penchant for groping became noticeable, though it often happened in the background. We all felt bad for Ben Murphy, star of television's GEMINI MAN, because none of us had ever heard of Ben Murphy or television's GEMINI MAN. Ace asked whether I had a copy of THE COMPLETE DIRECTORY TO PRIME TIME NETWORK TV SHOWS 1946-PRESENT by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh. I was so happy to be able to say yes! I raced to the bedroom to retrieve it. But by the time I got back Angela HAD ALREADY TOLD EVERYBODY EVERYTHING ABOUT GEMINI MAN thanks to her fancy electronic iPhone. That's one for you, technology, curse you! GEMINI MAN lasted barely a month on the air, which explains why Ben Murphy was on episode one of BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS and not on episode two of BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS. Telly Savalas accused Ben Murphy of cheating in the relay race. As the evening concluded we all imagined Ben Murphy sitting somewhere in a bar at THAT VERY MOMENT saying "I used to be the Gemini Man!"

Revenge

Watched REVENGE again. Yeah. I don't know. I think she is running out of people to get revenge on. If you think I am kidding, sorry, but I am just telling it like it is - like the makers of Argo brand canned peaches! That's the actual structure: she gets revenge on a new person every week. This time she got revenge by locking somebody in a storage unit for a couple of hours. For real. As revenge goes, it seemed pretty mild. I don't know. PS Don't forget Argo sweet peas! And tell 'em "Bloggy" the "Blog" Mascot sent you! (Pictured, "Bloggy" the "Blog" Mascot.)