From the Golden Toilet

Speaking of... what? Well, I know what I mean. Going from Queen Elizabeth in my fuzzy little brain to Dr. John Dee, I was put in mind of the chronovisor, a gadget McNeil emailed me about recently, under the heading "Forget the Golden Toilet." Perhaps I should explain the subject line of McNeil's email. Have you not heard of the famous artwork that was fashioned in the beauteous form of a golden toilet? McNeil and I used to amuse ourselves thinking of clever ways to steal the golden toilet, but then someone stole it in real life and ruined our fun. Now, according to all the newspapers, the golden toilet is back - and better than ever, I assume. But why am I telling you this? After all, McNeil has commanded me to forget the golden toilet – review the title of his email for confirmation - and think about the chronovisor instead. I’ll provide a "hyperlink" (here) so you can begin your own stupid journey of discovery about the chronovisor, a device that allows you to see back in time! Supposedly. Well, the idea behind the chronovisor put me in mind of my own big idea for seeing back in time, which involves an impossibly powerful telescope and a faraway galaxy. The narrator of Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN (or is it his hero de Selby, much quoted in footnotes?) has a related (?) notion involving an infinite series of mirrors, if I recall correctly, which the structure of this sentence throws into doubt. McNeil declared that my idea would indeed allow us to see ourselves eating lunch in high school, what a dream come true. Anyway, as our email chain became longer and longer, I kept misreading McNeil’s subject header as "From the Golden Toilet," which I finally told him. I think he said I could put that on his tombstone, but I countered that it might work better as the title of an edition of our collected letters.

My Secret

A lot of people ask me... and by "people," I mean hypothetical beings from an alternate universe... "Jack," their disembodied voices plead, "how do you decide what to read?" The answer is simple: the obituaries, of course! All of my ideas about everything come from obituaries. A New York Times obituary is how I came across an anthology called TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED. On the first page of the actual text (a distinction I make because of the three - three! - prefaces) there is an owl. My instincts in this matter having been honed to the finest of points, I feel confident in saying there will be several more owls before I am done. In fact, screech-owls, as distinct from regular everyday owls, make an appearance on the same page, in the same poem from the Cahto people of northern California. It is, if I am reading it correctly, which I am not, a list of things that were not there before the beginning of time. "Owls were not they say." Turns out a lot of animals and things weren't around back then. "Then clouds were not they say. Fog was not they say. It didn't appear they say. Stars were not they say. It was very dark." The last line has an echo in the last line of a story in my second book, which (the coincidence) gave me a good feeling, though you might justiably object, if you existed, which you don't, "It was very dark? I bet a lot of people have written that sentence." Well, it works at the end of the story, or is intended to, in the same way that it provides a satisfying resting place for the poem. The sentence in my story goes, if I recall it correctly, "Pretty soon it was dark, and between the lit cities it was very dark." I remember it chiefly because I got a rejection from some very high-toned magazine (I can't remember which, but it was a big one), on the bottom of which the editor or reader grudgingly scrawled, "The last sentence was good." Ha ha! Which reminds me: the other day it dawned on me that all my books are out of print. Someone who should know (Richard Howorth) told me it's not true, but I admit to lingering doubts, even in the face of his unquestionable expertise as the former mayor of the town and, more significantly, the owner of Square Books. Anyway, before Richard gave me that comfort, the notion came to me to organize an event in which I read from my out of print books (all my books). I thought I could sell whatever copies I could scrounge up around the house at bargain basement prices. Then I realized we have just one copy of SWEET BANANAS, of which there were not that many copies to begin with. So I looked around the "internet" and found exactly one for sale, and I bought it. Now, I wondered with some anticipation what would be on the cover, because, as you would not recall even did you exist, each copy had a different cover, featuring the beginning sentence (or so, as we shall see) of each of the novel's 365 chapters. Well! I was delighted, despite all my failures as a writer, as enumerated in part above, to unwrap the package and discover by wild and statistically unlikely happenstance my favorite chapter of the book staring at me from the cover. (See above.) Yes, that's a whole chapter, just so you know what you're missing. I think it's Mary Miller's favorite, too. She mentioned it in ELECTRIC LITERATURE as one of her favorite sentences. It is churlish of me to note in the face of such generosity that it is two sentences.

Sparkle

Madcap, dizzying whirlwind of a day, by which I mean I received an email from McNeil, who inquired therein, "Did you once have an idea that put Shakespeare and Bob Hope on an island? Does that ring a bell?" It did not ring a bell! In fact, I had no idea what McNeil was talking about, and replied as much. McNeil responded: "I think they were on an island talking about each other's plays/films. I remember you sent it to me - this is when we were unemployed - and I can't remember what I suggested...putting them on separate islands? But that doesn't make any sense." Nor did it make sense to me, the recipient of the email and supposed author of this demented notion. I asked, searching my mind and finding nothing, was it a play? Were Bob Hope and Shakespeare in heaven? McNeil replied, "I'm pretty sure it was a short story and they were trying to make each other's stuff 'better'. Hahaha. That sounds funny now that I'm all jacked up on caffeine." When I again insisted I had never written such a thing, McNeil agreed that perhaps I had not. I began to think he was gaslighting me! "I could have dreamed it," he wrote. But he couldn't leave it there. He tracked down emails from a long-defunct account of mine, and produced documentary evidence that in 2005, I declared that he and I should watch every Bob Hope movie and read every Shakespeare play and have phone conversations about the process, which we would transcribe and publish. I think I was trying to invent the podcast, though I believe the podcast had, without my knowledge, already been invented at the time. Anyway, it depressed me to hear how little my ideas have changed... I have a column running right NOW for which I just talk into a digital recorder and transcribe my own words. When I noted as much with some chagrin, McNeil wrote back, "A diamond will always sparkle!!!!" with the four encouraging exclamation points you see before you. In actual fact, as it turned out, it was MCNEIL who wrote, "I've got it!" He then described, in that 2005 exchange, an elaborate framing device for an epistolary novel in which we both crash-landed in the South Pacific on adjacent islands, too treacherous to travel between, but with currents that made it possible for us to write each other messages in bottles about Shakespeare and Bob Hope. Thus was one mystery solved, while other mysteries, perhaps, presented themselves.

Old Paperbacks

Met Bill Boyle and Ace for coffee last night. Afterward, Ace and I walked back to his office on the square. Ace had to pick up some things for a plane trip he's making today, and he mused aloud, glancing over his bookshelves, about what he should read on the plane. Maybe John D. MacDonald, he was thinking. I jokingly suggested I COULD GO ON SINGING, MacDonald's novelization of a Judy Garland movie. Ace has it! He has every single John D. MacDonald book, as you can confirm via this interview ("click" here) I did with him a while back. Ace picked up one and fretted over bringing a "vintage paperback" on an airplane, which reminded me that I had been considering just such a thing. (Ha ha ha! Are you still reading this? I don't care.) I need to figure out something to read on an airplane pretty soon. All the things I'm reading now are big, heavy, bulky monsters that no one would enjoy carrying through an airport in today's complicated times: THE BOOK OF MAGIC, OSWALD'S TALE, and I'm finally back into THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, come on! Get real! Get with it! So, someone... I think it was Kent Osborne... recently told me he (or she) was reading Vonnegut again. Was it Kent? [It wasn't. - ed.] I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember (see also). That - combined with the sighting of a colorful row of spines along a shelf at Square Books: slick new(ish) Vonnegut paperbacks - made me remember a neat little cardboard box I had requested and received for Christmas when I was about 13, a cardboard box of five mass-market Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks.

Here, I found a picture of one on the "internet." I have a deep feeling that this could be the most boring "post" I've ever written and yet I feel no compulsion whatsoever to stop. For example, here's something funny I remember about this cardboard box of Kurt Vonnegut books. It used to have WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE in it but I removed it and hid it somewhere in shame or fear and, with some effort, squeezed my older and somewhat fatter copy of Vonnegut's PLAYER PIANO into its place (to avoid uncomfortable questions, I suppose). Why? I have the vague notion that something offended or terrified me about WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE! Whereas I spent a lot of time casting the movie of PLAYER PIANO that I was going to make when I grew up. All I remember is that Peter Sellers was in it. Wait, I'm almost to the point. I remembered that although I've had this cardboard box for around 40 years (see also), there are two books in there I've never read! What a crummy way to treat such a nice Christmas gift. What an ingrate! So I thought I might read my 40-year-old paperback of THE SIRENS OF TITAN on my upcoming airplane ride. I like everything about this edition (above)! Look at the purple pulpy (purply?) cover! Look at this dude in the loincloth and the (I assume) sirens in question. I like the price of 1.95 on the cover! I like that the edges of the pages are green-blue. I'll show you:

Are the pages of current mass-market paperbacks still edged in blue or red or gold? Once again I'm reminded that I'm just not observant enough to be a "writer." So THE SIRENS OF TITAN looked pristine!

And I opened it up and the first eight pages fell out. But I don't think that's going to stop me. Crack it open in the middle and you can see that most of the glue holding the book together has dissolved. I still feel okay.

The Ninety Paths to Jerry

Soon it will be Jerry Lewis's 90th birthday. So I have "punched up" an old "post." In the old days there were only fifty, but now there are NINETY different ways to approach Jerry, should you find him unapproachable. I present this as a public service. Choose the path that's right for you! 1. How is Edgar Allan Poe like Jerry Lewis? 2. For that matter, what would Kierkegaard say about Jerry Lewis? 3. Bob Dylan got "deeply into" Jerry Lewis. 4. Jerry was a hero to Richard Pryor. 5. Jerry shares expressionistic instincts with iconic rappers. 6. He made Orson Welles laugh. 7. Freudian aspects of Jerry. 8. He played a gig with Thelonious Monk. 9. A trusted method of immersing yourself in Jerryness. 10. Don't believe me? Take it from bestselling novelist Laura Lippman! 11. Don't believe Laura Lippman? Perhaps famed method actor Edward Norton is more to your taste. 12. Consider Jerry Lewis as the forefather of David Lynch. 13. So can it be a coincidence that Louis CK cast Lynch in a part originally written for Jerry Lewis? 14. As muse to hardboiled Don Carpenter. 15. Jerry's spectacular use of color. 16. Jerry is the inventor of anti-comedy, his aesthetic also appropriated by the cinematic underground. 17. Read the great Jerry monograph by Chris Fujiwara. 18. Jerry a hero to Michael Palin of the Monty Python comedy troupe. 19. Jerry an inspiration for the British version of THE OFFICE that everyone used to love so much. 20. Jerry makes me think of the French painter Henri Rosseau. 21. Do you think Jerry is redundant? No, he is "unfolding redundancy." Joke's on you!

22. Do you like Godard? Well, Godard based some of his scenes on Jerry Lewis scenes. Like this and that. 23. Some maintain that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY would have been better with Jerry in it. 24. Speaking of which, was Jerry an influence on Boorman's groundbreaking POINT BLANK? I don't know, but he should have starred in it. 25. How about that prescient scene in THE BELLBOY that anticipates Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY? 26. The Cinderfella dance! 27. Jerry frequently appears in THE BELIEVER magazine, if that's your cup of tea. 28. I intuit a connection between Jerry and J.D. Salinger. 29. And supposedly Salinger considered Jerry to direct the movie version of CATCHER IN THE RYE, maybe. I said maybe! 30. Jerry's influence on GOODFELLAS. 31. Jerry Lewis is part of Philip K. Dick's mystic vision of the entire universe. 32. You should watch lots of Jerry Lewis so you can practice the fun habit of saying things like Jerry Lewis. 33. Even nature itself aspires to sound like Jerry Lewis. 34. Jerry Lewis is a good singer. 35. Maybe you identify with Jerry's world-weary attitude. 36. He hung out in a diner with Marilyn Monroe. 37. Blair Hobbs detects an aesthetic kinship between Jerry and the photographer William Eggleston. 38. Jerry was an inspiration to Bruce Springsteen. 39. Think of Jerry as a poet. 40. Need a dissertation topic? How about "Medical Ethics in the Films of Jerry Lewis"? 41. In a hilarious practical joke, Jerry ruined Dick van Dyke's meeting with the queen! 42. Jerry was instrumental in getting the great Stan Laurel his honorary Oscar. 43. Jerry is handsome! 44. Maybe you are a "conspiracy theory buff." Well, for real the CIA tampered with one of Jerry's movies. 45. Maybe you're an animal lover. Well, Jerry bought a hearing aid for his dog. 46. Jerry is subversive! 47. Quentin Tarantino + Jerry Lewis = True Love 4ever. 48. (Maybe because he anticipated one of Tarantino's more radical and disruptive narrative decisions by 40 years.) 49. Does he irritate you and make you uncomfortable? MAYBE THAT'S JUST WHAT JERRY WANTS! 50. For example, he once stuck his nose in Frank Sinatra's eye. 51. And took some of the starch out of Tony Curtis by flicking ashes on his jacket. 52. Jerry is complicated. He "both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure." - J. Hoberman. 53. Jerry's influence on the Beastie Boys. 54. Jerry appears in works by acknowledged comic geniuses John Hodgman and Michael Kupperman.

55. But perhaps you prefer authors from Mississippi, a chunk of land with a notable literary history. If so, you should be aware that Tom Franklin and Frederick Barthelme have put Jerry Lewis in their well-regarded "Mississippi" novels. 56. So has Don DeLillo, though he is not from Mississippi, nor are his novels set there. 57. ARE you a historian, by the way? Then consider Jerry's breakup with Dean in its implications as "a national trauma." 58. Francis Ford Coppola cites Jerry as an influence. 59. Which reminds me: I recently read an interview that Scorsese did with Lewis in which he (Scorsese) cites THE LADIES MAN as an influence. I always assumed the scene in question was drawn from SATYRICON. But SATYRICON came out after THE LADIES MAN, so maybe SATYRICON was influenced by Jerry too! I just now decided that, while typing this. 60. Jerry's darker side a fruitful subject for literary speculation. 61. Speaking of which, John Waters said Jerry Lewis was "probably a monster!" Can there be a higher compliment? 62. Although (see previous "link") John Waters went on to praise his taste in costuming. So that subject is worth contemplation. 63. Though, intriguingly, to Waters's original hypothesis, Jerry repeatedly acknowledges the collusion of the innocent with the monstrous, especially within a single individual. (See also.) 64. Jerry's art provides some of the same challenges and rewards as Sun Ra's. 65. Jerry envisioned hosting Queen Elizabeth, Jimmy Hoffa and Helen Keller on a talk show. I still want to write that play.

66. Fascinating undercurrents to his on- and off-screen chemistry with Dean Martin. 67. I wrote a pretty good article about him once if you can find it. 68. And this "post" is all right. 69. Try to solve Jerry's universal problem. 70. The complex transparency of Jerry's genius can be profitably compared to Brian Wilson's. 71. Jerry reveals the intrinsic flaws in the very notion of successful human communication. 72. Maybe that's why he's constantly "rewriting his own being." 73. But before he rewrote himself too much, here's a 13-minute clip of young Jerry at his brashest and most engaging. 74. Jerry's anarchic devouring of the hand that feeds him. 75. Maybe you are from the "dance world." Did you know that many highbrow choreographers turn to Jerry Lewis for inspiration? 76. Similarities between Jerry and the great Italian giallo director Mario Bava, if that's your thing. 77. Jerry is a model of tact and restraint compared to the makers of Jason Bateman movies. 78. As Jerry is, so you will be. As you are, so once was he. 79. Jerry, like Elvis, was a target of snobbery and classism. 80. I mean, even when he ended the Oscar broadcast EARLY, the powers-that-be still despised him. He gets under "the man's" skin. 81. For example, when everybody in "the establishment" was dumping on Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE, Jerry was one of the first to proclaim its greatness. 82. Did he inspire a character in a Wes Anderson movie? Probably not. But I think he inspired a character in a Noah Baumbach movie. 83. Touchstone for towering cartoonists Lynda Barry and Gilbert Hernandez. 84. Jerry deemed a subject worthy of the Savannah College of Art and Design. 85. Jerry cut short his formal education and set out to educate himself. 86. Jonathan Rosenbaum knows a lot about movies and he loves Jerry Lewis. 87. Tough-to-please James Wolcott likewise. 88. Camille Paglia seems happy about Jerry Lewis. 89. Jerry blurs assumptions about gender. 90. Hey, Sandra Bullock likes Jerry Lewis.

Catarrh

"Pray go back and recollect one of the conclusions to which I sought to lead you in my very first lecture," William James implores us in Lecture #10 of his VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: "You may remember how I there argued against the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin." So that told me that Bill Taft was right, or very close to right, in his fine guess about what William James meant! Plus it was a clue about where to find that thing about St. Paul that has been bugging my memory... because the index was no help. The index of this musty old paperback is inadequate. INADEQUATE! And the print is so tiny and the lines so close together... but I went back to the very first lecture, as William James begged me to do, and found the passage I was thinking of, which begins, "Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex... It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. George Fox's discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as the symptom of a disordered colon. Carlyle's organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh." I have to stop typing now, or else I'm going to find myself typing a lot of stuff like, "To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one has already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change." Ugh, my head hurts now, does that count?

Faulkner Time!

Went to Faulkner's house today with Pen and Kent... Bill Griffith was an amazing host as always, plus he turns out to be a huge ADVENTURE TIME fan, so he and Pen and Kent (photo by me!) had a lot to talk about. Bill had fascinating questions and theories about ADVENTURE TIME, which he magically bent until they came back to Faulkner. Bill even said that Faulkner would have loved ADVENTURE TIME... I don't know. He tried to enlist me in support of that idea, but I couldn't make myself say it, even though Bill has some intricate and compelling hypotheses - which I am not at liberty to divulge here! - about Faulkner's secret love of television. But somehow, indirectly, Bill's notions reminded me of my reckless theory, which I bandied about with absolutely no supporting evidence in my scary story class last semester, that Lovecraft might have had some influence on Faulkner, or maybe the other way around, and Bill confirmed that Faulkner had some Lovecraft books in his library! Which proves nothing, but still. And then when we were walking outside after the wonderful tour, Bill pointed out an enormous, glistening rat snake slithering across Faulkner's porch! Enormous! Kent and Pen took out their phones to get a picture but they weren't quite fast enough for the rat snake, big and ponderous as it was.

Commotion Notion

Hey, you know what else THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE reminds me of? That's right! Jerry Lewis. But what doesn't remind me of Jerry Lewis? Of the impish Cousin Lymon, McCullers writes, "When he walked into the room there was always a quick feeling of tension, because with this busybody about there was never any telling what might descend on you, or what might suddenly be brought to happen in the room. People are never so free with themselves and so recklessly glad as when there is some possibility of commotion or calamity ahead." For further insight, reacquaint yourself with McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy.

Pigs Fly

I think I still miss Sam Sifton. The restaurant reviewer who took over for him in the New York Times gives a great review to a Greenwich Village restaurant where he ate "a half-pound of deep-fried bacon" and a fish skeleton. The butter there has been subjected to "notions of controlled spoilage." As Sam Sifton would have, Mr. Asimov compels me think of this as a good thing. But I'm afraid Sam Sifton would have made me hungrier for a fish skeleton. It is surprisingly hard to find an image of Sylvester the Cat eating a fish skeleton, so here is Tweety in a sandwich. I find myself thinking - perhaps unfairly - about how gawker, for example, would frame a story featuring carnival-goers, for example, eating "a half-pound of deep-fried bacon" in Mississippi, for example, as opposed to a restaurant critic doing the same in Greenwich Village. Related: John T. Edge - also in today's paper - on "Pig Wings."

"Busted!"

So I was telling my class of "grad students" about the time I talked to Jerry Lewis on the phone. Wait! There was a good reason to mention that in class: we are studying Dean Martin. Wait! There is a good reason for that too, so shut up. I told them that this was back in the days when PULP FICTION had just come out, and I was working at TBS, and I was all, "This Tarantino kid's gonna make a name for himself, I tell ya!" and I decided it would be great to have a day of Jerry Lewis movies on TBS with Quentin Tarantino and Jerry Lewis hosting them together, because my wouldn't the sparks fly and so on. And one of my students was like, "They got together recently." And I was like, "WHAT? No they didn't!" I was like, "I bet they were all, 'Hey, remember the time Jack tried to get us together? He was right all along! Why didn't we listen? Why don't we ever listen to Jack?'" So then my student - his name is Bill and his wife is my friend who works for the Audubon Society! - sent me a "link" on facebook all about Quentin Tarantino presenting Jerry Lewis with this special bust of Jerry at the Friars' Club (above), and now I want to break into the Friars' Club and steal this bust of Jerry Lewis with the help of a team of unlikely misfits, each possessing a unique and unexpected talent necessary to pull off one last heist before retiring. I typed as much into the facebook, and my student replied that the heist should count as our final exam. GREAT IDEA! Of course I would never steal anything, especially from the Friars' Club, where so many scenes in MR. SATURDAY NIGHT were shot. But that heist would make a great movie, for which I just wrote the screenplay in between typing this "post," and I call it BUSTED! (You know, I was once invited to the Friars' Club by a guy who was Carrot Top's publicist - I think that was his position in the Carrot Top organization - and he also represented that guy who made noises with his mouth for a living [not Charlie Callas, the other one]. But the main thing was that this guy was writing the AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY of Harry Ritz, which I fully realize means NOTHING to you, so shut up. Well, I never got to go, so there was no "casing the joint.") Scott Phillips was monitoring this discussion via facebook and decided that once "we" steal the bust (yes, he has invited himself along, and I happily accept the notion!) we turn it into one of those busts with a secret button inside, like Batman used to enjoy, and Scott even provided instructions on how to build one. Finally, it looks like Jerry's good friend Richard Belzer was at the big unveiling, too, so my "two degrees of Belzer" might really pay off when it comes time to pull the job, which of course I'm never going to do, it's all in my wonderful imagination, ha ha ha, in no way am I a crazy person. Thank you for your time and attention and a very pleasant evening to you all.

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up

Welcome once again to All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up, your one stop on the "internet" for all the latest in excitement. ITEM! Dr. Theresa's brand new PhD was celebrated in style last night at the City Grocery Bar. ITEM! Who should be spotted chatting in a corner but the Man Who Says "Palimpsest" and Faulkner's niece? ITEM! Blair Hobbs sculpted the head of Lizzie Borden's stepmother (pictured) out of that greatest of all mediums: cheese. Gruesomely delicious! (Lizzie Borden is one of the subjects of Dr. Theresa's dissertation.) Continuing the criminal theme, Joey Lauren Adams provided "jail food": baloney sandwiches (seen below) and PBJ. There was food galore, in fact, provided by many thoughtful citizens! But I am old and unaware of how things work! And I used a digital camera for the first time last night, and the notion of a "memory card" was strange and frightening to me. After just a couple of pictures, I was ominously informed by the camera that my "internal memory" was "full." Something I have long suspected! So there is no picture of Theresa's favorite chocolate cake, which can only be baked by Beth Ann Fennelly. Last night's edition was decorated with a scarlet "A" (once again in keeping with Dr. Theresa's major themes). ITEM! Late in the evening, after the restaurant downstairs was closed, John Currence took the baloney sandwiches and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches - great enough already - into the kitchen and did something magical to them. They came back grilled or fried or toasted or something. Or maybe they were just sprinkled with love! Yes, that's probably it. Or he used one of those little blowtorches. But most likely, love. ITEM! Spirits flowed freely. Lovely decorations abounded. Dr. Theresa was laden with unexpected gifts, showered with good wishes, and covered with accoutrements. That's it for this edition "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up." We bid you adieu from the whirling social scene. Until next time, keep "reaching" for the "stars"!

Nebulous Wabenlotnee Precedent

As I have mentioned, CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS gets its subtitle from the fact that it begins by exploring the centuries leading up to the founding of the religion. In that spirit, I plan to write a book called THE "BLOG": THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS, because surely many historic forces have combined to culminate in the mighty edifice of learning and knowledge you see before you. For example, ask any sane person to list the "blog's" three main preoccupations and that person will say 1) Unicorns 2) AUTHOR! AUTHOR! 3) the "Mr. Wabenlotnee" gag from the Jerry Lewis film THE ERRAND BOY. Now I would ask you to thoroughly examine the clip from that old bit of programming I used to work on with Mr. Ward, Kent, and Mike Mitchell. Yes, examine it again and again with an archaeological eye! You will be alarmed and amazed to discover that even then, in the 1990s, an era that is shrouded in mystery, back before anyone knew what a "blog" was, the images and notions that were later to become "blog" staples remarkably existed in nebulous form. Observe! At the :37 mark, the actress Jennifer Grant is mentioned. She is the daughter of AUTHOR! AUTHOR! star Dyan Cannon (and father Cary Grant). At 1:46, Clint Eastwood is described riding a unicorn. And finally, at 2:32, Kent and his puppet friend do a variation on the classic Wabenlotnee bit. The roots of the "blog" reach far, far back into the misty mists of time. Have fun discovering your own exciting facts about the "blog's" incredible pre-history. You don't have anything else to do! Look at you!

Night of the Ghost Shuckers

Thursday will mark the first anniversary of the Snackbar restaurant. As part of the celebration, they have asked Tom Franklin and myself to shuck oysters for the evening - a perverse yet compelling notion! "Oysters are going to be flying all over the place," Tom Franklin predicted in a recent telephone conversation. "People are going to be waiting six hours for an order," I appended. Seriously, I am sure there will be ghost shuckers to ensure that Snackbar customers - including you, I hope! - receive their oysters in a timely and healthful manner.

The Funny Part

I see that the Library Journal is recommending a new novel to "appreciators of J. D. Salinger's CATCHER IN THE RYE and Jack Pendarvis' SHUT UP, UGLY." The funny part is that SHUT UP, UGLY has no appreciators! It doesn't exist! My (former? no one will tell me!) publisher is still having "phone problems," such as forgetting how to pick one up, that's one phone problem, so I still have no explanation for you... or me! The other funny part is Library Journal's weird notion that SHUT UP, UGLY and CATCHER IN THE RYE have anything in common. Life has so many funny parts when you think about it!

The Wonderful World of Dr. "M."

Dr. "M." writes to say that she "no longer uses the phrase 'apples and oranges' to describe similar yet dissimilar notions but instead uses the phrase 'zombies and unicorns.' The phrase may already be widely accepted by some, especially those in the fantasy and sci fi realms," Dr. "M." explains, as she picked it up from a colleague who writes and teaches fantasy fiction. "I thought you would appreciate that given your interest in unicorns," she concludes. And our dynamic "moth story" reminded her that she has been listening to a "podcast" called "The Moth." She elaborates: "Check it out. We listened to one last night that had me crying I was laughing so hard." ("The Moth" is a New York-based storytelling series, it seems, which reminds me to tell you parenthetically that Amanda Stern's Happy Ending Reading and Music Series has moved to Joe's Pub, which, if memory serves, is where Woody Allen goes or used to go to play clarinet. Wednesday night is the first show in the new location, and it features acclaimed novelist Richard Price, so if you're in the area, go help Amanda ring in the new year and the rebirth of Happy Ending.) Finally, Dr. "M." reports that she is reading and enjoying a novel called BEET by Roger Rosenblatt. So if you want to be like Dr. "M." - and trust me, you do - SAY "zombies and unicorns," READ Rosenblatt, LISTEN TO "The Moth." This long-awaited missive from Dr. "M." also gives me the happy opportunity to present yesterday's postponed picture of Killer Moth. Goodbye! Now I'm tired from making "links." I believe I'll lie down with a cool cloth on my forehead. I fear I may succumb to the vapors.

Cloud Declaration

Remember the cloud that bothered McNeil the other day? I have done some pretty impressive research - by which I mean that I have flipped rapidly through the first few pages of THE CLOUDSPOTTER'S GUIDE by Gavin Pretor-Pinney - and decided that it is "Cumulonimbus." What does this mean? I don't know. And others - call them "cloud experts," if you will - might disagree with my assessment. Yet I stand by it for some reason. Wait a minute. It also might be "Cumulus congestus." No, no, I'm staying with "Cumulonimbus." Says THE CLOUDSPOTTER'S GUIDE: "You can't miss a Cumulonimbus incus, with its distinctive anvil-shaped top, called an 'incus.'" Meanwhile, "blog" fan Sepsey sees not an anvil, but a prairie-style bonnet. And a jaguar. The cloud, he suggests, looks like "Laura Ingalls Wilder reaching out to hug or strangle someone. But then the cloud behind her," he goes on, "looks like a jaguar, in particular the jaguar from the Jacksonville Jaguars' helmet." Frankly, we don't see it. But we present his notions in the interest of cloud fairness. Everyone sees something different in a cloud. That's the way it is with clouds!

Dibs

Remember my lovable fictional creation Pearlie Withers? Of course you don't! She was supposed to appear in my upcoming detective novel SHUT UP, UGLY, but my task today is to remove all references to poor old Pearlie from the manuscript. Pearlie is a victim of the writing process! Say goodbye to Pearlie. You made through a couple of drafts, Pearlie, way to hang in there. Have fun wherever it is that deleted characters go. A sad incidental loss will be Pearlie's contention that the government is using clouds to communicate secret messages. But I call dibs on the notion! Maybe I'll use it in something else. I'm very frugal that way.

McNeil's Gold Medal International Emergency Exit Theatre

McNeil persists in teasing us with the notion that MGMIEET may get itself up and running again. Here is today's featured attraction. Hey, if you "click" on the Edie Adams cigar commercial in the previous "post," try to bear in your wondering mind how McNeil once insisted that Edie Adams (with whom he had confused Shirley Jones) resembles Hillary Clinton (!).

Our Generation!

During the delightful visit of the Barry B. family, Barry B. and I regaled one another with recreations of the lost candy bar commercials of our youth. Don't judge us! It is the nature of our generation. Old candy bar commercials are our campfire stories and we must work to keep them alive. I am put in mind of McNeil's notion of the "living 'blog'" for some reason. I reminded Barry B. of a candy bar called Peanut Butter With No Jelly. In the commercials, Peanut Butter was represented by a man and Jelly by a woman (or it may have been the other way around). In any case, Peanut Butter and Jelly undertook a tearful and irrevocable separation in vaguely tragic circumstances. This struck me as wrongheaded marketing even as a child. First, we were being reminded of how good Peanut Butter is with Jelly. Then we were being told that Jelly would have no part in our candy bar, despite the former fact. Finally, we were asked to associate the eating of the candy bar with despair and heartbreak and unutterable loss. Barry B., in turn, reminded me of a cow and an elephant who would come out and sing about the Butter Nut candy bar. Their song, in Barry B.'s telling, went like this: "It's buttery! Nuttery! Buttery! Nuttery! Buttery! Nuttery! Butter Nut!" When he sang it, I remembered it, though I could not bring to mind the accompanying capers. Says Barry B., the cow advocated for the butteriness while the elephant was more in favor of the nutteriness. At one point, the elephant accidentally said "buttery" instead of "nuttery" and the cow gave him (her?) a kiss of appreciation. The elephant seemed pleased and a fluttery musical cue indicated his (her?) complex emotions. Barry B. says that the cow and elephant were meant to resemble pop duo Sonny & Cher, in his opinion. I could not find either ad on YouTube (hence the importance of our oral tradition), though I was able to find one reference to the Butter Nut candy bar, which I present forthwith for your edification and pleasure:

The Sidebar

You know with what rapture we look toward Maud Newton's sidebar. It's where we learned about Tom Bissell and the apostles, for example. We don't know how to "link" to the sidebar itself; it is chimerical and changeable. But we can "link" to particular items we found there, or alert you to check them out for yourself, now, before they go away. Right now we are taken with the notion that Sylvester Stallone is planning to make a movie about Edgar Allan Poe! This is the biggest news since John Astin's one man show. Ms. Newton also provides a "link" to an interesting essay on Donald Barthelme. Go to the sidebar! Every day!