Of Donkeys and Robots

So I'm reading ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC and Gideon Bohak, the author, is telling of an "erotic spell" in which a charm is written on a piece of tin, to which he adds the parenthetical statement "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Let me explain. This is nothing like the Gideon Bohak I know. Well, there is a footnote in which he makes a fond, gently humorous allusion to his hometown. But the violent whimsy of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" is present nowhere else in this academic... some might say dry as burnt toast... work. Well! Gideon Bohak does favor a jaunty exclamation point in his parenthetical statements (as seen in the example already given), which might count as whimsy if you are a scholar of ancient esoterica. Before I continue exploring this thought, I want to say that I wonder what Gideon Bohak's editor thought of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Did Gideon Bohak have to fight for it? I am developing an enhanced sense of respect for Gideon Bohak. Anyway, so, yes! In the very next paragraph we have an example of Bohak's penchant for parenthetical exclamation points. He has moved on to a spell which requires the magician (or is it the client?) to "take meat of a donkey in your mouth." I'm sorry I told you that. But I had to! Because Gideon Bohak presently adds the parenthetical statement that putting donkey meat in your mouth is "not very kosher!" Exclamation point his, I reemphasize. He goes on to examine cultural depictions of donkeys as "stupid, stubborn, and lazy," which reminded me, by way of contrast, of the other book I am reading right now, THE ILIAD, in which mules have been put forth more than once as some of the greatest animals you'd ever want to meet. They're always plowing fields faster than an ox, or pulling a big tree trunk down the side of a mountain. Those are the two things I can remember mules (in both cases, metaphorical mules) doing in THE ILIAD. Which brings me to another subject! Last night in bed, as I read THE ILIAD and Dr. Theresa worked a crossword puzzle, I suddenly shouted, "Hey! There are robots in this book!" Let's let that hang in the air for a while. Because I also want to say that I ran into Kelly Kornegay in Jackson, Mississippi, a couple of weeks ago, at the 50th anniversary party for Lemuria Books, which I didn't even tell you about, because why should you know every single thing that goes on in my life? Anyway, Kelly and I were talking about THE ILIAD, and she mentioned living in a new place where she can look out the window and see a donkey, and I got to tell her about the heroic mules of THE ILIAD. Pretty soon it got dark and Ace Atkins and I were standing in front of a stage watching 92-year-old bluesman Bobby Rush, of whom I took a photo with my very own phone and perhaps I will "post" it below. Also, there was a guy dressed as a cowboy who did some of the greatest dancing I've ever seen. He was up there all by himself dancing in his cowboy suit while opening acts played, and finally I thought, I should go dance with this guy! Let's get this party started! And Ace took a video of it, which I texted to Dr. Theresa (who had stayed home) so she could see my moves, and she immediately texted back "Have you been drinking?" And that's an interesting question but I bet you want to get back to the robots I read about in THE ILIAD last night. "They were made all of gold, but looked like living women." So you know I immediately thought of the DC comics characters the Metal Men, just as Homer intended. Furthermore, I checked Emily Wilson's endnote, and she calls them "robot women," so I'm not just coming to crazy conclusions. In fact, I think somebody installed A.I., because "They had a consciousness inside their hearts." And as I was lying there marveling about the golden robot women with consciousness in their hearts, I remembered thinking that I had noticed robots in the RAMAYANA as well. And I didn't just lie there and think about it for a change. I hauled my sorry carcass out of bed and went upstairs and found the RAMAYANA and refreshed my memory about these hydraulically powered automatons: "mechanical men, silently driven by falling water in some hidden way." And much like them, I am now running out of steam.

Events Spiral Out of Control

What's a typical day like for me, you ask? What? You didn't ask? Who are you? Where am I? Most days I sit around looking up stuff like how many calories in an apple. Yesterday was different. I went out to see Beth Ann Fennelly onstage at the launch event for her latest book THE IRISH GOODBYE. I got into town a little bit early because the tradition is to have a quick drink at City Grocery Bar before the reading, at least that has always been my personal understanding. And look, I don't make it out to the bar as much since the famous unpleasantness of almost two years ago. So I was disinclined to miss out on my special treat. But get this! City Grocery Bar was closed for a private party! That happens from time to time, enraging me. It can strike at any moment! The private party, not the rage. Although that can also strike at any moment. There is no warning for either one. Anyway, Bill Boyle arrived early as well, so, with a little more than half an hour to go, we departed the venue (Off Square Books) and walked around the corner to Proud Larry's, which even the bartender there referred to as the "backup" for literary whatever the hell it is. Life? Bill didn't want a drink. He was just keeping me company and keeping tradition alive. So important! That's what I said to the golden-brown liquid in my glass so it would know it was not being consumed in vain. Anyway, we had a nice talk (Bill and I, that is, not the glass and I, though we got along great too) and then we moseyed back over at 5:31 PM, just one minute after the event's official start time. And let me tell you something: we couldn't even get in! Not only was every chair occupied, the rear of the store was packed with a standing-room-only crowd AND there were people kind of smushed up in the doorway and spilling out onto the sidewalk. Well! I wasn't really surprised by the turnout, especially for Beth Ann, though I have long assumed that literature is dead. An unsuspecting Dr. Theresa, meanwhile, was on her way, having just finished teaching a class, and I had to tell her to come pick me up at Proud Larry's instead. Please be assured I had already purchased my copy of THE IRISH GOODBYE upon my arrival. Anyway, back around the corner we went and I sat at the bar with Bill again and ordered some to-go food for Dr. Theresa and myself... our go-to order at Proud Larry's, yes, our to-go go-to, that's right, or our go-to to-go would probably be a more proper way to put it, two grilled chicken salads with the lemon-red wine vinaigrette. And, if we're really feeling daring, we cheat and split a quesadilla. And boy were we feeling daring last night! And look, you're not going to believe this incredible tale, but I had already ordered the quesadilla before looking at my phone to discover that Dr. Theresa had texted her request for a quesadilla. Yes, you read that right! That's the kind of magic that thirty years of marriage will get for you. What a night. What a world. What times we live in.

Say No to Chiromancy in 2026

Well, Kate Tsang sent me an amazing present - a tiny replica she fashioned of my novel SWEET BANANAS. I placed a penny beside it so you can see just how tiny a replica it is. In the foreground, that's Bob Hope's ashtray, but that's another story. I was going to photograph the tiny replica in the palm of my hand to emphasize its tininess, but then I decided I didn't want the palm readers of the "internet" to know everything about me and my future. Hey! You know what that makes me think of? The time Dr. Theresa and I went to a dinner party and the host had a few drinks (or maybe that was us) and told us that he had belonged to a secret society in Greece with 13 members, and each member specialized in a different occult art! And his was palmistry. I'm sure he read our palms that night but I don't remember what he said. All I remember is that his wife, who was from Italy, made a big pot of spaghetti with tomato sauce, which everyone ate except for the chiromancer, who sat at the head of the table nibbling on a lettuce leaf.

Royal Glue

Okay, in this Million Dollar Book Club selection, I just read about "a twenty-four-foot-long mechanical dolphin whose belly contained a large group of musicians." Is our subject a Miley Cyrus show? No, but that's a good guess! It's just a little party set up in a private home for a traveling Queen Elizabeth I. "Now, wait a minute," you'd be saying if you existed. "Doesn't the Million Dollar Book Club read celebrity bios and books that are celebrity-bio-adjacent?" What, you don't think Queen Elizabeth I was a celebrity? Okay, okay, I admit she's not even really what this book is about. She's kind of the glue that holds it together, but don't tell her I said that. I don't think she'd like the comparison!

Breakthrough for an Animal

You know three things about me. 1. I'm sore all over from yesterday's garbage misadventure. 2. I get all my ideas from the obituaries. 3. I like to alert you whenever the New York Times mentions the TV show GREEN ACRES, mostly because they tend to get everything about it wrong. Number 1 came to mind just because I am sore all over, but numbers 2 and 3 were combined today in a way I think you will find most stimulating, yes, most stimulating indeed. So an underground cartoonist named John Peck passed away, and he was quoted on GREEN ACRES in his very own New York Times obituary. From the brief snippet, it is very clear that he understood GREEN ACRES completely, unlike the New York Times, although by quoting him on the subject - and in the limited space of an obituary, of all places! - they nudge themselves into acceptable territory. Mr. Peck, in a 1987 interview (a time when watching TV was considered a hobby for dolts... why, I recall when I was first employed by TBS in 1993, I would go to parties, and people would ask what I did, and I would tell them, and they would say - gleaming like a glazed ham with angelic pride! - "We don't even OWN a TV!" like I was supposed to faint or, maybe, lift them onto my shoulders and carry them around from room to room, blowing a trumpet)... what was I saying? Oh! So, Mr. Peck contrasted that attitude with the "high esteem" in which the GREEN ACRES character Arnold the Pig was held, because watching TV (an activity for which Arnold was famous), while looked down upon in humans, was "a breakthrough for an animal." The New York Times obituary department categorizes his statement as "dry."

The Music Critics

Last night as we were watching the John Wayne movie McQ, Dr. Theresa noted that the theme to McQ reminded her an awful lot of the theme to THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123. She conjectured that Elmer Bernstein "got lazy." I replied that while I agreed with Dr. Theresa's observation about the similarity of the themes, Elmer Bernstein didn't seem like the lazy type to me, and I wasn't even sure which movie came first. So I looked it up, and they both came out the same year! So I suppose there was just something in the air, something that went, "Ba-dum-dum-dum, Ba-dum-dum-dum," and composers Elmer Bernstein and David Shire heard it independently with their magical musical ears. (Dr. Theresa also noted, brilliantly, I thought, when watching McQ stride across a lobby, "They should have had John Wayne play Frankenstein." But that's a different subject!) Here's the thing! WHILE we were watching McQ, I received an email from McNeil, who said that sometimes the music of Hank Williams made him think that ol' Hank "went to too many luaus." I don't know about that, although a lot of his songs that aren't depressing are about fun parties. McNeil's remark rests, however, in my belief, or assumption, mostly on instrumentation. "It's not a criticism," insisted McNeil.

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

I'm sure some of you, if you existed, would be wondering about McNeil and why he hasn't bothered much with his bits lately... specifically, his "Li'l Bogie Bits," which is what we call it when he throws us a couple of bones based on the 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart he has been reading. Well, here's what happened: he thought he had left the book somewhere and lost it. Maybe in another state of the union, I think? But then he found it at home under a pile of... unspecified stuff. Of course, Freud would say that McNeil just doesn't care about his "Li'l Bogie Bits" anymore, so he effectively hid the book from himself. But Freud would be wrong! Speaking of Freud (and don't worry, we'll get back to the promised bits), McNeil told me he's reading SYNCHRONICITY by Carl Jung. I know what you're going to say! Freud isn't Jung. Well, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. All I know is I can't think of one without the other, like the two great flavors in a Reese's peanut butter cup. Like, when Freud and Jung were arguing that time and there was an inexplicable explosion in a nearby bookcase. I think I have that story right. And that reminds me of another story! I made it into a chapter of SOUR BLUEBERRIES, my novel that no longer exists on this planet. So I think I can quote it here and no one will care. And this is a true story, and I didn't even change Leslie's real actual name to protect her innocence: "That made him think of the time he and Leslie were arguing about Kubrick and Mike Nichols on New Year’s Eve and there was a loud bang from the other room and everybody ran in and saw that the oaken bookcase with all the film books on it had cleaved itself down the middle in despair and the film books were in a pile on the floor." Okay. What was I saying? Oh yeah, and then there was the time that Freud and Jung were on a train, I think, right here in the USA, I think, home of the "blog," and Freud got it in his head somehow that Jung was comparing him to a corpse preserved in a bog, and Freud swooned and fainted! I think I have that story right, too. But if I don't, who cares? Oh yeah, and what about when Frasier had a Halloween party and came dressed as his hero, Sigmund Freud? I feel, in a related matter, that Frasier would occasionally (though maybe not in the episode in question) make a sarcastic quip about Jungians. I don't have the sources to back that up. None of this is the point. The point is (well, this might not be the point, either) that I was telling McNeil about an Elmore Leonard novel I was enjoying and McNeil said he was envious, because he wasn't making a lot of headway with SYNCHRONICITY (in a subsequent email, he indicated that he was starting to get into it and groove on its vibes, though not in those words). Explaining that he wished Jung's examples were simpler, McNeil wrote, with what I took as plaintiveness, and I believe this is a quote, "Why not cats walking through a door?" So I closed my email and I opened up Elmore Leonard and I read "A cat walks in the room..." WHAT! So I emailed McNeil back and said, I believe, "Synchronicity!" or some other smart remark along those lines. Now for the bogie bits, which I will now attempt to reconstruct before your very eyes through the power of memory. One of them was... hmm... I guess Bogart was getting sick of Sinatra coming over to the house and drinking up all of Bogie's booze, and also (if I am recalling correctly) putting the moves on Lauren Bacall, who was Bogart's legally wedded wife. What was the other one? It had something to do with Bogart winning an Oscar. McNeil did not specify the movie, but I am guessing it was THE AFRICAN QUEEN. I'm not looking it up because I don't care about anything anymore. Anyway, Bogart's buddy tells him if he wins he should act real cool and snarl "It's about time" and casually walk offstage like some kind of tough customer. So Bogart is like, "Wow! That's a great idea! I'll do it!" And then he wins and gets up there and blushes and giggles and cavorts about the stage all giddy and squealing. That can't be right. But as I have already expressed, I don't care. I was reading more of the Elmore Leonard in a doctor's waiting room today. I took it instead of my prescribed waiting room reading material. After that, I stopped by Square Books because my copy of THE ICEMAN COMETH had arrived. I ordered it because I was watching the movie version the other day, and the character Hugo, played by Boss Hogg from THE DUKES OF HAZZARD, said what I could have sworn was "Life is a crazy monkey face!" So I was going to check the text and see. So Dr. Theresa is driving us home and I'm flipping through the end of THE ICEMAN COMETH and I find Hugo saying "Hello, nice, leedle, funny monkey-faces!" And another time he goes, "Hello, leedle Don, leedle monkey-face!" I don't know, maybe he's all about the leedle monkey-faces the whole way through, though where I got "Life is a crazy monkey face!" I don't know. In my defense, Boss Hogg isn't exactly Demosthenes in this role. And he is forced by the author, as you have witnessed, to say things like "leedle." When I read the whole play, which I promise you I never will, perhaps I'll come across the exact line that I misheard. Thank you. This has been "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits." Now leave me alone!

Speaking of Fox Mulder

I wanted to “post” this earlier, but the AT&T “internet” stopped working over and over. Anyway, here’s what you’ve been waiting for. I got one of those junk headlines that you get on your phone, something like “The Queen’s Favorite Sandwich That She Ate Every Day Since She Was Five – And It’s So Basic!” So I took a screen grab of it and sent it to Ace. That’s all we do all day every day, grab stupid things that appear on our phones and text them to each other. Then I texted the same screen grab, with its accompanying photo of Queen Elizabeth II, to Sara, along with my own humorous commentary: “The answer? A foot-long chili dog.” Sara’s reply was something like (a close paraphrase here): “OMG, really???” So I sadly had to reply that no, Queen Elizabeth II did not, as far as I know, eat a foot-long chili dog every day for 90 years. As Sara expressed it in a subsequent text, her tragedy – ha ha! she didn’t say tragedy – is that she “wants to believe.” Just like Fox Mulder from the X-Files! I added that part. Speaking of Fox Mulder, I was reading another old comic book about The Atom, and he was fighting these tiny guys who lived in a cave and rode around on the backs of bats. The editor interrupted the story to announce that tiny people of a proper size for riding small flying rodents into battle most likely really existed at some point! He insisted, in the capital letters typical of old comic books: “THE ELVES, THE BROWNIES, THE LEPRECHAUNS, THE FAIRIES, ALL MAY BE FANCIFUL RECOLLECTIONS OF A RACE OF TINY HUMANS! CHARLES FORT WRITES OF THEM.” Naturally, I was interested to run across this use of Charles Fort's captivating ramblings as evidence. I always thought Charles Fort would be a big deal on the “blog,” though he has never ended up in even 10 “posts” so far, after all the “blog’s” horrible countless years of thankless and unwanted existence. You remember Charles Fort, of whom it was once recorded on a book flap that he "collected and published reliable accounts of colored rains, living things falling to earth, unknown objects in space and in the oceans, people who have mysteriously appeared and disappeared." Charles Fort, to whom Tom Wolfe casually alluded: "Cassady began fibrillating the vocal cords, going faster and faster until by dawn if he had gone any faster, he would have vibrated off, as old Charles Fort said, and gone instantly into the positive absolute. It was a nice weird party." Charles Fort, whose glowing owls inspired the owls in my own second book. Charles Fort! That’s what I wanted to say. I wanted to say Charles Fort. Oh! In conclusion – and you will have to pardon me in advance for blue language on a level such as never, in my memory, has been attempted on the “blog” before – I watched THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY again, and as I was looking it up afterward in Fujiwara’s excellent monograph, I ran across Jerry Lewis’s defense of the puppet sequence from THE ERRAND BOY, which, having grown wise over the years, I now welcome with arms open wide. In fact, I’m ashamed of some of my earlier “posts” in which I seemingly apologize for Jerry. Back in those days, I just wanted everybody to like me! Now I don’t care anymore. So, Fujiwara interviews Jerry, who says of the part of the movie in which he, Jerry, cavorts tenderly with (if I recall correctly) a flirtatious, languorous ostrich puppet and enjoys maudlin interactions with a little finger-puppet clown… Jerry, who says of himself, actually, “We call that a director with steel balls.” And I was like, you know what? He’s right!

Two Knights and a Non-Knight

I am pretty far into THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA and there have been no owls, even though there are owls on the cover. But there are plenty of other things! Like, these two knights are talking and this one knight is like, "Alas, we all must die. Only the hour of our death is not certain." And the other knight is like, "Wait, who has told you all these pleasant novelties? It must be a mortal with an extraordinarily witty turn of conversation. Is he often invited out to supper?" And when I read that, I thought, "Hey! 'Is he often invited out to supper?' must be the 'He must be fun at parties' of the 18th century!" And then I thought, is that something people even say: "He must be fun at parties"? I think I've said it. I think, for example, when I went to see Dr. Theresa get an award - before she was a doctor! - and the speaker at the ceremony, for some reason, was a guy whose whole life was spent studying the sense of smell in lobsters... on that occasion, I do believe that as he went on for some time about the sense of smell in lobsters, I turned to our friend Chuck, who was seated next to me, and said, "He must be fun at parties." So I did a "google search" for the phrase "must be fun at parties" and turned up 145,000 matches, so I guess it is something that people say. More and more often, since my little medical hiccup, I wonder whether I know certain things or only think I know certain things. On the other hand, maybe I was never sure. As I type this long series of thoughts, I am in unbearable suspense about whether the "internet" will stop working, as it often does now, thanks to the good folks at AT&T, ties with whom I am assiduously working to sever forever as we speak. (As further evidence of my mental state, I just looked up "assiduous" to see if it means what I think it means, and it does, almost.) Oh! So a few pages later in THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA, someone (not a knight) is playing a cithara, which took me straight back to the "blog's" big cither/citer/cithern/cittern/kithara/zither craze of 2010. (Citterns were poised to make a comeback in 2011, but it didn't take. Though I will say that as I continue to examine the "blog" for zombie "links," I am astonished to find that the "Frequently Asked Questions about the Renaissance Cittern" webpage not only survives, it was updated - ! - as recently as April 2023. I guess they found out something new about renaissance citterns.) Now, did I immediately assume that the cithara I read about in THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA was identical with a kithara? Good God, no! I learned my lesson back when I stupidly assumed that a cither and a cithern were the same thing ("click" on "link" after "link" for the incredible details). I'm so glad we had this talk. Postscript: Yes, as predicted above, the godawful AT&T "internet" ceased to work at a vital juncture in the composition of this delightsome bagatelle. (Continuing a theme: I second-guessed myself about the existence of "delightsome" as a word and did not find it in the dictionary that came with this laptop. When the "internet" began to work again, however briefly, I checked out the OED online, which cites numerous uses of the word - well, maybe "numerous" is going a bit too far - beginning in the 15th century and ending only a few years ago, in what seems to be an advertising brochure: "our Sheraton Lagos Hotel teams have come up with a line-up of delightsome and inspiring culinary options." Ugh! Now I see why my computer doesn't want me to use "delightsome.")

Having a Small Get-Together

I was reading in one of these old comic books about all of his superhero friends throwing a bachelor party for the Atom. And here's the thing! All his superhero friends are regular-sized, and here's the Atom at his bachelor party, and he's about a damn inch tall, pardon my language, and he's sitting in a teeny tiny little chair that can zoom around for convenience. But here's the thing you need to know about the Atom... yes, you NEED to know. Get over yourself! Anyhow, although the Atom uses his shrinking powers for the good of humanity, he doesn't HAVE to be a damn inch tall all the time, pardon my language. He can be any damn - pardon my language - size he pleases, up to and including the size of his regular human self. So why is he sitting there like a clown during his entire bachelor party being one inch tall while all his human-sized friends hang out drinking beer and eating cake? That's my question.

The Rose/Wexler Ratio

I just finished reading JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS. What, you thought I wouldn't crow and bellow about it in a boastful manner? Just think back on how I strutted around after THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. And there are 1.5 Anatomies in 1 Joseph, or as we call it around here, "The Rose/Wexler Ratio." (The studious and scholarly may "click" here for more information about the origins of that useful term. You non-"clicking" bastards!) My first thought, of course, is that JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS ends exactly like WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING, an allusion that Kent Osborne will get if he ever stumbles across this "post." The rest of you will have to read all 1492 pages of JOSEPH and then watch the Sandra Bullock vehicle in question before enlightenment may occur. Next I'll say that it is almost impossible to believe that one person could be responsible for two such towering works of imagination as the novel under consideration and THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. I'll put it mildly, as I am not exactly allowed, living in the unnamed town where I do, to express the secret thought rattling in my brain, but... let's just say Thomas Mann gives William Faulkner a run for his money. I've already said too much. All my blabbing about Thomas Mann during the course of this journey, as I guess I'm calling it - sorry! -, has had unintended consequences. For example, Tom Franklin dug out his old, presumably yellowed, copy of THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, read a few pages, and said (I think this is an exact quotation), "Jack likes THIS?" I'm glad it happened! And I'll tell you why. It allows me to reiterate a couple of interesting points. 1. You can't just dig out your old paperback! You have to spring for the John E. Woods translations (assuming you are reading either book in English). 2. You have to give THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 100 pages of grace. Just trust it for 100 pages! Do I have to remind you of what Keats said? I'd insist that you "click" here to find out, but who are we kidding? How I hate you! End of interesting points. For the moment! Bill Boyle told me that Annie Baker, a playwright we both admire, in turn admires Thomas Mann, particularly in the Woods translations, I believe. An inside source, drawing from the private content of an encounter at a party, revealed to me that a certain famous author (we'll call them "Famous Author") personally confided in my source that they (Famous Author) enjoyed every Thomas Mann novel EXCEPT for JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS!!! One may only assume that Famous Author did not heed my variation on point #2 above, which is that the latter novel requires anywhere from 200-400 warm-up pages before really kicking in. Let me also state that Famous Author famously and authorially ragged on the state of Mississippi (where I dwell) as containing not even one single inhabitant capable of reading a book. Before I left social media like a true hero of our age, I responded indignantly to Famous Author's assertion, having perused an old comic book starring the giant, dimwitted duck Baby Huey on the very day of Famous Author's proclamation. Though my brave social media statement regarding Baby Huey has been lost in the bog of dead and dying tweets, as they were formerly called, it gives me no small pleasure to know that as an illiterate Mississippian with drool rolling down my face, I was yet capable of gleaning more than Famous Author from the inestimable trove of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS. In a final incident worthy of consideration, Mary Miller informed me with some excitement that Lee Durkee was reading and enjoying THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. I was so thrilled to have someone with whom to talk about it! So I hopped on my phone like a happy teen and texted Lee at once, whereupon he issued, just as swiftly, a strongly worded denial. It turns out that Mary was confusing Lee with... me. I was the one who had told her about THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. With this charming anecdote I lay the entire matter to rest, just like the Biblical patriach Jacob at the end of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS. Spoiler alert!

I Didn't Know

Yesterday, Dr. Theresa and I were watching the movie I, FRANKENSTEIN for reasons your frail human mind could never understand, and neither could ours. The following may contain at least one spoiler for the movie I, FRANKENSTEIN, which came out 10 years ago, though it feels like it came out 200 years ago, in a different universe. Anyway! At one point, a skeptical modern-day scientist gets hold of Dr. Frankenstein's notebook, and opens it, and says with delight, "Oh! He used electric eels!" Because before that, she didn't believe Dr. Frankenstein would have access to electricity. Now that she has read about the electric eels, she believes in Dr. Frankenstein, like he's Santa Claus! Well, that caused me to ask Dr. Theresa aloud, "What's the deal with electric eels anyway?" Before she could answer, I screamed in excitement, "Oh, yeah! I have a whole book about electric eels!" (See also.) I was referring, of course, to ELECTRIC EEL CALLING, lavishly illustrated by its author. Off I scampered to the bookshelf, which happened to be in the very room where we were watching I, FRANKENSTEIN, to retrieve my copy of ELECTRIC EEL CALLING. It was published in 1941, and I acquired it circa 2009, and I finally had a reason to open it. One thing I read was the author's contention that the people of South America were "the first humans in all the world to find [electricity] in a palpable form, and although the Egyptians are credited with the earliest observation of electric fish (the electric catfish of the Nile)"... wait! Let's just stop the sentence right there. I interrupted I, FRANKENSTEIN to yell towards Dr. Theresa all manner of questions about the electric catfish, such as, did she know about it? She lived in Egypt for a number of years. I, myself, had reached the age of 60 (I started this "blog" as a wee, apple-cheeked lad of only 43... my God! What a nightmare), and had just discovered, for the first time, in this old book, the existence of the electric catfish of the Nile, which I assume everyone else reading this (there is no one reading this) knew about already. I'm always late to the party. However, due to my strict policy of "blogging" about things that remind me of other things I have "blogged" about before, I thought I should publicly acknowledge these electric catfish, as the catfish of ancient Egypt have previously appeared in this space, though I was shamefully ignorant at the time of their electrical talents. In conclusion, if you do not "click" on the "links," you are really missing the point of the "blog," which is nothing less than a vast, oddly constructed historical novel meant to be read Julio Cortazar style! That's what I'm telling myself these days.

Nestled Together

I'm rusty at the old jotting game. As you know, it used to be that when I went on a trip, I jotted everything for you in one of my dear old jotting books. Everybody was simply crazy about that! But then I stopped "blogging," and the last time I went to Los Angeles, why, I hardly even mentioned it. But since then, I quit social media, and as a result, I no longer have anything to do aside from the ocassional jot. Bearing that in mind, I shall now attempt to make you one of those lists that I used to make that everyone adored so much. 1. I asked a question at the front desk of the hotel and the desk clerk said he knew my voice! He said, "Are you Root Beer Guy?" I screamed back in his face, "YES!" That has never happened to me before (being recognized as Root Beer Guy, I mean; I have screamed enthusiastically into many faces), and, I dare say, never will again. (Full disclosure: on a later date, I overheard him telling a coworker "Did you know that guy is the King of Root Beer?" So maybe he didn't have the solid grasp on my character that I thought.) 2. I don't usually use conditioner on my hair. In fact, I would almost go so far as to say I never do. BUT! I figured, what the hell, this hotel conditioner is free. I'm going to put it on my hair! What's the worst than can happen? I also cleaned out my wallet. 3. Rode around with Richard, the chillest Uber driver in the world. If you're ever in California and need a ride, ask for Richard! 4. Remember the drugstore where I famously bought my expensive brush? And, let me double check, did I buy an expensive comb there? Once again, I scream, "YES!" Anyway, that drugstore is gone now! It's just not there. How could they have gone out of business? They must have been raking in a fortune on brushes and combs alone! All kidding aside, I miss you, fancy drugstore. Go with God! 5. I had steak Sinatra two nights in a row, once at Dan Tana's and once at The Smoke House. (I think I have erroneously called it "The Smokehouse" a few times in the past, but their official signage separates the smoke from the house.) I may have formerly insisted that Dan Tana's steak Sinatra is superior to the steak Sinatra at The Smoke House. On this ocassion, however, I must advance the opposite claim! The old Smoke House waiter stood and mixed the spaghetti in with the steak and peppers right at the table, but not with showy theatricality, no, just in the background, in a workmanlike fashion, getting the job done without undue fuss, which, of course, did not add to or subtract from the toothsome nature of the dish in question... OR DID IT? The result, in any case, was delectable. 5. I had stars in my eyes whilst consuming my steak Sinatra that night, for across the table from me sat Jesse Moynihan and his brother! Now, I have never met Jesse's brother before, and, as I have often boasted (most recently a few seconds ago), I quit social media. The only thing I miss about social media is "Pickle Minute," a thing that Jesse and his brother and some of their friends do on Instagram. I'm a big "Pickle Minute" fan! And there, at The Smoke House, I felt I was in a live episode of "Pickle Minute," as Jesse's brother took a photo of me pointing at a fried pickle. For, yes, having spotted fried pickles on the menu, how could two of the hosts of "Pickle Minute" resist placing that order? They could not. 6. Also at dinner, a guy named Joe I met at a party in 2012 and haven't seen or talked to since, but I remembered him, because you meet so few people you can talk about Anthony Braxton with! 7. Had a meeting scheduled at the Bob's Big Boy restaurant where David Lynch used to go every day. It turned out that Bob's Big Boy was too crowded to host the meeting, to my deep chagrin, as I thought it a wonderful coincidence that Lynchian muse Laura Dern was at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, whence I had come, at the very same time! 8. After the meeting, I walked around the neighborhood with a person who had been in the meeting with me. We wandered about, talking about the meeting, and what it meant, and sharing our regrets about the salad place across the street from Bob's Big Boy, where we had ended up. Finally, in our circular perambulations, we saw Bob's Big Boy looming before us. "Should we?" said the person. To which I again screamed, "YES!" By now, its lunchtime rush concluded, Bob's Big Boy was quite accommodating. The person ordered a slice of strawberry pie, because the Bob's Big Boy menu stated that the strawberries were "nestled together." When the pie came out, this person observed joyfully, "They ARE nestled together!" The person went on to declare the strawberry pie at Bob's Big Boy "maybe my favorite piece of pie." 9. I brought some Henry James to read on the airplane. I always found him tough going in the past. Anyway, this time, his characters were making lots of wisecracks and I was getting into it. 10. Well, I have left out many of the nice people I saw on the trip, and interesting events, but my jotting is not what it used to be. Special mention must be made of Hanna K Nystrom, who was flying in from Sweden just as I was about to fly back to Mississippi. She thoughtfully made time for breakfast in the brief Sweden-Mississippi overlap we enjoyed. We talked about how cold and gray it was. (Los Angeles was chilly and gray for the whole of my stay, once again lending some weight to the Lorenz Hart lyric.) Hanna said it was colder than Sweden!

It Only Hurts When I Cry

Well, I happened to scroll past TCM last night, where the film BEACH BLANKET BINGO was playing... there was this woman (pictured) singing "It Only Hurts When I Cry" while she was roasting some wienies in the fireplace, and I stood there and counted the wienies (lying on a napkin on the bricks, bottom right). I am pretty sure there were at least 20 wienies in the scene, including a couple you can't see because I grabbed this screenshot from a faded pan-and-scan version on youtube this morning, giving you little idea of the garish vitality of the original wienies as presented in Technicolor, or whatever process they used on BEACH BLANKET BINGO. It really did look like an awful lot of wienies, but it was a big party and, honestly, there may not have been enough wienies to go around.

Midflight

Tonight is the 40th anniversary party for Square Books, so it is highly appropriate that even though I do not "blog" anymore, a chance occurrence yesterday, related to that august institution previously named, brings me here to confirm, by compulsive necessity, my controversial theory that every book has an owl in it. So it happened that Bill Boyle and Megan Abbott and I were crowding up the landing on the stairs at Square Books, huddled as we were over a volume that Megan had plucked from a display for our delectation. "I am in this book, telling the story of a ghostly encounter," Megan said, or words to that effect. Naturally, Bill and I were startled and delighted! "Quickly, quickly, let us move in all haste up the stairs, retaining this book in our possession for further study," I exclaimed. My cheerful plan was accepted by all. For you see, I had spied Richard Howorth entering his benevolent domain, and I did not wish for him to glance upward and conceive of me as a person who would in any manner impede the traffic that wends its merry way up and down the hallowed stairs of Square Books, the establishment of which we celebrate, yea, this very eve. Megan, Bill, and I settled ourselves, therefore, in the conveniently situated coffee section of the shop and in just such a spot it was confirmed, as might well be expected, that indeed Megan, a person of notable honesty already, was telling the truth, as is her wont. Yes, yes, there she was, appearing as a character in someone else's book! And on the same page, "a spooky owl in midflight." (See also.)

Adult Education

As part of my ongoing program of adult education, I am reading Bricktop's autobiography along with Megan Abbott. Bricktop (left) reminisces about "the type of place where gin was poured out of milk pitchers." And I wondered why it mattered out of what the gin was poured. And I still wonder! It did put me in mind of a fact relayed long ago by Megan Abbott, namely, that some people would use cream pitchers decorated with Shirley Temple's face to make martinis, using a handy mnemonic for the perfect recipe: "Gin to the chin, vermouth to the tooth." There, the motivation for using the pitcher is clear. And while I was typing all this, I recalled the lyrics to Screamin' Jay Hawkins's "Yellow Coat," in which the eponymous coat, as part (I believe) of its manufacture, is "laid out in milk and gin." As I prepare to hit the "publish" button, it occurs to me that I have no idea why I have always heard that lyric as explicitly referring to the yellow coat's origin, although the garment's magical and legendary properties are certainly extolled by the narrator. It might just as well be that the coat, with, perhaps, its owner still inside, are supposed to be lying in some milk and gin after (during?) a celebration of some kind.

Brian and the Birthday Boy and Me

Here are my friend Brian and me at that birthday party I was telling you about. Sure, the birthday party guy was supposed to be anonymous, and that's his picture my thumb is poking at, but it would take some kind of internet genius to figure it all out, and nobody cares, plus he looks like a magnificent sad prince, so I feel okay about everything.

Encounter

I don't "blog" anymore. You may think I do but I assure you that I do not. Sometimes you need an update, though, don't you? I know how you worry! So the other evening I was at Ace Atkins's office and I thought I'd see if he had a copy of THE GREEN RIPPER. He said he probably had several. THE GREEN RIPPER is a novel by John D. MacDonald. You will recall that I gave up on John D. MacDonald. I don't get the appeal of John D. MacDonald. If you "click" here you can read some of the reasons why. But I know you won't. What is wrong with you? You beg me to "blog" but you can't take the time to "click" on the "links." Well! It is really none of my business. But John Hodgman was saying all these nice things about John D. MacDonald in the New York Times some weeks ago, and in particular THE GREEN RIPPER, and although this did not change my feelings about John D. MacDonald I was made sufficiently curious for the actions related above to be the result. Anyhow, Ace contacted me yesterday to say he had located THE GREEN RIPPER and I could come by to fetch it. So I did. Now I took Ace's copy of THE GREEN RIPPER with me across the street from his office to Square Books. As I made a purchase there, I remarked to the cashier that this was Ace's copy of THE GREEN RIPPER and not part of my haul. We got into a little discussion (Bill C. wondered whether it might be a first edition of THE GREEN RIPPER) and it was at this time that I opened the book and discovered it to be, if not a first edition, at least an edition signed by the author. I couldn't imagine that Ace wanted me to drag this copy around town with me! You may recall, though I doubt you will "click" on it to refresh your memory, the time I spilled rye all over Ace's copy of LA BRAVA. So I went back over to Ace's office and returned the signed copy of THE GREEN RIPPER. He was surprised! He had no idea it had been signed, but he looked at the signature and confirmed it - thanks to his expertise - as John D. MacDonald's very own. Ace quickly produced yet another copy of THE GREEN RIPPER to replace the one I had brought back. Copies of THE GREEN RIPPER are just scattered around Ace's office like so many throw pillows in a film by Nancy Meyers. Okay! Now it was time for me to go back to Square Books and meet my pal McKay McFadden, whom I had not seen in the flesh in some years. Before McKay arrived I had time to note that Travis McGee (hero of the John D. MacDonald novels) refers to fat people as "fatties" on the second page of THE GREEN RIPPER, not raising my hopes. (A few pages later, though I did not make it this far at the time, McGee's girlfriend boards his famous houseboat and announces, "Today I jogged with four sets of fatties." There are shady goings-on at her place of employment, which makes me think she will be dead shortly. As Ace once revealed the key to the Travis McGee novels: "The woman always dies." [Further along: "Last week I had a batch of fatties down by the barns" - ed.]) I also read (in another book entirely) about the time U. S. Grant wanted to give his coach driver a Christmas present, so he hurried back down the steps and fell and experienced the debilitating leg injury that was just the start of all the troubles and misfortunes shortly to snowball on him, culminating in his death. Then McKay appeared on the stairs! We greeted one another warmly and McKay said, "I'm sorry I'm late. I just had an encounter with a pig in the woods." I can quote her accurately because I immediately leapt up to borrow a napkin and a pen from the Square Books coffee counter, as seen here:

She went on to describe the "encounter," which was much more horrific, grisly, tragic, and bloody than anything I would call an "encounter," and I shan't disturb you with it on this festive occasion. Conversation moved on to pleasanter subjects and we found before we knew it that we had spent some number of hours catching up, a sufficient number of hours for me to happily inform McKay that it was just about time for John T. Edge's yearly ritualistic dispersal of sausage balls at the City Grocery Bar on the occasion of his birthday. McKay and I, having arrived perhaps five minutes before the party officially began, were, I believe, the first to retrieve sausage balls from the traditional brown paper bag, pellucid as it was with delicious grease. (It occurs to me that I have used the phrase "pellucid with grease" in my "professional" writing at some point - perhaps on more than one occasion; I know it has assaulted my brain repeatedly, in any case - and I apologize for the lazy repetition. I must think it's quite the literary turn of phrase! How I sicken myself.) "I miss my Oxford life," said McKay. I replied with some observation about the many charms of San Francisco, where McKay now finds herself most days. "Oh, it's DAZZLING," she replied, employing a theatrical hand gesture to indicate bedazzlement. And yet her tone belied her adjective! I have never heard the word "dazzling" to drip with such venom, nor seen it accompanied by such bitterly flashing eyes! Not long thereafter, Dr. Theresa arrived, arrayed in silver.

We were able to boast to Tom Franklin (another recent arrival) that we had taken his picture off the TV screen. You see, he was once an extra in DEADWOOD, a show that Dr. Theresa and I are currently watching for the very first time. We proudly described the scene in which Dr. Theresa spotted Tom with her eagle eye and the pains we took to catch his fleeting image, and it was his sad duty to inform us that - although he indeed appears as an extra on the show - the person we thought was him was not him. Later at home we realized that the extra we thought was Tom had long hair and a graying beard, both of which Tom has at the present moment, but neither of which he would have had during the physical production of DEADWOOD. This is not Tom Franklin.

The Money Store

1. If we know anything about Bill Boyle, it is that he suggests decadent or disturbing books to me AND he sometimes gives me something to read on an airplane. This time he recommended a decadent book and I took it upon myself to bring it on the airplane. "I don't want to tell you anything about it," said Bill. "There's a tortoise encrusted with precious jewels." Well! I knew that much from the back of the book. And if that's on the back of the book you have to wonder what else is in there. The book is AGAINST NATURE - no, that's the title - by Joris-Karl Huysmans. 2. Lee Durkee gave me a ride to Memphis. See, the closest airport is in Memphis and my flight is always so early and this time I thought I'd stay overnight closer to the airport... for convenience! But! The last time I tried that, I found my "motel by the airport" experience disenchanting. So I decided to stay somewhere "nicer." I recalled that Elvis fan Ace Atkins had once stayed at an Elvis-themed hotel in Memphis, which sounded like a diverting choice. After my no-refund advance booking (it was cheaper) I read that the place had been shut down temporarily some months ago due to an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease. "Oh, I'm sure they've taken care of it," Ace assured me with the casual air of the physically fit. My room was on the second floor but somehow the ground came right up to the window anyway. So the second floor was also a ground floor. I'm not sure I'm being clear. Some grass and dirt came right up to my window, and just beyond that, the dark, forbidding woods. Woods in Memphis! With naught but a pane of glass betwixt me and them. The window reached the ground, I mean. Something could stroll right through it. It looked like "Young Goodman Brown" out there. I vaguely recall from that Elvis book I was reading that Gladys was frightened by some bushes growing outside the Presley home. Now I know how she felt. 3. Two tiny spots like dried ketchup on my nice gray jacket that I am not actually sure is gray. Is it blue? Back at home, Dr. Theresa and I dismissed these spots as "a shadow" or "a fold in the material" but now I can see in the vast hallway mirror near the swirling white staircase at the Elvis-themed hotel that they are definitely spots of uncouth ketchup. 4. Sitting in the airport reading "he had gone to those unconventional supper-parties where drunken women loosen their dresses at dessert and beat the table with their heads." (!) 5. Flight. Beastie Boys came on the iPod, amiably rhyming "cellular" and "the hell you were," which I noted to tell Jon Host on my return. 6. The airplane food was something I'd never seen before. I might call it "an open-faced breakfast pie." In the center was a slurry composed of everything you've ever had for breakfast. Some of what I think was the egg portion was colored pink for reasons I never managed to grasp. I ate it. 7. An early impression, though the book was first published in 1884, is that AGAINST NATURE advocates for Pen Ward's pet mode of existence, virtual reality: "Nature, he used to say, has had her day; she has finally and utterly exhausted the patience of sensitive observers by the revolting uniformity of her landscapes and skyscrapers. After all, what platitudinous limitations she imposes, like a tradesman specializing in a single line of business; what petty-minded restrictions, like a shopkeeper stocking one article to the exclusion of all others; what a monotonous store of meadows and trees, what a commonplace display of mountains and seas! In fact, there is not a single one of her inventions, deemed so subtle and sublime, that human ingenuity cannot manufacture." 8. A new bartender at my hotel in Burbank asked where I was from and when I told him, a guy at the other end of the bar shouted, "A lot of great writers come from Mississippi!" This is a true fact, but I must tell you from my travels that this is never the first thing a stranger will say upon hearing the word "Mississippi." And I hasten to add that Mississippi has brought endless negative reactions on itself. But it was nice to hear something milder for a change. This guy, who did not hail from the South, I should say, was not up to speed on some contemporary Mississippi writers so I pitched him Mary Miller pretty hard. 9. Went back to Dan Tana's and got the same table! Been there three times, got the same table three times. Let's call it "my table." Let's call it that! I'm scared to ever go back in case I don't get it again. 10. Reading the paper the next morning I see that our friend and former neighbor Jesmyn Ward won another National Book Award, and it felt doubly right after hearing what the nice man at the bar had said about Mississippi writers. 11. My brother sent a pic of us at Dan Tana's. As he remarks, my face is vampirically blurred, as if photography cannot quite capture it. Here we see me in the preparation stages of jotting in my famous book of jottings, no doubt about the fact that we are getting our "regular table." A rare appearance of the jotting book in action!

You may also notice that my hair is sticking up and so is my brother's. That's going to be our gimmick now: the brothers whose hair sticks up. 12. Disagreement with a bartender about Robert Walker's performance in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. 13. I went to the ADVENTURE TIME wrap party and danced with Andy Merrill. You may remember him as Brak from SPACE GHOST COAST TO COAST! As you can see below, we freaked out because Weird Al was RIGHT BEHIND US.

14. Laraine Newman and I saw Jeffrey Katzenberg in a grocery store. He's gotta eat too! We had lunch (not with Jeffrey Katzenberg). The young woman in charge of the host station spoke engagingly and learnedly to us of Chekhov and Ibsen and Shakespeare. She knew a lot about THE CHERRY ORCHARD and also a lot about actual cherries and how to grow them, and what mistakes not to make when growing cherries, and what the cherries mean in THE CHERRY ORCHARD. I mean WHY CHERRIES? This is the question she answered. Fascinating and delightful! But I don't think I'll tell you. From our outdoor table we could see a bridge that Laraine told me was featured in one of the old, original PLANET OF THE APES movies. I said that Sal Mineo played an ape in one of those and Laraine sort of doubted me! She texted famed comedian Dana Gould right then and there and he immediately confirmed it with his knowledge. Dana Gould is Laraine's version of Google! 15. As the sun was going down I walked alone in the unfamiliar part of town from whence I had parted with Laraine. I found a fancy restaurant tucked - nay, almost buried - in an unlikely location. The bartender had played Hamlet twice! 16. The next morning I went to the Starbucks where I have seen Andrea Martin and (on a separate occasion) the guy from Tenacious D who is not Jack Black. Got the last New York Times from the rack and discovered something small and green on it. Small, green, and sticky. Bright green, emerald, holding there fast, hard candy vehemently licked and rejected or a foul lozenge someone had coughed up? Anyway, I touched it. I've visited this Starbucks often enough to recognize some of the customers who have been going there for years. There's one guy who blows his nose a lot. There he was, blowing his nose! Just like old times. He's been blowing his nose in that Starbucks since at least 2012. 17. "... birds with rats' heads and vegetable tails." When I read that I was like, "Nothing as prosaic as an owl is going to be in THIS book!" But in the very next paragraph: "a patch of virgin forest packed with monkeys, owls and screech-owls"! 18. Breakfast with my brother and nephews at Musso & Frank, where they are breakfast regulars, received warmly by all. My brother adjusted the blinds like he owned the joint! 19. After breakfast, we went to what my brother called "the money store," which turned out to be a hot, cramped box specializing in old coins and old silver and smelling like old farts. My eldest nephew and I looked at some olden utensils. "Look, they have the nicest spork ever made," said my nephew. 20. Dr. Theresa called: the wind blew and a huge limb, itself "the size of a tree" crashed to the earth right outside our house. It was a calamity! Also a miscreant peed in our backyard and ran away hitching up his pants under a fiery barrage of Dr. Theresa's righteous scolding. 21. Pen and I ate at The Smokehouse. Pen audaciously ordered the "steak Sinatra" with salmon instead of steak! We pondered what Frank might have made of that. We summoned up Frank Sinatra's violent, indignant ghost. The waiter said he would have to check what sort of surcharges would be involved. "A million dollars!" Pen predicted. But the waiter came back and said that according to the kitchen, steak Sinatra with salmon instead of steak costs ONE DOLLAR LESS than steak Sinatra! Then another waiter came in bearing a chicken pot pie that astounded everyone in the room. It was as large as... a pie. Like... a whole, entire flaky pie you might see on display for its beauty and wholesomeness in a bakery case. I swear, every person at every table was marveling that such a thing as this could be a chicken pot pie. Everyone stared in wonder - and dare I say envy? - at the recipient of the flabbergasting chicken pot pie. I thought of Dr. Theresa, who loves chicken pot pie, and I thought of her again as Pen and I enjoyed wedge salads, Dr. Theresa being one of our nation's leading proponents of the wedge salad. 22. At the airport I sat right next to a guy who had a big jotting book in the exact color and style of my small jotting book! I waved my tiny version of his large jotting book at him in excited solidarity. His wife laughed merrily at my antics and did not call airport security. 23. I don't "blog" anymore.

You Eschew Froufrou Poo Poo

I was thinking about Richard Strauss's tone poem "Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche" and realized I don't really know much about Till Eulenspiegel himself. So I started poking around and was delighted to learn that Eulenspiegel means "owl mirror." So any collection of the Till Eulenspiegel tales might be said to have an owl in it, mightn't it? Sure it might. Why, look. Here's Till Eulenspiegel's supposed gravestone and he's holding an owl and a mirror over his head in case you don't get the point. During my idle research I stumbled on the website for that certain corporate behemoth, the name of which I never utter here. And someone had reviewed a collection of Till Eulenspiegel stories like so: "It seems like the punchline of every single story has to do with Euelenspiegel defecating on or in something or someone. That's it. That's the book's running joke. I suppose if you were an illiterate German peasant sitting around a hearth fire in the 1500s, you'd find these tales of feces and bad puns hilarious, but I didn't." I was fascinated to discover this living person who is so worked up about Till Eulenspiegel. And as you can imagine, he had inadvertently composed one of those "bad reviews" that made me want to read the book more than ever. For good measure, the reviewer rubs this salt in the wounds, though I hate to repeat it so close to our nation's birthday: "Of course, since a good majority of modern Americans are probably less sophisticated than an illiterate German peasant from 400 years ago, perhaps Till Eulenspiegel is due for a comeback. Hollywood could cast Johnny Knoxville... and he could crap all over American audiences, who will double over with laughter at every fart noise." Sold! I was naturally drawn to this reviewer's other reviews, which form a kind of epistolary novel or Robert Browning poem, in which you get to know the narrator by filling in the gaps. It's like that famous intellectual essayist said in his manifesto that time, we don't need novels anymore. Did he say that? It sounds like something somebody with a manifesto would say! Before getting into his one-star judgment of Folgers Classic Medium Roast Coffee Singles Serve Bags, our reviewer indulges in this bit of throat clearing: "I am no coffee elitist. I eschew status-conscious coffee drinkers and the frou frou coffee houses they frequent in order to be seen carrying green fringed cups emblazoned with quotes from left-wing icons." I've spent some part of my life trying to make up narrators who talk just this way, but I see once again that I am unnecessary. Also recommended: the same reviewer on the moral depravity of the Frankie Avalon movie BEACH PARTY.