McNeil Absolved of Blasphemy

1. We drove down to visit my parents. We got a rental car with some of that sweet, sweet satellite radio we have learned to enjoy. So I turn it on and here comes "American Pie," Dr. Theresa's least favorite song. When he sang "Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry," Dr. Theresa said, "Drive it in! You can't drive it fast enough for me!" Ouch! Later, I was thinking, hey, shouldn't a levee be dry anyway? Isn't it supposed to keep the water out? I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my idle musing. So, anyway, changing the selection before Dr. Theresa could explode, I noticed that one of the preset stations specialized in bluegrass. "Did you set this to bluegrass?" I asked with obvious astonishment. Dr. Theresa's response, which was not exactly an answer, was something like, "What's wrong with bluegrass?" The answer is nothing. There is nothing wrong with bluegrass. But when I put it on the bluegrass channel, Dr. Theresa made me change it again because bluegrass, according to her, "sounds like they did a bunch of coke." An exact quotation! 2. My dad goes to a particular Waffle House every Saturday morning with a collection of his cronies. Dad said that someone who lives next door to this Waffle House keeps chickens, and the chickens wander over and hang out in the parking lot. People feed them. It's all part of the experience. I was of course reminded of the Original Frosty Mug, and the chickens that used to peck around your feet while you tried to drink a milkshake. I wondered glumly and aloud whether the Original Frosty Mug could possibly still be open for business seeing as how the interstate has been improved - quite a few years ago now - to bypass the town. Dad said there was a new chicken at the Waffle House. I asked him how he knew it was new. He said it had "different feathers and a different attitude." He described it as a "quick-acting, small chicken who didn't know the procedure." Quote! 3. While visiting down there on the Gulf Coast, I received an email from McNeil, indicating that he had received his copy of the Apocryphal Gospels. He waited so long for it that I was sure he would be disappointed, but such did not appear to be the case, as McNeil remarked gleefully that Young Jesus should have been sent to military school. I do not consider this blasphemy, given the apocryphal nature of the text. 4. As we began our departure from the Gulf Coast by way of the Dauphin Island Bridge, I was given to remark, "Pelicans are cool. You know, they got their big old mouths." QUOTE! I thought I could put that line in an upcoming unpublished novel. Speaking of my unpublished novels, I'll have something else to say about them below. 5. I accidentally left my hat at my parents' house! It was a nice hat I bought at a shop in Pasadena recommended by Adam Muto. I wore it to the racetrack with Pen! If I ever want my hat back, I guess I'll have to visit my parents again. 6. While down there, I received texts from Megan on the evening she attended Wallace Shawn's new play. She has a good story about all that, but I shan't share it here as it is hers alone. But I will tell you this! When I got home, I was reading the New York Times... and look, I skipped the New York Times a couple of days while traveling. Was it a relief? I think it was! But now I'm back to reading the New York Times and I see a review of Wallace Shawn's new play. And here, I'll quote a little bit from the review, which observes of one character, "given his ontological understanding of the Big Bang, all action is preordained." So! I have a character in one of my unpublished novels who thinks the same thing! And I was like, oh no, people will think I am trying to rip off Wallace Shawn in the unlikely event my unpublished novel is ever published! So I sent Megan an excerpt of my novel, to get her opinion about whether or not people in this highly improbable future I have imagined will think I'm trying to rip off Wallace Shawn. Here, I'll share a small portion of the chapter I sent Megan: "Everything was made of molecules! Every single thing that ever happened was because of a couple of molecules banging into one another, causing the creation of the universe itself, in Gram Rattan’s understanding. Everything that happened after that was just more and more molecules banging around. Even the thoughts in Gram Rattan’s head! ... Molecules obeying immutable laws! That first molecule hitting that second molecule, well, that was the only thing that had ever really 'happened' in Gram Rattan’s opinion. The rest was gravy." So anyway, Megan told me that in the Wallace Shawn play, the moment must have passed so subtly she barely noticed it. I paraphrase. Anyhow, we can all breathe a sigh of relief! 7. You know who plays the "Big Bang Guy," as I call him, in Wallace Shawn's play? John Early! He was in an episode of SUMMER CAMP ISLAND I worked on! And Wallace Shawn was on ADVENTURE TIME! I'm not 100% sure, but I think maybe he was on SUMMER CAMP ISLAND as well. Anyway, based on a profile I read of him in the New York Times, he would love it if you went up and shouted that fact in his face, especially if he happened to be standing in a "temple of art." According to the New York Times, if there is one thing Wallace Shawn can't get enough of, it is standing around in a "temple of art." 8. You know I don't care to lug a big fat book with me when I travel. So I left Witold Gombrowicz at home. Upon my return, I opened it up and the first thing I read was "God, allow me to vomit up the human body!" Ha ha. You had to be there. That's old Gomby for you. Funny, I was already thinking of him as "old Gomby" when Megan texted, referring to him as "Gommy." I bet he would love it! As much as Wallace Shawn would love to be told by strangers on the street that when he was on ADVENTURE TIME, his character farted.

Frivolity When the Earth Is Swallowed Up

This is where I tell you about my trip to Burbank. 1. On the flight out, my seatmate had a sweet dog companion seemingly smuggled under his hoodie. I don't know about dogs. I believe this one was a boxer. But I just don't know. I can't swear to it in a court of law! The dog had one blue eye and one brown eye. It would arise from the neck hole of the hoodie and look at me with a nice expression. Sometimes, due to the angle of its owner, it looked like a human with a dog's head! When the guy got up to go to the restroom, he stuffed the dog into a duffel bag. The dog was fine. 2. Layover at the Salt Lake City airport! This story just gets better and better, doesn't it? So, a booming voice on the public address system repeatedly gave out the first, middle, and last name of a guy who had walked out on his check at an airport restaurant. It was an old-school public shaming... Cotton Mather style! I realize that by mentioning Cotton Mather, I may have confused you geographically. I don't know enough about Brigham Young to know whether he would have made an appropriate replacement in my already shaky allusion. 3. Okay, on the next airplane, a guy across the aisle was scrolling through pictures on his phone and narrating to his friend: "This is a salad bar... that's another salad bar..." Ha ha, anyway, I thought that was funny. They were looking at photos of salad bars! It's a crazy world! 4. BURBANK! Kent was in town, too, and we were both staying in the same hotel. As we rode back to the hotel from Dan Tana's, Kent spied a DeLorean pulling into traffic behind us. He was pretty stoked, I don't mind telling you! He kept saying, "It's a DeLorean! Look, it's a DeLorean! It's right behind us. The DeLorean is right behind us!" But I don't know why, I never turned around to look at the DeLorean. It was just like when Kent begged me to watch Mark McGwire break a home run record and I coldly refused. We'll never know what's wrong with me. 5. On one menu, I briefly misread "scallion" as "sea lion." 6. Kate Tsang and I spent a good part of one afternoon just wandering around in the impossibly vast Warner Brothers prop department. People were working, loading props on carts to be taken to various sets. We just stayed out of their way. No one hassled us. In fact, one man cheerfully asked if we needed anything. We said we were just looking. Then we ended up in some odd corners, such as a section containing many kinds of animals who had been subjected to taxidermy. I have never enjoyed the thought of taxidermy. But here's Kate. She notices that some of the animals are falling apart. She dates them for me to the time "when Theodore Roosevelt was shooting animals" because they were stuffed with straw... a discontinued practice, Kate gave me to understand. I was standing there thinking, like, "Wow, Kate sure knows a lot about taxidermy!" Which reminds me of something: 7. I ran into Steve Wolfhard completely unexpectedly! Somehow we got to talking about the movie THE SEA HAWK and I mentioned how much I enjoyed the monkey's performance in that film. Steve said the monkey made him sad. I got it! I feel the same way about taxidermy. I said, "Were you thinking about the monkey's home life?" And Steve said... I think I have this right... "I was thinking, 'That could have been me!'" Trying to show Steve that I was on his side about being sad concerning monkeys, I said I didn't like it when monkeys were made to ride dogs. Steve said, "Maybe the monkey likes it. Maybe he likes going fast." 8. Oh! Before I get back to the prop department, I should say that when I arrived at the gate into Warner Brothers, I was greeted by a young, groovy guard, not an irascible old guard of the type the movies have trained me to expect. So, when Kate and I entered the parking garage over near the prop department, an irascible old guard really didn't want to let us in. At last, he asked us for identification, and that's when I discovered MY DRIVER'S LICENSE WAS MISSING! I bet you didn't know you were in for thrills like this. Anyhow, it turned out the groovy young guard forgot to include it when he handed me back everything I had taken out of my pockets for him. And I didn't notice! So I'm not blaming the hipsters of today for falling down on the job! BUT! If that hardboiled old-school guard hadn't been so stereotypically irascible, I might never have been allowed to leave Burbank! I might be sitting in a small room at the Burbank airport right now! So, thank you, hateful old guard. 9. Well, I can't really describe how satisfying it was to wander around the prop department with Kate. I don't know - though I suspect there's a Warholian element - why it is so wonderful to look at, just for example, a wall full of rotary phones arranged by color, or a shelf of hundreds of miniature Statues of Liberty, or boxes and boxes of beauty products from the 40s and 50s, or the long row of toilets, of which (the toilets) I sent a photo to just one person: Ace Atkins. Kate and I stayed in the prop department so long that they were closing up. We didn't know it. We just kept trying to get out and finding nothing but locked doors. We could have been trapped forever! Who was going to help us? Not the irascible guard! He would probably think we were getting what we deserved. Then we found a different kind of door: a door that was not locked. 10. Kate and I walked a few short steps from the Warner Brothers lot to the Smoke House, where we dined with one Adam Muto. Now that I can't eat steak anymore because of wanting to stay alive, I was excited to order the chicken pot pie. You know the one! The one that Pen and I saw once! The one as big around as a manhole cover! But friends, I am here to inform you they have taken it off the menu. The server told me that one time... just one time... they had put it back on the menu for a special occasion. But that time is gone forever. We live in new times now. He was very nice, and couldn't have known he was breaking my heart. 11. Reading Seneca's NATURAL QUESTIONS while taking my blood pressure in my hotel room, I laughed when he observed, "Frivolity when the earth is swallowed up shows a lack of serious-mindedness." He was angry at Ovid for beautifully describing an apocalyptic flood but then adding the image of wolves and sheep and lions swimming around in it. "Come on, Ovid! Get real! As if!" Such seemed to be the contents of Seneca's objections. 12. Quinn took me to a place that featured on its menu something called a "Good Ass Salad." Such language! Is that how you get your kicks? Forcing someone's great-grandmother to say the words "good ass salad"? This great-grandmother I'm imagining can't silently point at the item on the menu with her quaking, palsied finger! Thoughts along these lines led me to confess to Quinn that I have been saying "ass" on the "blog" a lot lately. Quinn said, "Oh, Jack, Bart Simpson could say 'ass' in the 90s." She might not have said "Oh, Jack." 13. It was raining the morning I left for home. Kate had said just a day or two before, "It never rains here." But there it was, falling from the sky, the tears of the gods as I like to call it. At a stoplight on the way to the airport, I saw a driver sticking his hand out the window, eager to discover for himself what this thing they call a raindrop must feel like. His beaming grin indicated that he was pleased with the result!

Famous Cats of Mississippi

I am sure you will recall 2013 as the year that Pendleton Ward made our cat Big Boy (formerly known as Sad Face) famous in Japan. ("Click" here to assess the accuracy of my dubious statement. Big Boy is still doing fine, by the way. Thanks for asking!) Well, great news! We have a new feral kitten. Ace Atkins found her under City Grocery Bar. And thanks to my award-ineligible interview series ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, part 5 of which is AVAILABLE NOW, you can see a photo of that kitten, who has been named Teeny Houdini for reasons that I plan to put into one of a series of unpublished novels. If you "click" here you can get a free peek at Teeny Houdini, but the interview is behind a paywall, so you will have to pay good money (well spent!) to find out more about how Ace rescued her from under City Grocery. (I don't know if that's true. I think you've already learned everything. But! If you don't subscribe, how will you know about all of Ace's adventures on the set of the Pauly Shore movie JURY DUTY?) Ace took the kitten in to get her shots and so on, and when Dr. Theresa picked her up, the team behind the counter told her, as soon as they stopped quaking in mortal fear, "This cat will never be a sweet cat you can play with. She's a wild animal! This is a wild animal you're dealing with. You're in for a terrible surprise. I don't think you understand. This is a wild animal. Wild animal!" And then the guy carried her out to the car in the carrier, holding it way in front of himself like it had that thing in it that ate the cow (?) at the beginning of JURASSIC PARK. Well, Teeny Houdini is already as sweet as pie, so go to hell.

Monocles, Bullets, and Cigarettes

Like the world at large, I have completely forgotten about the book I wrote about cigarette lighters. But yesterday I was watching Erich von Stroheim's version of THE MERRY WIDOW, that's right, a silent operetta, what could be more fun? Lots of things. And let's say Erich von Stroheim doesn't exactly have the Lubitsch touch, as I wittily texted to Megan Abbott, and oh how she must have chuckled at my waggish observation. For example, it takes Stroheim an hour and a half to get to the point where Lubitsch's movie STARTS! To be fair, the stories are pretty different. But why should I be fair? Who is reading this? You? You don't exist! Anyhow, I guess you, if you did exist, would be wondering what this has to do with my cigarette lighter book. Fine! I'll tell you. In THE MERRY WIDOW, as undertaken by Stroheim, there are a man and woman with cigarettes in their mouths, and they are standing so that the tips of their cigarettes touch. It might be that one is giving a light to the other, a process described in my book, in which I thoroughly explore the obscene slang term for such an action. I tried to search the "blog" to see if I had mentioned it here before, but I don't see how I could have, except by such euphemistic means as I have employed above. If you want to read dirty talk like that, you'll just have to buy the book! Anyway, so these two are standing there with the tips of their cigarettes touching and the bad guy, who is across the room, and in a hilarious mood, takes out his little gun and shoots off the ends of both of their cigarettes with a single bullet. Then he shoots the eyes out of a statue, which has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. He is, however, wearing a monocle, and monocles figure heavily in my cigarette lighter book for reasons I would tell you if we weren't both asleep by now. But! The relationship of guns to cigarettes and lighters is another theme of the book, so you can see clearly that when you tabulate all the various themes and subthemes and so on of my book you've never heard of and will have forgotten by the end of this "post," I am obliged to add THE MERRY WIDOW (1925) to my appendix of stuff that really should have gone into my cigarette lighter book but didn't. You know what else has a lot of monocle action? NIGHTWOOD! What pie and ice cream were to Kerouac, monocles are to Djuna Barnes. There's one chapter where a guy fiddles with his monocle in every conceivable way. You should take a drink every time Djuna Barnes uses the word "monocle"! (The surgeon general advises against it.) In a movie, the actor playing Felix, the guy with the monocle, would be like one of the pipe-smokers I have observed in at at least three movies "letting the pipe do most of the acting," except with a monocle instead of a pipe. And in an earlier chapter, Felix's monocle pops out, I believe, the way your monocle is always popping out when you're shocked. You may recall that I also found a person whose monocle pops out emotionally in Fitzgerald's TENDER IS THE NIGHT. You know what else had lots of monocles? That Erich von Stroheim bio we read in the Million Dollar Book Club! (Did you know Anita Loos affectionately called him "Von"?)

That Upon Which I Was Sitting

I was sitting on something for secret reasons that no longer require sitting. Forget about those reasons, for they are defunct. The important thing is that I fished out my COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED WORKS OF LEWIS CARROLL some months ago... it is still over there, in my home office, sitting forlorn atop a box of Daily Racing Forms from 1956 (long story, or maybe no story); I need to reshelve it. But that is not what I came here to tell you! Those months ago, when I fished it out for my secret reasons, I opened ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND with fateful randomness to a passage I had somehow never noticed before, in which we are informed via poem that "the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie." If you do not understand why I am telling you this, I advise you to spend the next several years studying this "blog."

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!

The Waiter's Secret

Well, there was a piece in the online version of today's New York Times where the fancy big shots who work there extolled in hushed, reverent awe the incomparable virtues of Skippy brand peanut butter, and that reminded me of a time when Dr. Theresa (before she was a Dr.) and I used to go to this restaurant in Atlanta, where we really enjoyed the peanut butter pie. One night, the waiter asked us if we knew why it was so good, and we said no, and he leaned in close, over the table, and said, behind his hand, from the side of his mouth, in a funny, conspiratorial voice, which we have imitated for all these years since, a single word: "Skippy." Just think of all the time we have spent, Dr. Theresa and I, saying "Skippy" to each other in a funny voice, never knowing that the waiter who said "Skippy" would one day be validated by the wonderful Gray Lady in all her glory. Anyway, Dr. Theresa is downstairs trying to work as I type these words, and I went down and asked her what the name of the restaurant was, but neither of us could remember. It didn't last too long. It was behind the post office.

Helpful Thoughts

Back before I stopped "blogging," I would use this space, among other things, to collect many quotations that felt creatively helpful to me... a commonplace book, of sorts... once I even printed them all out and handed them to a classroom full of bewildered students, back when I had students. A few examples spring to mind, like Sun Ra's advice (I'll paraphrase) to eat peach pie every day, and one day you'll discover that it tastes like something other than peach pie. Or the Maine antiques dealer who said, "I think I'm becoming more and more attracted to things that aren't worth anything." There were many, many more, now scattered to the winds. Well, I still run across helpful thoughts, but I have no place to put them. Like, there was a New York Times article about a plant that lives for a thousand years, and a scientist was quoted as saying, "From weird things, you discover weird things that help you understand things that you didn’t know you didn’t understand." I jotted that in a manuscript I had started in which the protagonist tells the stories of the knights of the round table to his cats. Yeah, I got about two paragraphs into that one before stopping. And just yesterday, I was reading another celebrity biography, as part of my continuing program of adult education with Megan Abbott. It's a Lee Grant memoir, which came highly recommended by Bill Boyle. Anyway, Martha Graham just told Lee Grant, "Ugly is better than pretty!" Exclamation point original to the text.

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.

Reading In Dreams

I guess I should tell you that McNeil dreamed about Nipsey Russell the other night. In the dream he was looking up Nipsey Russell in the dictionary and when he awoke he could remember the things he was reading in the dictionary. McNeil said he had always heard a person can't read in dreams, and I recalled hearing something like that myself, but as I told McNeil - reassuringly! - I often read in dreams and remember the words on the page when I awake. Yes, I felt I needed to inform you. Say did you know that Nipsey Russell was famously an employee of the Varsity in his youth, Atlanta's home of the chili dog and the hot peach pie? Remember, I'm no longer "blogging." This doesn't count. I was never here.

Chocolate Shell Gently Cracking

I recorded the movie BEST FRIENDS off of TCM. In one scene, Ron Silver pops through a doorway and he's eating an Eskimo Pie. I'm sorry to use the word "eskimo," because it is offensive. But Ron Silver's performance made me crave that brand-name ice cream treat. I can't remember the last time I had one. Ron Silver seems to be enjoying his brand-name ice cream treat so very much. And kudos to the sound department! You can really make out the gentle and enticing crackling of the chocolate shell under Ron Silver's careful teeth. Or did I just imagine that? Either way, that's some tactile filmmaking.

The Krebs

Melissa Ginsburg and Chris Offutt dropped by last night. They gave us a bunch of neat old matchbooks (in case my cigarette lighter book becomes a big hit and I want to write a sequel, Chris claimed ironically). I showed Chris one of Bob Hope's ashtrays from the time I bought a couple of Bob Hope's ashtrays and he wisely suggested that I display some of the old matchbooks in the Bob Hope ashtray. I've been picking through them and so far the best match (ha ha, "match") seems to be this one from a place called "The Krebs" in (according to the narrow top of the matchbook) Skaneateles, NY. Sounds like a town Bob probably slogged through in his old vaudeville days. And as you can see from the founding date proudly displayed, The Krebs would have been around back then. Much nicer than the diner where his vaudeville partner allegedly died from eating tainted coconut cream pie. The Krebs served Lobster Newburg, according to the infinitesimal amount of research I've done on the subject. By the time Bob could have afforded it, I doubt he was passing through Skaneateles anymore, if he ever did. Who am I kidding? Bob went everywhere! You can also see from the matchbook cover that the phone number for the restaurant was "14." That's some phone number! I remember when I was a little kid in Bayou La Batre you could call anybody in town by dialing just four numbers, okay children, I'm going to crawl back into my hole now.

A Bad Piece of Pie

Bob Hope's first vaudeville partner died from eating "a bad piece of coconut cream pie" in a restaurant in West Virginia! Don't worry, I am going to tell you everything I learn from this new Bob Hope biography by Richard Zoglin.

Heliocentric Worlds

Brian sent me a tweet in which someone talks (appreciatively!) about "the moment a dud Jerry Lewis bit passes the three-minute mark." The tweeter praised such moments as transgressive. I understand what he's getting at, and he's right, but the more Jerry I watch, the less I can think of those bits (which seldom last three minutes, though they may seem much longer) as "duds." My attitude toward Jerry Lewis is kaleidoscopic! I didn't even mind the sock puppet bit in THE ERRAND BOY last time I watched it. Of course, sometimes Jerry does milk a dud - Milk Duds! - on purpose. He WANTS you to be uncomfortable during Stanley's terrible stand-up act in THE PATSY, or when Kelp and the Dean sit in fraught silence. I've grown to enjoy how he draws things out. The other day I was actually narrating such a moment from CRACKING UP to Pen and Kent, featuring Jerry's compulsion to stretch a gag past its natural life by narrating his own misfortune. I remember a couple of years ago when I got obsessed with listening to a Sun Ra album called "Heliocentric Worlds" over and over. It starts up with some bells jingling and then a noise like a cord being plugged into an amp or a needle dropping roughly on an LP, but after you've listened to that record about ten times in a row, you know when the bass clarinet is going to squeak or whatever, and when the muted trumpet is going to start echoing, you're familiar with the terrain, and what seemed like a jumble turns out to be a path full of friendly landmarks - that electronic burp, which may have been an accident to begin with, becomes a welcoming beacon. What Sun Ra said about peach pie applies here, and I'll repeat it in case you're not up to "clicking" on "links": "if you keep eating peach pie every day, [sooner or later] it's going to taste like something else." And I can swear I "blogged" about this once, but didn't David Lynch famously drink a chocolate milkshake from the same restaurant every day for the same reason? Hey! This is way off the subject, but while I was looking for a frame of my current favorite scene from CRACKING UP (Jerry is a hideous gangster - man, he loves dressing up as hideous gangsters! His grotesque mug shot was the running gag McNeil and I appreciated the most in our recent viewing of THE BIG MOUTH - who becomes mesmerized by the security camera, so that the bank robbery turns into a song-and-dance number; note that carpet, subject of a McNeil theory) I ran across an interesting Jonathan Rosenbaum essay in which he attributes current American disdain for Lewis to (among other things) classism: "regardless of how many rooms his Bel-Air mansion had, Lewis’s nouveau riche manner, like that of Elvis, kept his persona firmly within the realm of the working-class." (See also.) Please "click" on Mr. Rosenbaum's essay, he's so much smarter than me (though I did beat him, I think, in comparing Jerry to Edgar Allan Poe).

Real Chocolate Pudding

Hey! Remember how much Jack Kerouac loved pie and ice cream in ON THE ROAD? In THE DHARMA BUMS he's gaga for an all-new taste sensation. The Jack Kerouac character is about to go mountain climbing with his friend and the friend says, "I'm bringing real chocolate pudding, not that instant phony stuff but good chocolate pudding that I'll bring to a boil and stir over the fire and then let it cool ice cold in the snow." And Jack Kerouac replies, "Oh boy!" Ha ha! Jack Kerouac.

Big White Pie

First of all let me say maybe I was a little too hard on IF A MAN ANSWERS yesterday. I mean, if I didn't find the image of the big white pie arresting would I have spent so long searching the "internet" for it? Like J. Hoberman said in the New York Times today, "'The Nutty Professor' both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure," and I'm certainly no better than Jerry Lewis in that regard. And how snobbish of me to suggest that the film could not be put into conversation with LA CHINOISE. The palette of the fantasy pie sequence is pretty close to Godard's, and who knows? Godard might get a kick out of that big white pie. It's not hard to imagine an entirely white pie in a Godard movie. That big white pie might have put Godard in mind of his man Tashlin. And anyway, when Godard was making LA CHINOISE he wrote this on a big poster, according to the book I have about Godard: "It is the rich who create languages and who endlessly renovate them from top to bottom... A school that selects, destroys culture." Know what I mean? Because I don't. I sort of do. I think I do. Besides, the big white pie makes me think of a line I like from a recent New York Times obituary. It's for the original "Miss Subways," upon whom "Miss Turnstiles" was based in my sister's favorite movie ON THE TOWN, and it tells how a later Miss Subways "was said to have received 258 marriage proposals, at least 182 orchids and, from a lovelorn bakery worker, a vast lemon meringue pie." I've watched a couple of Will Rogers movies in my Lonely Film Festival. "He's like Brando!" I yelled, but I yell that about everybody. This one Will Rogers movie, STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND, has a musical saw in it, which reminded me of when Megan and Jimmy got so excited about Marlene Dietrich's ability to play the musical saw. In the movie, Anne Shirley goes to see her betrothed in jail (he's set to be hung for murder!) and he shows her how he's been spending his time learning to play the musical saw. He plays "There's No Place Like Home" and all the other prisoners hum it with intricate harmonies and lugubrious pathos. (The book that came with my John Ford box set [Ford directed STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND] quotes Darryl Zanuck poking fun at "the kind of thing John Ford does when he is stuck and has run out of plot. In these cases, somebody always sings and you cut to an extreme long shot with slanting shadows.") This movie also has a wax museum in it, which is, as we know, something Megan Abbott generally enjoys. Anne Shirley's character's name in STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND is Fleety Belle, which is the kind of thing Jimmy and Megan might like too.

Comparatively Subtle Winkie

Wow, I have been watching a lot of movies over the past two days. More than normal, even. Gorging on them, really. I don't think it's safe. I feel funny. But I'm on hiatus, so what else am I going to do? It's been a lot like a McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival, but McNeil isn't around so it's a Lonely Film Festival. Oh, sure, Dr. Theresa sits in once in a while but she does things during the day like a real human. Coincidences pop up, the kind you get during an actual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. Why, just today I accidentally watched two movies in a row with Cesar Romero in them - 25 years apart in the making! Imagine if you will the awakening of my giddy childlike wonder at such an occurrence. The first Cesar Romero movie was WEE WILLIE WINKIE, starring Shirley Temple. It was in this John Ford box set I've had for years, filled with oddities by that director I've only begun to sample. The next Cesar Romero movie was IF A MAN ANSWERS, which McNeil gave me years ago, but not as long ago as he gave me that John D. MacDonald novel I finally read. IF A MAN ANSWERS was still in the plastic. In more ways than one! It made the blunt, sentimental colonialist propaganda of WEE WILLIE WINKIE look downright politically subtle by comparison. Ford at least gave his murderous revolutionary bad guy (Cesar Romero) some warmth and complexity. Meanwhile, the greatest fantasy that Sandra Dee's brain can possibly generate is that of tying on an apron and serving an enormous white pie to Bobby Darin.

(I regret that I found only this single tiny, low-grade representation of the giant fantasy pie on the "internet." But you can tell that it's a really big pie, right? Also some birds fly out of it but one of them just seems to lie there and flap sadly and I don't think that was on purpose.) After all that I guess I thought I should have some Godard, kind of like slugging back a shot of wheatgrass. But LA CHINOISE made me think of McNeil too. You know how McNeil loves carpet and furniture in the movies! And LA CHINOISE is a movie about furniture. That is a lie I just typed with my own fingers but I guess I'll stick by it, I mean, look at that lamp. At least you could put WEE WILLIE WINKIE and LA CHINOISE in conversation with each other, I mean, they were made on the same planet, hey, I told you I was going crazy, okay, time to take an aspirin and watch more movies.

Why Pie Cry

Now I will tell you about the rest of that Red Skelton sad clown movie. Are you excited? Like, remember when I told you that he had a job attacking people at an amusement park with a cattle prod? Okay, well, one guy got kind of mad about it. So Red Skelton's boss comes out and says to Red Skelton, "Hey, we run a family place here!" He's mad at Red Skelton! Even though HE'S the one who hired Red Skelton to attack the customers with a cattle prod. It's a strange business, being a threatening clown. So Red Skelton gets fired. For doing his job too well, I guess. Next he gets a job being a "receiver." That sounds bad! He says, "Don't let my kid see this." So he sits there while a guy gives him an exploding cigar and smashes butter on him and hits him in the face with a couple of pies. And his kid sees it! And silently weeps! Ha ha ha! Doesn't this kid - whose name is Dink (!) - know what a clown does for a living? He's been living with a clown his whole life. The weirdest part of that scene is that Red Skelton gives no reaction whatsoever as the guy assaults him with pies and so on. I mean, he doesn't move a muscle. Put some effort into it, clown! Half the fun of the old pie in the face is the hilarious reaction of the "receiver." I mean, even if you're going to be deadpan about it, you have to be deadpan in a funny way. Like, I don't know, stoically and with economical motions wipe the pie out of your eyes, one at a time. Oh well. And the kid is just crying while his dad gets hit in the face with pies. I forgot to mention he's not just a sad clown he's a drunk clown and a clown with a gambling problem. Charles Bronson (!!) wins all of Red Skelton's money in an all-night dice game and Red Skelton picks his sleeping kid's pocket for a gold watch that means the world to him. I also forgot to say he sent his kid to sleep in the backseat of a random stranger's car! (Remember, now, at the end of the movie, Jane Greer says, "You did a great job raising him, Dodo.") I'll tell you who I liked: Little Julie, a shady operator who does his business out of a diner booth. "Step into my office," he says with self-loathing and also regular loathing. He organizes what Megan Abbott would probably - probably? does! I've heard her! - call "smokers" - smokers with racy entertainment! This guy has a touch of authentic sleaze. The actor's name is Lou Lubin. Let's hear it for Lou Lubin (pictured)! He gets Red Skelton a shameful gig where he has to tell the 1953 version of dirty jokes while ladies take off their clothes. At the end Red Skelton dies from clowning too much. For real! And I skipped over some surprisingly brutal moments like when Red Skelton smashes a pane of glass with his fist and then starts hitting the wall and screaming. That is one sad clown. Okay, bye!

Nothing But Pie or Cake

Aw, you guys are going to be super pumped that Faulkner reminded me of Beckett again! In ABSALOM, ABSALOM! the characters (and author) begin to bleed together: "Yes. Maybe we are both Father. Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished... Yes, we are both Father. Or maybe Father and I are both Shreve, maybe it took Father and me both to make Shreve or Shreve and me both to make Father or maybe Thomas Sutpen to make all of us." That made me think of the way title characters from other Beckett novels ("All these Murphys, Molloys and Malones") impose themselves on the narrator of THE UNNAMABLE some decades later. [Though it strikes us belatedly that Faulkner and Beckett share a wellspring in Joyce, which may, in this particular case, be the connection. - ed.] Back to Faulkner, and a character who "believed that the ingredients of morality were like the ingredients of pie or cake and once you had measured them and balanced them and mixed them and put them into the oven it was all finished and nothing but pie or cake could come out." Ha ha, that doesn't remind me of Beckett, I just like it. If you are on twitter you probably follow somebody like that.

RBG

Tonight's episode has aired (except in the Pacific Time Zone, but I don't think there are any spoilers here), so I thought someone might stumble across this "blog" while struggling to answer the vexing question, "Who is this jerk and how did he get to do a voice on ADVENTURE TIME?" I am that jerk and I will tell you. I started writing for the show way back in October of 2012. My old friend Kent Osborne, who is the "Head of Story" for ADVENTURE TIME, called out of the blue and asked if I wanted to give it a try. My first instinct was to say no! I didn't know how to write for cartoons. I knew Kent worked for the show, and I had watched and enjoyed a few episodes with my nephews, because it was their favorite show, but I didn't feel qualified. Kent said not to worry, it was just a two-week freelance job. So I said okay. I have hardly ever turned down a quick freelance job! I didn't know that those two weeks were secretly a kind of audition to see how I got along in the writers' room. I got along fine because everyone was nice as pie. And so the assignment turned into steady employment, for which I am grateful. It's the best job ever! I live in Mississippi. Three times a week I meet with my friends in Burbank by video. We just make up stories and talk about feelings and that's about it. Well, there is also a good deal of typing. One of the coolest parts of the experience for me was when my dad helped out with the "We Fixed a Truck" episode. For some reason I recall with special fondness and clarity a chat that Adam Muto and I had about Klarion the Witchboy and his mystical cat Teekl, two characters from Jack Kirby's comic book THE DEMON, not that it yielded anything for use in the show, nor was it meant to. But as often as not the germs of episodes are contained in such random digressions. Very occasionally I will travel to Los Angeles and go to the office in person. (And once Pen and Kent came to Mississippi.) I flew out to read my "Root Beer Guy" lines for tonight's episode. ADVENTURE TIME is recorded mostly like an old-time radio play, with a bunch of people standing in a booth together, stationed at separate microphones. But how did I get the part? Kent suggested I do it, that's all. I didn't think it would really happen. The name "Stephen King" was bounced around as another possibility, but he was never approached. I think Adam asked me during a conference, "Do you think you could do it?" And I answered with joking bravado, "I AM ROOT BEER GUY," paraphrasing Flaubert on the subject of Madame Bovary, ha ha ha, oh boy, what fun we're having now. I should emphasize that the idea for the Root Beer Guy story was all Pen's - that's Pendleton Ward, creator of the show - and brilliantly fleshed-out and brought to life by storyboard artist/writer Graham Falk. Incidentally, I met Owen King, one of the writer sons of Stephen King, at City Grocery Bar during the annual book conference we have in my town. You should come! Kent came to the book conference once! I almost said to Owen King, "I beat out your dad for a role!" But instead I didn't say anything. ("Click" here for another example of something I didn't say.) In the first place it wasn't strictly true, and in the second place it is usually best to keep your fat mouth shut. The only reason I even thought of it was because of how much Mr. King's voice resembled his father's. Now, how did Anne Heche end up playing "Cherry Cream Soda"? After we finished the outline I blurted (fairly inaccurately) that Cherry Cream Soda's part was something like Anne Heche's in DONNIE BRASCO. And Kent cried out, "Let's get Anne Heche!" Because he's kind of obsessed with her, I guess you'd say, though it is a harsh word with which to describe Kent's gentle fascination. And then they got her! And she did it. She was amazing! The genuine emotion with which she imbued her lines gave me no choice but to actually try. So I tried. And now you know as much as I do about life. How sad.