Mom Right

When I was growing up, there was a local grocery store Mom didn't like. It's still there and she still doesn't like it. But now that I am adult man with sophisticated opinions, I am always like, "Mom, it is just a grocery store like any other. Why do you go so far out of your way for groceries?" And then I continue to lecture my mother on a variety of topics. I'll tell you, though... I have a single vivid memory of this grocery store from childhood. I don't know why it should be vivid. It involves a cigarette. It was the late 1960s or early 1970s. Cigarettes were everywhere. So that's not why the memory is vivid. Three of my four grandparents constantly blew cigarette smoke into my cherubic face. Benignly, I add! But anyway, I saw the back of a guy kneeling in a white uniform at a dairy case... putting in milk bottles... he turned, and I saw his face... he had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, a cigarette with, probably, the longest ash I had ever seen. Or ever have (when not deployed comically, as in the case of Nathan Thurm or a 20-year-old infomercial for a blender)! It seemed miraculous that the ash hadn't fallen off his cigarette - which was mostly ash! - and into the whipping cream... anyway! Somehow it filled me with uncanny horror. I don't know why we were even in that grocery store, the one Mom didn't like. None of this is the point. Some of it is the point. Now I'm going to reveal the kind of personal detail that has security experts quaking in their boots. Sometimes, Dr. Theresa and I like an apple and an orange at night. We have been off desserts ever since some medical shenanigans. So, yes, sometimes an apple and an orange will hit the spot. For whatever gendered reason, it is Dr. Theresa who peels the apple and orange as part of the elaborate ritual. She likes peeling an apple! What do you want me to do? So... oh! I forgot to say that Dr. Theresa and I frequent the forbidden grocery store when we are visiting my parents. And this time, we happened to bring back some apples. So... afterward, when we would have our apple and orange, and the apple turned out to be insipid, I would say, "Is this one of those ****** apples?" (Here, I named the grocery store Mom doesn't like.) And every time, yes! The flavorless apple came from that grocery store. Finally, I was obliged to call Mom on the phone and say, "Mom, you were right!"

Orange Vinyl Spider-Man Sequel

I finished reading THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES but no I didn’t. Because you get to the end of the first book and then you have to – by law! – read the next volume, which is called INTO THE MILLENNIUM, or, I suppose, THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES: INTO THE MILLENNIUM. Either way, it sounds like a Spider-Man sequel. I need to get over to Square Books and order it up! Meanwhile, the Million Dollar Book Club is working on THE RIGHT STUFF. And here’s what I noticed! Wally Schirra, one of the Mercury astronauts, is a real prankster. Like, he has a little box and tells people he caught a mongoose in it. Then when they try to reach in and pet it, well, it jumps at them like one of those snakes out of a peanut can. You know those snakes. Wally Schirra’s mongoose is some kind of furry sock on a spring. And that made me remember my short story collection MOVIE STARS, when a character goes to an auction and tries to buy a novelty mongoose in a box, operating on the same principle. I got out the catalog from the auction of Bob Hope's personal effects, which I actually attended, and confirmed that Bob’s mongoose box, as pictured in the aforementioned catalog, appears to professionally assembled, whereas Tom Wolfe sure made it sound as if the mongoose box was something Wally Schirra thought up and slapped together himself. I think that’s an accurate memory of my reading experience. But the book is downstairs by the bed and I don’t care enough to go get it. Then I started imagining whimsical fancies, such as, maybe Wally Schirra gave Bob his very own homemade mongoose box! Wouldn’t that be something? It doesn’t seem overwhelmingly plausible, really. Although I’m sure Bob Hope hung out with the Mercury astronauts at some point. Nor does it seem plausible, though, that Wally Schirra was manufacturing his own trick mongoose boxes when there were plenty of trick mongoose boxes, apparently, in the nation’s many novelty emporiums from coast to coast. Maybe Tom Wolfe got this one thing wrong! Unless! What if Wally Schirra saw a novelty mongoose box in a store and thought, "I could make this myself for half the price!"? I guess we'll never know. Speaking of stuff we'll never know, I noticed again that the Bob Hope auction catalog wasn’t too heavy on provenance, which reminded me that I wanted to check it, and not for the first time, to see if I could find a clue (I couldn’t) about what cartoonist made these clever Bob Hope caricatures I bought at the auction. When Quinn came to town, I was like, “Look, this guy made pictures of Bob Hope as if rendered by Goya… and, uh… [trying to think of some names of other artists]” And Quinn was like, “Are these supposed to look like Bob Hope?” And I was like… “!” Because of course! Why would Bob Hope have these hanging in his office if… and my voice, as well as my thoughts, trailed off as Quinn stood there with a doubtful look on her face. So let’s get back to THE RIGHT STUFF! As I texted Megan with photographic proof, I still have an orange vinyl 45 RPM record with recordings from the actual Mercury space flights. It came with my G.I. Joe space capsule, the interior of which glowed in the dark. I got scared and thought it was a ghost! Give me a break, I was three years old. (Speaking of Megan Abbott and Square Books [see above], I’ll be “in conversation” with Megan about her new book EL DORADO DRIVE on August 13. I wouldn’t mention it so early, but I just started reading it and on page 4 [of the galley, anyway] there’s a “bird crying in the night.” As a review of the owl-spotting portion of the “blog” will remind you, we have given much thought to the matter, and just because a bird cries in the night, that does not make the bird an owl. Maybe it’s just an upset bird. I’m not worried! There are plenty more pages to come that might have a definite owl in them.) But I really came here to report about THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES, didn’t I? I think it’s going to end up being JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS length. And contrary to my advice (usually about Thomas Mann), which is, essentially, read the first 200-400 pages and then you’ll be hooked, I was really bopping along with TMWQ for, oh, let’s say 200 pages… then I hit a real dry spell until page 630 (though, miner-like, I uncovered, here and there, random chunks of boldly glittering sarcasm that made it worth the trouble). So you have to get over a very big hump in the middle. Can you handle a 400-page hump? (Remember, this is just the first volume I’m talking about.) But when I got to page 630 I think I said out loud, “Things are starting to happen!” On page 630. Then the book was over not many pages later. Well, it was and it wasn’t.

Butter Knife

Attention! My friend Sarah will appear in this "post." I happened to notice yesterday - Sarah would never mention it herself; she's too nice! - that I've been dropping the h from her name for how long? Months? Longer? I have decided to investigate no further. But I did want to record my shame here for all to see. Now we may move to happier matters. It's back! The precious little jotting book has been removed from its mothball-filled cedar chest. Now that I have stopped pretending to stop "blogging," I am allowed to take said jotting book with me to Los Angeles, California, and, upon my return, to transcribe my jotted experiences into the form of little numbered jottings. 1. Ace Atkins printed out my boarding passes for me! He said he had left them in his mailbox, and I was concerned, having noticed on our many walks around the neighborhood as we exchange wise thoughts, that the door had fallen off of Ace's mailbox. What if my boarding passes were to blow away in a gentle breeze? I discovered, however, upon my arrival, that Ace has a BRAND NEW MAILBOX! This is the biggest thing to happen in the neighborhood for years. And it reminded me that Dr. Theresa and I had driven past Tom Franklin's house not that long before, and I had admired their sleek, modernistic mailbox. I couldn't decide whether it was new or if I had simply never noticed it before. One day, I vowed, I'll get to the bottom of this! But such thoughts would have to wait, for I was on my way! To wherever I was going. 2. My chosen reading material for the airplane: NIGHTWOOD by Djuna Barnes. My friend Eugene recommended it. He's been dead for 26 years, but I finally got around to it! 3. The new jotting book has an interesting flap on it that it is not within my writerly powers to describe correctly. It also has a built-in ribbon bookmark, burnt orange in color. 4. So, we stayed at the Peabody in Memphis the night before my trip, because the plane left so damn early. Pardon my language! Anyway, I knew I would be rising before the Peabody started serving breakfast, so I ordered a pot of coffee the night before, thinking to down it cold in the morning. Guess what? When I poured a cup, 10 hours after having received it, the coffee was STILL WARM! Here's to the magic coffee pots of the Peabody Hotel. 5. I admit to eating half a Biscoff, my favorite airplane cookie, to help with my fear of flying... the first cookie or sweet of any kind in which I've indulged since the fun little medical incident I enjoyed in March. The king of cookies! The mighty Biscoff. 6. Should I boast that my old iPod is still working hard and well to provide my inflight entertainment? I seem to be listening to a version of "I Love How You Love Me" featuring bagpipes. I jotted as much during the flight. Only when the plane landed did a guy sitting behind me and across the aisle lean forward to ask if he had seen with his own eyes an actual iPod. I was proud to extol its existence, longevity, usefulness, and capacity. He was happy to hear it. 6. I found a Burbank hotel in which my accommodations included a full kitchen - you see, ever since my little medical hiccup, in which part of my human mind was zapped (despite my decision not to investigate further, I did investigate further, and, as I feared, I started dropping the h in Sarah around that point), it is much better if I cook for myself. But the full kitchen did not include any knives of a sufficent sharpness for the necessities of ordinary meal prep. Friends, that is how I ended up cutting up shallots with a butter knife! Let me tell you, it is no easy thing, attacking a shallot with a butter knife, even though a shallot presents itself as a small and tender thing. But don't we all? (See also.) 7. Stopped by the front desk in the morning to see where to get coffee. The "night auditor," as he called himself, was still on duty, a jovial man named Randy. When he asked if I had received my 10% off coupon to the restaurant, and I replied that I had not, he exclaimed, "What the devil!" which I found charming. The way he said "I'm Randy!" was reminiscent, without any of the unsettling atmospherics, of the way Steve Buscemi says "I'm Chet!" in BARTON FINK. 8. When I went to get coffee and asked about a kitchen knife, the server explained that they don't allow sharp things in the rooms. Hmm! She, like Randy, was very nice, and said they would cook anything I wanted, off the menu, to my specifications, so I wouldn't have to stand there brutally murdering a shallot with a butter knife like a chump. Her name was Lourdes, which I found to be a cool name, especially as I was sitting there reading a discussion of miracles in NIGHTWOOD. 9. Not until I returned to the room did I notice for the first time that it was decorated with a large photograph of Jayne Mansfield carrying Bob Hope down some steps (see above)! My powers of observation! They have never been great. 10. Saw a crow in a palm tree but failed to get a decent pic. 11. Elizabeth Ito brought me an illicit steak knife! Which I smuggled into the room, wrapped in a dishcloth (the steak knife was, not I). Elizabeth and I wound up in a photo booth. 12. In NIGHTWOOD: "He'll look as distressed as an owl tied up in a muffler." There! Unlike smiling or drunken owls, this is the type of owl comparison I can understand! Although I cannot approve of the owl treatment described.

13. I met Quinn's cat. He looked like a tiny human person! 14. Met Ashly Burch in Beverly Hills, where I was given a fork with a dramatically bent prong with which to eat my egg whites. No, it wasn't some sort of fancy Beverly Hills utensil for eating rarefied egg whites, it was just a peculiarly, even obscenely destroyed fork (see evidence below) and the egg place just didn't give a damn, presumably. I defiantly swallowed my eggs with the aid of the monstrous fork! You know, and this is true, the last time I ate with Ashly Burch, in January of 2022, as I sat on a wooden bench waiting for my "ride share" to arrive to take me to a fine sushi dinner, I glanced over and saw a fork lying there on the arm of the bench! I took a photo of it at the time, and no doubt shared it on "social media," but I see that it is no longer in my phone, so you'll just have to take my word for it, as I have quit "social media" to the acclaim of millions. What I am saying is that every time I eat with Ashly Burch, there is something weird about a fork. About the bent fork, I made a Uri Geller joke, prefacing it, or softening the blow, by saying, "Now, if I were Dennis Miller, I might say..." and also adding the caveat that Ashly Burch would have no idea what I was talking about when I presently mentioned Uri Geller, which turned out to be true, but she laughed anyway, because she is so nice. Later, I described the incident to Joe Wong, who said I had not really imitated Dennis Miller, because there were not enough allusions to obscure celebrities in my remark. So I gamely tried again, saying, "Looks like Uri Geller and the Amazing Kreskin had a brunch date, cha cha," which Joe kindly deemed passable, though I had added but one allusion. Or maybe "brunch" is an allusion of some kind to something or another. 15. That night, Kate was giving me a ride and I said, "I remember these seat covers!" She has these sheepskin (?) seat covers in her car. Kate laughed and said, "They're old!" She told me I was sitting on the same seat cover where Stan Lee had once parked his bony ass, though she didn't use such crude language, and neither would I, so I don't know what happened just now. Anyhow, it reminded me of the time ("click" here) that Kelly Hogan once touched William Faulkner's buttocks through the very fabric of time itself. I felt the power of Stan Lee's butt! 16. They have spectacular grocery-store brand frozen mango in California. Look, frozen fruits are part of my medically induced breakfast ritual now, okay? So Sarah with an h took me to the grocery store and I was walking around pouting and crying and knocking over huge pyramids of canned goods, as I believe happens in THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY and maybe BACHELOR IN PARADISE???? I am exaggerating my reaction to Sarah's favorite grocery store, but I really was going around saying, yeah, so what? We have these same eggs in Mississippi! And so on. But now I publicly admit that grocery-store brand frozen mango in California is plucked at the peak of flavor and texture. The stuff I'm getting here at home just doesn't measure up! 17. Going home, my inflight screen prominently announced BATMAN RETURNS as an entertainment choice and I felt it was a sign, because I had just been praising that film to Ashly AND Kate AND Adam on my exciting trip. Man, I was ready to watch it. It really struck me as the perfect airplane movie. But the screen was broken! The flight attendant, a very nice person named Davi, showed me that the kids' entertainment selection was working, anyway. "Wallace and Gromit are funny," she assured me, which might be true, I guess, but who cares? Wallace and Gromit can go to hell! I'll tell you what she did, though. I couldn't get my phone to connect to the wifi, so she entered her own password to give me special flight-attendant access to whatever the hell I was doing. I ended up watching Chaplin's A WOMAN OF PARIS, because my headphones didn't fit my phone, and a silent feature seemed to be a good option. 18. I had purposely arranged a 4-hour layover in Atlanta for reasons best left unexplored. 19. As the plane descended, the guy next to me asked if we were landing in Atlanta, which I thought was a funny question from a person on an airplane, but I said yes. 20. As I was leaving Cat Cora's airport restaurant, where the service was excellent - thank you, Ana and Winsome! (That's right, Winsome, another cool name... to Sarah, yes, Ana had but the one n in her name, I checked) - a guy stopped me and said he was a missionary. He said he could sense with his missionary powers (though he didn't put it that way) that I had had some health issues recently and he wanted to pray for me. He might have said "over" me. I said, "You can pray for me later, but I have a plane to catch now." He said it would take 10 seconds. I said all right. Wait! I should mention he was wearing a shirt that said "Fudgie Wudgie" on it. I asked him what "Fudgie Wudgie" meant. He said he was a chocolatier as well as a missionary. I said okay. He prayed over me as advertised. Then he said, "I can see the Holy Spirit all over you." I said thanks.

The Satisfying Commas

Well, well. I see I have something in common with Nobel prizewinner Olga Tokarczuk: I wrote a novel called SWEET BANANAS, and she mentions bananas in THE BOOKS OF JACOB. Her phrase is "myrrh, oranges, bananas." I stared at it for a long time. Three words that go well together. Some credit may go to her translator Jennifer Croft, for all I know. The satisfying commas, for example.

A Movie With a Book In It With an Owl In It

So I was watching DOCUMENTEUR by Agnes Varda and the mother and son start talking about a book they read about an owl who makes tea out of his own tears, and he has a list of sad things he thinks about to make himself cry enough to make a pot of tea. Despite some halfhearted "googling" I have not determined whether this is a real book or an invention of Agnes Varda, so I regret to inform you that I cannot at this time put it on my big long list of books with owls in them... however, I can say that - while being charming in its own right - this owl crying into his teapot business puts me in mind of one of the least pleasant subplots of the Thomas Harris novel HANNIBAL, which I bought at the Atlanta airport and read on an airplane back in 1999, yet to this day I remain astonished by the number of typos I recall. Never, to my recollection, have I run across a professionally published novel containing so many typos. You know I like everything! Yet somehow that book made me feel so bad - some flaw within myself, no doubt! - that I purposely left it behind in a San Francisco hotel room, an act for which I still feel remorse, what a horrible surprise for somebody. (I left some Bukowski novel - was it POST OFFICE? - in a New Orleans hotel room for similar reasons but I guess I don't feel so evil about that.) As long as you are here I should tell you that Ace Atkins and I finally went back to Costco yesterday. I saw "a fourteen-pound tub of violet decorative cake icing," as I put it on twitter. Although! In reality I saw several fourteen-pound tubs of cake icing, some orange, some green, some pink. I don't know why "violet" struck me so particularly. I did wonder - as I remarked to Ace on the way back - why there is only one color per tub. That seems like a rip-off! I think they should go in there and arrange it in three stripes, like Neapolitan ice cream. Though no doubt you get a good price on a fourteen-pound tub of cake icing, so who am I to argue?

Bakery Heiress

Remember in Feb. 2007 when Dr. Theresa took a hammer and a nail and made me a new notch in my belt? Well I am about to lay on you a story just as captivating! First, let us go back (forward?) to 2008. Our fascinating prologue commences when I was staying in a motel in Los Angeles. I walked up several blocks to see THE APARTMENT on the big screen. And I saw Shirley MacLaine's face in this very scene (above) race through dozens of emotional transmutations in mere seconds. Every emotion, she had! But subtly. It was different on film, and at its intended size and scope, though I had seen THE APARTMENT many, many times before, on a tiny television screen with a tiny televised picture. The difference was like... when I used to see Rothko paintings in a library book and think, bleh! But then in the 1980s my ex (?) girlfriend (?) and I flew to Washington, D.C. together and I don't know where she went... but I met, by some obscure prearrangement, a bakery heiress on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Her roommate, possessing the magical name Cornelia, was a Roosevelt. Like... A ROOSEVELT. We drank concoctions of rum and orange juice on the balcony of a hotel across from the White House. An upstairs light was on over there! As dusk descended! The bedroom, we reckoned. George and Barbara, en déshabillé! After we parted, though, the kind-hearted bakery heiress and I (it was on plain white sliced bread that her cunning people founded their considerable fortune!), I was forced to stay with a different, less hospitable bunch, some [redacted] who - however noble their purposes, and I think them quite noble in intent! - were unpracticed as hosts. They lectured me vitriolically on the subject of cheese for hours at a time, for example, and hung gory, unavoidable posters of vivisection in every cranny, and fed me on naught but that which made my stomach hurt, and always made me pay for the cab. EXCEPT for that one glorious evening when [redacted] a raging fire in a big fireplace though it was June and boiling hot outside, and then [redacted]! [redacted]. The Indigo Girls were climbing the charts for an eager young nation with their hit [redacted], which, coming through the radio, burrowed into my mind as the theme song for that [redacted]. But I mean, I saw some Rothko paintings in person at the National Gallery back then, in the aforementioned 1980s, in Washington, D.C., and their majesty was all-consuming, like Shirley MacLaine's. Even though, prior to the screening (keep up! we've moved forward to 2008 again), I had considered her movie "my favorite," it was like I had never seen it before. So that seems like a shame. It seems, in fact, like I have wasted my life! But the point is that in 2008 I forgot to turn in my motel key when I checked out. Nothing else I just mentioned had anything to do with anything. I just wanted to explain why I still have this motel key.

It's an old fashioned key. A key key. Like, a metal key. A key. The kind of key Norman Bates would give you, or possibly Dennis Weaver from TOUCH OF EVIL. A motel key dangling from a flat blue slab of plastic, Room 109. So! Now we are coming closer to the point. Dr. Theresa and I have this spare house key we like. It just stays by itself. It's not entangled or associated with a bunch of car keys and office keys and random keys that open we don't know what. It's just on a ring all alone. Or used to be. Very light and convenient! Like, to have in our pocket if we want to take a casual stroll. But its key ring just fell apart! Suddenly there was nothing to anchor that favored key, to give it heft, to shield it from loss. So I thought maybe we could put it on this old motel key ring I have. Ha ha! These kinds of stories are my favorites. The motel key was designed diabolically. Bulky and twisted and nigh impossible to pull apart. Probably for some motel owner's good reason. So Dr. Theresa got some pliers out of the kitchen drawer and went to town on that implacable key ring like a champ. Finally she was able to separate the parts of the ring just enough so that we could slide the vital house key into place. Then I took a hammer and banged the whole thing back together like Thor himself descended from the heavens. That key ain't slipping off now! I'd like to see it try. It was real teamwork, though Dr. Theresa had already restored everything more than adequately with her pliers by the time I managed to dig out the hammer, and my hammering, while it made me feel like a great big man, was likely just for show.

Reading Too Much Into It

I'm lucky enough to have an advance reading copy of Megan Abbott's next book, YOU WILL KNOW ME. I see that a LeRoy Neiman tiger poster appears in it. Megan told me about that poster, which is why it also coincidentally appears in MY next book, MOVIE STARS, in which, as I now see thanks to Megan, I consistently misspell LeRoy Neiman's name with a small "r." But the important thing is that the LeRoy Neiman tiger poster is literature's next big trend. I also came across a subtle allusion to Brian Keith's "Uncle Bill" (pictured) from the TV show FAMILY AFFAIR... a touchstone that is pure Megan, as I know from many a conversation. Last night I was trying to piece together what makes something a "Megan Abbott" novel, other than the fact that Megan Abbott wrote it. Is it that you feel you're on sure footing and then things start to slip away from under you? Characters' nightmares seem truer than their daily lives. I'm grasping here. I know that Megan likes David Lynch, and often cites him as an influence, but it's not precisely Lynchian. Lynch can show you a ceiling fan and fill you with dread. Megan achieves something of the same effect with words. Ordinary things aren't ordinary for her. Uneasiness, I decided. That's what you feel. Megan Abbott is our great author of unease. I already had that phrase in my mind - "our great author of unease" - when I came on this sentence in YOU WILL KNOW ME: "It was upsetting, like the seam of something had been torn, ever so slightly." Yes, it's the "ever so slightly" that marks this perception as Megan's, maybe, and separates her from everyone else. Also, the evocative vagueness of "the seam of something." It's not that Megan "peels back layers" the way people say David Lynch does... it's that the world itself is already hallucinatory and gothic. There's no need to peel back any layers! Megan and I discuss this, or something related to this, in an old interview I hope you will "click" on: see pp. 14-16 (MEGAN: "It’s like the thing that students sometimes say: 'You’re reading too much into it.' And of course that’s what students always say when they’re frightened about what they’re reading"). I'm not saying Megan Abbott and Emily Brontë share a worldview, necessarily, but there's a scene in WUTHERING HEIGHTS that I wrote about for the Rumpus once, "when the housekeeper goes back to visit a sweet little boy she used to take care of, and in the short intervening time something has happened to him. He throws a stone at her head and curses. She tempts him with an orange: '"Who has taught you those fine words, my barn," I inquired. "The curate?" "Damn the curate, and thee! Give me that," he replied. "Tell us where you got your lessons, and you shall have it," said I. "Who’s your master?" "Devil daddy," was his answer.'" Very uneasy, queasy, skating around the edge of normal life. Hmm, maybe it's the orange that seems like a Megan Abbott touch, an otherworldly fruit or shining spot on those bleak moors. In conclusion, there's a significant doodle in YOU WILL KNOW ME that looks "like a cartoon owl." So I can put YOU WILL KNOW ME on my stupid list of all the books I read with owls in them, trying to pin it down and categorize it with my sickening brand of whimsy. Yes, yes, that's it, Pendarvis, laugh your unease away. IF YOU CAN! The last book I read featuring a "cartoon owl" was by Ace Atkins, a close friend of Megan's and mine. Surely this is an area for further investigation, he quipped, narrowly avoiding the abyss.

Graham Ogden

Last night I was watching the movie version of UNDER THE VOLCANO and Albert Finney had this awful neighbor who made me think of the character actor Grady Sutton. But he didn't really look like Grady Sutton, nor did he behave in the usual sweet and befuddled Grady Sutton manner. Something about him made me think of Grady Sutton, though. I knew he couldn't be Grady Sutton. I figured Grady Sutton was certainly dead by the time of UNDER THE VOLCANO. [Wrong! Grady Sutton died in 1995, if you can believe it. - ed.] But the point is, I couldn't think of Grady Sutton's name. It was driving me crazy. "Is this the beginning of the end?" I asked myself. I kept thinking, "What is that guy's name? Graham Ogden? Graham Ogden? It's something like Graham Ogden." It's all over for me. But I did get up this morning and check the "internet": a professor at a school of dentistry, a real estate agent, an Old Testament scholar... these are just a few of the many Graham Ogdens in the world, to my surprise.

I know I should have led off with a photograph of Grady Sutton but I was too mesmerized by the shot of Jacqueline Bisset in UNDER THE VOLCANO, standing between an orange (?) wall and an aquamarine (?) armoire (?), a color move which should have made me think of Jerry Lewis, but didn't.

Heartbroken Mope

I thought I'd un-live-tweet another movie, a Matthew Broderick movie from 1993 - by coincidence, the same year as STRIKING DISTANCE, the last movie I didn't live tweet. It's called THE NIGHT WE NEVER MET and I don't know why I picked it. Certainly not out of disrespect for Mr. Broderick, who plays the Dream Warrior (pictured) on ADVENTURE TIME. Oh, wait, I know why I picked it. I liked this capsule description provided by the satellite company: "An unlikable yuppie shares a Greenwich Village apartment with a frustrated housewife and a heartbroken mope." All right! Who could ask for more? Let's get to ersatz live-tweeting in the new-fashioned way that won't wreck your precious timeline: A guy turns off his alarm clock and puts on some... sandals? There's a glare on the TV screen, so I can't be certain about the footwear. Dirty pots filled with old beans. Matthew Broderick has a beard and mismatched curtains. Matthew Broderick talks out loud to himself, movie style! Bearded Matthew Broderick hits the town on his vespa. He saw a cute nurse and that made him happy! Annabella Sciorra, I do believe. Matthew Broderick is looking for a new apartment. Annabella Sciorra came out of the apartment building so I bet he takes the apartment. EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom is peeking with a surly mien through a crack in the door. Annabella Sciorra and Christine Baranski smoke cigarettes inside a restaurant at the height of the lunchtime rush. Those were the days! Annabella Sciorra confesses her desire to take an "art class." Hey! Is that Louise Lasser? Maybe. They're setting up some weird plot, where people are moving into this apartment for two days a week...? Does that seem practical? A bunch of "yuppies" with neckties and no jackets acting all WOLF OF WALL STREET, standing on desks and making speeches and howling and pumping their fists for reasons I can't understand... EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom puts on hand lotion. The plot gets explained more. I don't understand it. Jeanne Tripplehorn! I always thought that was a cool last name. Matthew Broderick goes to see Tripplehorn (his ex?) in an "experimental play" - a form always treated with sneering contempt in movies. Take that, Samuel Beckett! I missed something. I think she was making out with a plastic snowman? Tripplehorn has a fake French accent. I mean, she's supposed to be French in the movie, though. Well, she took off her sweater in front of Matthew Broderick and that made him feel sad. Now she's singing "Alouette" in the shower! Are you kidding me? "Alouette"! She wants Matthew Broderick to put out her cigarette for her. Is it so hard to put out your cigarette in the shower? I guess it was supposed to emphasize some "character trait." Just throw it in the toilet, French Jeanne Tripplehorn! Oh boy, I didn't see this coming: some kind of unconvincing 50 SHADES OF GREY monkey business with the "yuppie" character. Wait! Was that a dream? Another alarm clock going off. It was all a dream! Back when I was teaching, we used to strongly discourage the use of alarm clocks in short stories. I guess they don't tell you that in screenwriting class. This is the second alarm clock going off in this movie. Is that Justine Bateman? It seems that Justine Bateman and the "yuppie" want very different things out of life. Annabella Sciorra is a dentist, not a nurse. Her patient is Garry Shandling! He seems sleazy. In this movie, I mean. No, Annabella Sciorra is a dental assistant but she wants to be an artist. She has a husband and tropical fish. The husband wants to move to the suburbs. Montage of people eating lunch meat? Hey, it's that guy who always plays a jerk in movies. For some reason, he's pretending to be Louise Lasser on the phone. MB works at Dean and Deluca and hates French cheese! Because of his problems with French person Jeanne Tripplehorn. It's causing work problems! What! Here's what's-her-name from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS! She and MB are on a blind date. "Is that veal?" she says. How could she know? MB is just carrying a serving dish with the lid on it. Does she have X-ray vision? Because it IS veal! She's incensed. A weird thing to cook on a first date, though. Okay! So MB and Annabella Sciorra are sharing this apartment but they never see each other. And yet methinks she's falling in love with his remnants! The "yuppies" are also sharing the apartment. They play loud music and jump around and scream like jerks. EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom is married (?) to Johnny Ola from GODFATHER II! He also peeks out of crevices and makes faces. They are like a Greek chorus. Except they NEVER TALK. So they're not like a Greek chorus. Annabella Sciorra continues to be entranced by the still-unseen (by her) Matthew Broderick. He's leaving notes for her everywhere. It's actually sort of controlling and creepy, despite this mellow "blue-eyed soul" number underscoring the developments, if you want to call them that. One of the "yuppies" pees with the door open. They make pig noises and smoke cigars. Now they're screaming out of the windows and burning pizza in the oven. The guy who always plays jerks in movies lights his cigar with the burning pizza box to show what a horrible weirdo he is. Wait! Have I explained the plot? So the "yuppies" use this place a couple days a week to chillax. MB brings dates there? I guess? Annabella Sciorra uses it to explore her artistic impulses. It's a getaway from the world! All right. Okay, there was a zany mixup I barely feel like getting into, though it may become necessary later. Johnny Ola finally said something but EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom just gravely shook her silent grim head. Annabella Sciorra's husband is shown to be a philistine. The alarm on his watch goes off! Man, this screenwriter loves alarms. Dang! MB's alarm clock goes off! Fourth alarm clock! Jeanne Tripplehorn took a shower with a cowboy and a dog? She loves taking showers. I think the cowboy is feeding her a Pop Tart. MB: "I want you to do what you say you want to do, not what you do do." JT: "No, I do do what I say I do." Ha ha, oh boy. Doo doo. Maybe I should stop here. Is that Dr. John crooning a stirring ballad while the "yuppie" admires his own butt in a mirror? Poor Dr. John! Johnny Ola mugs for the camera some more through the crack of a doorway. I can't believe that Annabella Sciorra is about to do it with the "yuppie," mistaking him for MB for reasons I can't get into here because I don't really understand them. Time to feed the cats, I'm going to miss some of this movie. I hope you're not too disappointed. I came back. Johnny Ola is peeking through a doorway again. Annabella Sciorra's fingernails are painted white and the "yuppie" is climbing all over her. She's not going to put up with his boorish manner for long! Well! I was wrong! They did it. I know because his shirt is unbuttoned all the way and he says, "Man... you came to play." Gross! Johnny Ola eavesdrops on their intimacy through his doorway and checks his watch and rolls his eyes and mugs for the camera like his life depended on it. Reckonings commence. Why the hell is MB so happy all of a sudden? He's walking down the crowded NYC streets tossing an orange in the air as Motown plays. Did I miss something? He has no reason to be happy that I can recall. EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom smokes and glares out of a window. I hope they paid her a lot. MB goes on a date with a character so stupid she thinks he has cooked pasta with dog in it. "Dog?" she says. "Ruff ruff ruff?" Wait! She's on the TV show NASHVILLE! She plays Deacon's doomed sister. EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom speaks! She and Johnny Ola are really spewing out the dialogue. They've been holding it in so long! You can't shut them up. Dr. Theresa says soup is ready. I may miss something. Wait! Is MB going to end up with Justine Bateman? That's coming out of left field! I did not see that coming at all. Kudos... but to whom? Now Johnny Ola has finally brought a chair or stool to put by his door so when he peeps out of it and makes faces he can sit down. Wait! Is the "yuppie" the "nice guy" from SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY? Weird. He went to his "yuppie" workplace and all his coworkers ritualistically cut their neckties in half at the same time, and made pig noises...? I don't know what's going on. This soup is good, though. Hey! Christopher from THE SOPRANOS! One line. Funny shirt. And I could swear Lewis Black walks by in the background: no lines, funny shirt. Well, I could swear this movie was about to end, but things keep happening. I guess you could call it. MB just threw a drink on Jeanne Tripplehorn. Not very gentlemanly! And her character's name is "Pastel," seemingly. Ha ha, Pastel! MB goes back to talking out loud to himself, which he hasn't done since the first scene, so maybe it's a circular thing and we're finally wrapping up. They made the husband suddenly 100,000 times more awful than ever before to justify it when Annabella Sciorra inevitably leaves him for Matthew Broderick. My Justine Bateman speculation was way off base. That would have been a neat twist! MB and Annabella Sciorra meet again. They still don't know each other. Is this movie going to last forever? The "yuppie" comes in and takes off his pants in front of Matthew Broderick, a total stranger, you know, how people do. Annabella Sciorra: "I didn't mean to sleep with him, I meant to sleep with you!" Did the guy from SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY just tweak Matthew Broderick's nipple? Dr. John is singing again.

Mayonnaise Bildungsroman

You know who likes condiments? Dr. Theresa! So I got her about 25 condiments from around the world for her birthday. I gave them to her a month early or so, because I was tired of hiding condiments all around the house and also I was like, we should use these before they expire! Maybe under a bed is not the best spot for mayonnaise! Here, pictured, are just a few of the condiments. Maybe you don't think olives are condiments. Maybe I agree! But even if you subtract the olives, there were still about 25 condiments in the birthday package. Just yesterday we realized how many of the condiments we haven't even tried yet... lots! (And that's why I put some yuzu mayonnaise on a ham sandwich yesterday... not the best combo, though going in having no idea what a "yuzu" was - I just took a chance and squirted it on there - I was pleasantly surprised by the bright orange flavor. But not on a ham sandwich. But I ate it. Maybe it would be good in chicken salad...? Don't listen to me! I'm an idiot!) Of the condiments we have tried, I feel comfortable telling you the top four. I'm not sure I have the order right. Nor am I sure Dr. Theresa would agree. 4. Farmer's Daughter Salty Dog Marmalade. That is a fine marmalade! Let me tell you something about April McGreger, maker of the Farmer's Daughter Salty Dog Marmalade. I met her at a Southern Foodways Symposium several years ago, when they were handing out biscuits with her fig preserves on them. Ladies and gentlemen, not since my childhood had I tasted fig preserves SO EXACTLY LIKE my grandmother's fig preserves! I ordered jars for everyone in my family for Christmas, that's how good they were, and how close to home. I'm not sure Ms. McGreger has ever made exactly those fig preserves again. The last batch I saw for sale had bourbon in them, I think. My grandmother wouldn't have done that! The point is, April McGreger and her staff make different stuff every season, based on whatever is fresh and available in abundance. I NEVER (never?) advertise places to buy things on this "blog" but I am going to "link" to Farmer's Daughter. Get one of everything! The Salty Dog Marmalade has grapefruit and juniper and sea salt in it, and I rank it only at "4" because I guess - like ordinary marmalade - there are just a few truly proper things to smear it on. But I could be wrong! Maybe my imagination is insufficient. Anyway, it's amazing marmalade. We also use the Farmer's Daughter Sweet Potato/Habanero hot sauce a lot. 3. "Cereal Terra" (that's the brand) "ketchup piccante." I am afraid it has ruined us for other ketchups. Like, yesterday we broke out an "artisanal ketchup" (I guess) from the birthday batch to try on our hash browns and Dr. Theresa remarked "This is like tomato paste" when compared with the spicy flavor of Cereal Terra Ketchup Piccante (and yes, there are two c's in piccante, because it's Italian, I guess). So Dr. Theresa had to drown the inferior ketchup with a layer of ketchup piccante. I told you she likes condiments! She might rank the Cereal Terra Ketchup Piccante higher on this list. 2. Edmond Fallot Walnut Dijon Mustard. It's from, you know, France! And it has walnuts in it. And it goes on and in everything, which contributes to its high ranking. And it tastes so good you can eat a spoonful of it out of the jar. 1. Duke's Mayonnaise. For much of my life I "hated" mayonnaise. Let's analyze me! Was it because my mom would never put mayonnaise in our school lunches? She was afraid it would spoil before lunchtime! Nor, if we were going to the beach or on a picnic or anything like that (did we ever go on a picnic?), would anything with mayonnaise be included, for similar reasons. So perhaps from a young age I associated mayonnaise with danger. Ha ha ha! Or is it that I thought it was a food for "country people" (of which I was one)? My grandparents liked a spoonful of mayonnaise on a slice of fresh tomato or (as Tom Franklin and I, with our nearly identical backgrounds, have reminisced) a soft canned pear-half, with some cheese grated over it. Maybe I aspired to be too sophisticated for such rustic fare! Or maybe I didn't like mayonnaise. Maybe I wanted to be a big shot! But all through life I had to admit that mayonnaise was the only thing for a classic BLT, and maybe that is where I allowed my secret (even to me) craving for mayonnaise to express itself! Maybe I started to crack some time in the 90s. Is that when every restaurant started serving supposed "aioli"? And I was like, "Hey, this is mayonnaise!" I have heard many "food people" talk about Duke's mayonnaise. I have heard John Currence wax rhapsodically about the "old Duke's mayonnaise factory." And when I ate dinner at the James Beard House in New York City, they gave out packets of Duke's mayonnaise in the gift baskets we received upon departure. Still I resisted mayonnaise. Not anymore! We have already used a whole big jar of Duke's mayonnaise and started another. That's right, I bought it in bulk. In bulk!

This Counts

Move over, vampires and werewolves, there's a new hot ticket this Halloween season: ghosts! Oh, how I hate myself. But I know you'd want to be the first to hear that Dr. Theresa and I have started our annual Halloween film festival. So far, it's 100% ghosts. First, LAKE MUNGO, recommended by Megan Abbott. And then BEETLEJUICE came on TV and we were like, "This probably counts!" Both BEETLEJUICE and LAKE MUNGO have kids capturing ghostly images with their cameras, and in both cases - forgive me for this morbidity - the ghosts are produced by drowning. Hey, ghosts gotta be produced somehow. Speaking of gruesome subjects I guess I should tell you about these gruesome stories I have been reading in THE DECAMERON lately. WARNING! They are gruesome. Like, in one, the king has the heart of his daughter's low-born lover cut out and then he gives it to her in a golden goblet! What a jerk. He weeps a lot, too. He's probably one of the weepiest kings you'd ever want to meet. It's complicated. And then there's one where this woman finds her lover's body and takes his head as a keepsake! And she puts his head in a big vase and covers it with dirt and plants basil over it and waters it "only with rose or orange water or with her own tears" - and she grows the sweetest basil in the land! Anyway, THE DECAMERON is gross.

Melted Fezzes

Well! Megan and Dan came to town and we went out and had a ball. Bill Boyle appeared on the scene and we drove out to Water Valley to a place called the Crawdad Hole. Somehow Megan knew about it. Dr. Theresa and I had never heard of it. As Dan pointed out, a restaurant has to have a well-placed sense of confidence to put "Hole" in its name. It was great! Great enough for "hole." I'm kind of sorry to tell you about it, because they only serve food until they run out of whatever is fresh that day, and I don't want you to eat it before I get there next time. We had so much stuff spread over the checkered oilcloth (was it checkered? It should have been!) - crab legs and sausages and corn on the cob and Mississippi tamales - that's a famous thing, if you didn't know! - and oysters, both sweetly raw and succulently grilled, all superb, and all washed down with a pitcher of ice-cold beer that went perfectly with the food. No crawfish because they were out. Megan said they told her it wasn't crawfish season. But we didn't even miss the crawfish. Then we were supposed to meet Ace at a "secret bar" but we went to the "secret bar" and it wasn't a "secret bar," it was the shabby back room you have to walk through to use the toilet at a local pizza restaurant of small repute. So we were like, "THIS IS ACE'S SECRET BAR?" But the story hasn't ended. MORE LATER. Because we had made a basic mistake about the "secret bar" and it wasn't Ace's fault! Now I'm going to start looking at whatever I jotted down last night on scraps of paper in my wallet and on bar napkins. As I recall, some of it might be bawdy and shocking! You know I don't like to "go there." Blame the liquor and high spirits of rekindled camaraderie. The first note I see just says, "Remember the Night." I'm like, hmm, this isn't as scintillating as I recalled. Was I just telling myself to remember the night? Then it occurred to me. It's the name of a Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck movie that Megan thinks Dr. Theresa and I would like. A nice sentiment, but a disappointment in the realm of fevered inspirations scrawled on tattered scraps from bars. Muttering, we left the (temporary) debacle of "secret bar" and went up to City Grocery. There we encountered Randy Yates, owner of Ajax, who was talking about his former fez collection. That seemed bar-napkin worthy. I wrote down what happened to Randy's fez collection: "I lived in such a [crappy] house all my fezzes melted." That didn't seem like a sentence I had heard before. Oh yes, I have noted here on the back of a postal receipt that Bill Boyle claimed, "If you were stranded on a desert island, all you'd need was Guinness and breast milk." I told you you'd be scandalized! Ace came to CG and took us back to the secret bar. We had lost Megan and Dan by now, but Angela had appeared, a delightful and special treat! And the bar really was different all of a sudden. It was darker and there was a fancy man to make Bill Boyle take off his baseball cap! When we sat down, the server asked if we'd like a complimentary shot, and unless I am crazy, the shots were being offered in empty shotgun shell casings. You know, the way they do in a secret bar. Bill was the only one who drank one and - still miffed about his forcefully doffed baseball cap - said, "That was terrible!" But he said it in a gruffly charming way that made even the server laugh. And when they brought out ice water, they offered to put drops of rosewater in it. Which we accepted! Now, rosewater was popular in Cairo, Egypt, when Dr. Theresa was growing up there, but I believe in the U.S. I have witnessed only her little brother Hesham (he's a full grown man, not a "little brother"!) spiking anything with it. Bill had gotten himself into a rare mood I enjoy seeing him in on those spare occasions when it happens - a touch of lovable surliness that comes over him with just the right amount of fluid help. Surliness isn't the right word. Sweet irascibility? Acting the wiseacre? I don't know any good words. Anyway, he didn't seem to care much for the rosewater. He said - and I was afraid this didn't even show up on the napkin! It was so dark and the server gave me a pen that wrote in PALE ORANGE INK, and I couldn't tell whether words were falling upon the napkin at all - "They're serving us old lady sweat and we're drinking it like we got nothing better to do." Then he said, "It's like you're licking your grandmother's armpit." And then I THINK he said (I didn't write it down) "Don't get me wrong, I'd lick my grandmother's armpit, she's a great lady!" But I may have made that part up. I'm afraid I haven't done justice to the secret bar, which was very pleasant and conducive to much convivial talk and served excellent grilled cheese sandwiches.

Research

Well, I kind of hate to say this, but I just watched FOUR ROOMS as research for my cigarette lighter book. Why do I even mention it? Because I'm always saying everything was influenced by Jerry Lewis's THE BELLBOY but you never believe me, and most of the time it's not even true, plus you don't exist, yet in this case they WANT you to know it from the beginning and then at the end the character played by Quentin Tarantino makes a long, impassioned speech about Jerry Lewis, of course he makes a long, impassioned speech, it's one of those roles he writes for himself in which he just spews a lot of stuff out of his mouth, like a human "blog." FOUR ROOMS presented no real worth in terms of my book. Maybe I got a sentence out of it. Two? Two, I think. And it's an omnibus film sliced into sections, and the cigarette lighter section is the last section, so I could have just skipped to the last section instead of watching the whole thing - what I learned, as a matter of fact, I might have discovered in a crummy wikipedia article. BUT THAT'S NOT HOW I DO. So I watched the whole thing. I conclude with the following fascinating remarks: the final section of the movie takes place in an open, Lewisian space where there is a white couch dotted with Jerry-style multicolored pillows, Jerry-style wall-to-wall carpet and huge orange curtains, Jerry-style.

Silver Bells

I'm writing a book about cigarette lighters and supposedly another book, plus look what the producer of SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS put on twitter the other day:

Yeah, so that's going on too! And I just went to Burbank to work on ADVENTURE TIME, so maybe that's why I haven't been "blogging" too much, what, you didn't notice? Gee. And you know I pride myself on taking a little notebook along and jotting down precious memories for you, but the whole first day of my trip I had a dull, aching feeling that there was nothing to jot. I remembered that before I left TEQUILA SUNRISE was on TV,

a movie that I went to see a number of times on the big screen during the callow days of my impressionable youth, and Dr. Theresa came in the room and made a funny comment about the "smokin' hot Kenny G riffs" on the soundtrack, so I jotted that: "Dr. Theresa, sarcastically: 'smokin' hot Kenny G riffs.'" And I closed my notebook and sat there in the hotel lobby nursing my drink like, "Well, I guess that's it." BUT THEN GARRY MARSHALL SHOWED UP. Garry Marshall, creator of HAPPY DAYS! Director of PRETTY WOMAN! Actor in a memorable cameo in LOST IN AMERICA! He was meeting some friends so I eavesdropped on them. The bartender came over and Garry Marshall asked him about "the score of the game" and the bartender said that Tennessee had just scored a spectacular 80-yard touchdown and Garry Marshall said "Eh." Some of his younger friends started trying to explain what ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK is to Garry Marshall and he was slightly ticked off that they didn't think he knew what ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK was. He knows what ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK is! He's Garry Marshall for God's sake. He didn't say it in those words. I'm interpreting. One of Garry Marshall's friends reminisced about his (the friend's) first big job onstage, in which he had to bound out naked for his first entrance. "He was very good naked," Garry Marshall said, which got a big laugh from everybody. Garry Marshall and his friends left the bar area of the hotel lobby so I called Dr. Theresa and told her I had seen the director of RUNAWAY BRIDE and she was very proud of me. Then I told her about how I had accidentally bought a really expensive brush at the drugstore across the street from the hotel. I should have known because it said "By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen" on the handle. That was the slogan of the brush company! But the brush was so small! Whether from pride or embarrassment, I allowed the cashier to ring it up without protest. Dr. Theresa got in some good jokes about me and my expensive brush. Then Verdell showed up! She had been hoping she could come by after work, and she did. These days, Verdell works for a space company that makes space rockets that go into space! Anyway, Verdell sat down and ordered a drink and I told her she had just missed Garry Marshall. AND we discovered that Garry Marshall and his friends had been blocking our view of another actor. I said, "Hey, look, it's the guy who played the mad scientist on FRINGE!" Verdell had never heard of this guy. (Later, Dr. Theresa told me he has a current role on the television program SLEEPY HOLLOW.) The mad scientist from FRINGE was reading a newspaper. "What do you think he's doing?" I asked. "Looks like he's reading a newspaper," said Verdell. Verdell said that there were Christmas carols on the radio on her way over. She doesn't like most of the religious Christmas carols but said she finds the secular "No Place Like Home for the Holidays" acceptable. We discussed the meaning of the line, "Gee the traffic is terrific." Then we talked about "Sleigh Ride" and "Let it Snow" and "Silver Bells." Then I had to pee. I walked into the bathroom humming "Silver Bells." There was just one urinal! So I had to stand behind the guy who was using it. When he turned, he revealed himself to be the mad scientist from FRINGE! He had what I must call a sour demeanor. I also noted that he had an unexpected resemblance, somehow, to the late Robert Preston, a sour Robert Preston. As I peed, I noted that I could hear him over there at the sink washing his hands. Good hygiene! And he started humming! I can't swear to this, but I think maybe he was humming snatches of "Silver Bells"! I could hardly wait to tell Verdell.

Verdell and I had some more drinks. Garry Marshall came back to the lobby! I pointed him out to Verdell. Garry Marshall noticed us noticing him and came over and introduced himself. Verdell said to him, "You look fashionable, are you wearing desert boots?" "I don't know," replied Garry Marshall. Later, when Garry Marshall sat down with a friend of his, Verdell was able to determine that Garry Marshall was most likely wearing "tan suede oxfords." She noticed that Garry Marshall's friend was wearing loafers with no socks. That reminded me of something else I had overheard earlier in the evening, about Garry Marshall and his wife (I think) donating 650 socks to the homeless, or maybe 650 pairs of socks. There's a breakfast place I like across the street from the hotel, and the next morning TV's Andy Richter sat at the counter next to me! I am pleased to announce that he is the trusting sort and left his keys and sunglasses on the counter when he went to the restroom. Needless to say under my watchful eye Andy Richter's keys and sunglasses went undisturbed. Kent and I had lunch with Kent's brother Mark, who happened to be in town directing Jeff Bridges for Mark's upcoming movie! Mark told us how nice Jeff Bridges and Albert Brooks are, and that's what you want to hear, you want to hear that these actors you like are nice people. Dinner at the Tam O'Shanter! Seo Kim came. I got to tell her about a cat she drew that I especially liked. While Kent and I were waiting for the others to arrive (we went there early, right after work), Kent drew me at the bar,

contemplating my favorite curse. Joey and Brian came to dinner! We had Welsh rarebit and deviled eggs to pass around the table and then Kent and I had expensive ribeye steaks! Kent paid! What a pal. I tried to give him the bit of ribeye I had left over and Kent demurred until Joey came up with the brilliant idea of asking the waitress for one of those delicious rolls that came with the Welsh rarebit. "Now you can pop it right in there," said Joey to Kent. Kent thought it was a great idea for leftovers. And that's when I found out those rolls we had been enjoying were "Yorkshire puddings." So that's what a Yorkshire pudding is. I didn't know. Anyway, Joey had been joking that I sounded like a mom, repeatedly begging Kent to take my leftover ribeye so he could "make sandwiches" but SHE is the one who came up with idea of nestling the last bite of ribeye into the welcoming center of the Yorkshire pudding for a tempting taste treat okay I think it is time for me to stop jotting now.

Abating the Transmission

Sitting at the bar at the Lamar Lounge with Derrick Harriell yesterday, talking about Joe Louis because Derrick wrote a whole series of poems about the man, and I suddenly remembered that we studied Joe Louis in 4th grade Alabama history. Here is what I remember about 4th grade Alabama history. We studied the notable people of Alabama, who apparently were Helen Keller, Joe Louis, George Washington Carver and William Crawford Gorgas. Yesterday, talking to Derrick, I couldn't definitively remember anything about William Crawford Gorgas except his name, or so I thought. I told Derrick "I think he did something with yellow fever or malaria." Well, I looked him up on wikipedia today and it turns out he is known for "abating the transmission of yellow fever and malaria" at the Panama Canal. So I guess 4th grade history really stuck! Way to go, Ms. Matthews! The main thing I remember about my 4th grade teacher Ms. Matthews (I think we were still saying "Miss Matthews" not "Ms." then, but in Alabama it sounds like "Miz" either way) is that she loved the Miami Dolphins and talked about them all the time. All she did was talk about how much she loved Larry Csonka. And William Crawford Gorgas, I guess. Also, I guess she was the first teacher I had a crush on. The previous ones (except Polly Cherry, my happily named kindergarten teacher) were comforting and grandmotherly, but hardly crush material. Wow, this is self-indulgent. Well, you're reading a "blog" so I don't feel sorry for you. This "post" is really only for Hogan, who loves all 4th grade memories of everyone thanks in part to the noble influence of Lynda Barry. The other thing I recall (I'm pretty sure) from 4th grade Alabama history is these lyrics - and almost no others - of the Alabama state song: "Fair thy Coosa, Tallapoosa." Ha ha! Sounds dirty (though I never would have thought that at the time). But it is a paean to rivers, like FINNEGANS WAKE. I believe the state song also has a line about orange trees, which always confused me. Does Alabama have a lot of orange trees? I loved singing "Fair thy Coosa, Tallapoosa," but always felt ambivalent at best when I got to the part about orange trees (if that part actually exists). There's an Alabama town named Satsuma, which is also a kind of citrus fruit.

Like

"... like an owl, like a bobcat..." Do I really need to finish typing this simile? Isn't it enough to say that this book about Philip Roth has an owl in it? Hey! Remember how harmless and jolly it seemed when I started listing every book I read that happened to have an owl in it? Ha ha ha wheeeee those were the days. Now it is just a boring, irksome obligation. Everything starts out one way and ends up some other way. And as so often happens, the owl quotation in this case comes from another book. An owl within an owl! What a country. Hey I remember when I was a little kid we used to go get hamburgers at a place called the Bobcat Drive-In. As I recall there was half a terrifying, fascinating real stuffed bobcat leaping out of the wall. That place got torn down when I was still a kid. And there was a regional or local hamburger chain called "Colonel Dixie" (!) about which there was some murder scandal. The hamburgers there were squashed and flat, I think. And the orange drink was flat and tepid. As I recall.

Certain Musty Old Letters

You know whenever I go on a little plane trip I like to jot down some things about it to tell you when I get back and then you don't read it and I don't really care. Sometimes I get lazy and don't jot until the trip is practically half over. But this time I STARTED JOTTING BEFORE THE TRIP EVEN BEGAN. I was sitting on the couch, waiting for time to go to the airport, and the Fox Movie Channel was on and I took out my special jotting notebook and start jotting down some things about this scene in this Doris Day movie that was on. Doris Day wore a backless, sparkling orange dress. A fat German guy was swatting grapes into the air for some reason. One grape fell into the butt section of Doris Day's dress and she inadvertently started a "dance craze" by trying to shake the grape out of her butt. I was thinking about how smutty everything used to be. I couldn't think of what to read on the airplane. I was really hoping for ANCIENT EVENINGS, but Bill Boyle isn't back from his trip home yet, and anyway he writes me that he has lost the tattered old copy of ANCIENT EVENINGS he had when he was a teenager, and which he had planned to bequeath to me. So I impulsively grabbed THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL - this despite my reservations about VILLETTE as good airplane material, and VILLETTE was by Charlotte Brontë; THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL is by Anne, the Brontë nobody likes! Ha ha, just kidding, Anne Brontë. But one of the first things I read at the airport was this: "It is a soaking, rainy day, the family are absent on a visit, I am alone in my library, and have been looking over certain musty old letters and papers, and musing on past times... having withdrawn my well-roasted feet from the hobs, wheeled round to the table, and indicted the above lines to my crusty old friend..." Well, that is just the kind of thing I want to read on an airplane. Something about the hobs really got to me, and I don't even know what hobs are! My mellow mood was abetted by gin, my go-to remedy for fear of flying. I eavesdropped on a woman who was ordering crab cakes at the "Sun Studios" themed bar at the airport (!) and the book made me think of how Kelly Hogan and I used to write letters all the time, back when people wrote letters all the time, and how Hogan recently told me she keeps mine in a waterlogged suitcase in her once-flooded garage and sometimes she takes them out. Oh no, I said, don't remind yourself needlessly of the inanities of that callow twerp, and Hogan clarified: "I don't read them - I smell them." An intoxicating brew of moldy sentiments! I was met at the airport by some grad students from the University of Cincinnati, where I was set to speak. I should thank them all, and especially the ones who drove me around while I was there and tended to my every need, and who, in fact, were responsible for my invitation: Luke, Steph, Justine, and Woody - and there were so many more, all nice. Luke and Woody were waiting by baggage claim with a huge poster with my name on it - decorated as well with several startling portraits of me, drawn by Luke's undergrads. They had been reading my short stories in Luke's class and he asked them to draw what they thought I looked like. One had given me a neck tattoo! Another, according to Luke (I haven't yet had a chance to examine the poster in detail, though Luke says he is mailing it to me) wrote her phone number on the poster, and "Call me" - ha ha ha! Woody and Luke drove me into the city, remarking cheerfully as we went over a bridge, "Obama cited this as a dangerous bridge that needs work." I shouted repeatedly to Woody and Luke that I wanted to go "somewhere fancy" for dinner. They said they'd take me to "the fancy hot dog place." Maybe they were kidding, but it WAS a fancy hot dog place, though not pretentious like some other fancy hot dog places I have heard about. It was called Mayday, very welcoming and comfortable, with excellent beer, friendly service and a pleasant, dark atmosphere. My hot dog contained lamb sausage made with cherries! So you will have to admit that was fancy. Somehow people already knew when I walked in the door of the fancy hot dog place about my work with ADVENTURE TIME. Someone wanted me to sign an apron for the kitchen. "My favorite is Lady Rainicorn," she said. She kind of went "Ah!" when I started drawing something at the bottom of my inscription, but it was just a stupid heart with an arrow through it. I'm the only person associated with ADVENTURE TIME who can't draw, reliably disappointing all I meet. It's understandable and even delightful to me that the students at "literary events" now are more interested in ADVENTURE TIME than in my books, which are but dubiously in print - in fact, I have a lawyer working right now to discover who is getting that tiny kickback on the rare occasion when a copy is sold. It's not me! I stayed in a nice bed and breakfast near the campus. My vivid and relentless dreams that first night took place - as if I were awake - in the actual room where I was sleeping, and were populated by humorous, cherubic ghosts or pixies who wanted to remind me whenever I became too relaxed that THEY were in charge. The room and bed were very comfortable, let me stress. But I was tormented all night by mirthful pixies - a first for me - and was tired for the reading. I didn't really want to read from any of my old, dead books, so I read from my cat book that no one wants to publish. As I was preparing my selections - the introduction, part of Chapter One, and the conclusion - I realized that most of the book has been published in bits and pieces, as I've cut it up and used it in lots of different stories and articles and the like. I'm sorry, sort of, that it's never going to appear whole, as "my cat book," though I see in retrospect it is perhaps unwise to write a 10-chapter novel in which nothing happens until the last half of Chapter Eight - a little wholesome advice I was able to impart to the young writers who attended the reading! In the Q&A and in her poetry, my fellow reader Marisa Crawford made some good points in favor of the use of pop culture in literature. One of her poems had Joan Crawford in it (and another made telling use of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART FIVE!) so I was glad that by coincidence I was reading the Joan Crawford section of my "cat book." After the reading, a bar. I sat with two other grown men - the head of the English department and the poetry editor of the Cincinnati Review - and we all talked about our kitties. I noticed that the openly sentimental discussion halted when Chris Bachelder came back to the table! Or maybe I imagined that. Did he exude the air of a man who would not tolerate such weakness? He was friendly and funny. But the cat talk did cease with his approach. Mr. Bachelder is a writer whose fiction I have always enjoyed and admired. I was meeting him for the first time, and we had fun trashing various McSweeney's editors. Ha ha! Not trashing. Affectionately ruminating upon their individual styles and methods. The conclusion of my cat book was published in McSweeney's, and I mentioned how the editor had made me change "solar plexus" to "abdomen." The poet at the table (Don Bogen) kindly took up for "solar plexus." Then we talked about why I had cravenly reverted to "abdomen" during the reading that day even though I had brought an old manuscript with "solar plexus" typed on the page. The strange tyranny of the absent editor! The next morning at the bed and breakfast I sat there reading this in THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL: "I thought it but reasonable to make some slight exertion to render my company agreeable." And I thought, yes, THAT is the kind of sentence I want to write all the time, and no other, editors can go to hell. And then Anne Brontë introduced some complicated plot business about trying to fetch a ball of cotton that had rolled under a table without disturbing a cat. WHY CAN'T ALL WRITING BE THAT? But that was the next day. The night before, as the students were about to leave the bar, I had the sudden urge to inquire, "Where do you go to sing karaoke in Cincinnati?" Luke knew. So a group of us walked some blocks to a gritty, narrow, cash-only joint called, with refreshing lack of irony, Junker's Tavern. Here is a picture of some of us getting ready to go to Junker's Tavern. That's Justine and Luke.

I'm in the middle, doing my thing where I think it's hilarious to look surly in a photo, but it never is. It was a good evening, though I got tired and made Steph and Luke leave before they could do "Mambo #5." Back at the bed and breakfast, the ghosts returned only once in a dream, as parody ghosts with greenish faces and CARNIVAL OF SOULS style dark rings under their eyes, but dressed in colorful rags, shouting, "God bless us, every one!" with Cockney accents and well-meaning but gruesome smiles.

On the plane back, the narrator of THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL was saying, "I was by no means a fop - of that I am fully convinced" and I was like, "Right, pal, keep telling yourself that!"