Animal Friends

I know what you're asking. Did we spend part of our 30th anniversary celebration as you might expect, revisiting the grim site of the miserable death of Meriwether Lewis, which we accidentally discovered on a prior anniversary trip? Yes and no. We paid tribute to it as we drove by, sending good wishes aloud to Meriwether Lewis's ghost, but we were too busy thinking about how we hadn't eaten all day, and we were eager to reach our destination. Sorry, Meriwether Lewis! Now I'll fill you in on the rest of our trip in a massive, unreadable, unbroken chunk of text, such as has been a "blog" tradition for more than 19 years, God help us all. We saw lots of cool animals, including a donkey and a goat who seemed to be good friends. At one point we were stopped at a traffic light behind a huge tanker truck, and printed on the rear of the tank were the words - and only these words - THE WORLD'S BEST COFFEE. "Is that full of coffee?" I blurted idiotically, causing Dr. Theresa to laugh for the next 10 miles. In the instant, I meant it! You may recall that my brain was famously stunned into a stupor at a not entirely distant point in the past. You'd think it would have fixed itself by now! The truck was full of fuel, of course, which it was carrying, no doubt, to a convenience store/gas station purporting to serve THE WORLD'S BEST COFFEE. There is no conceivable reason to fill a tanker truck with coffee. One night we had a great dinner and walked back to the hotel, where, on the previous evening, we had sat in the lobby bar and gazed across at an elegant recess filled with a different kind of furniture, and upon that furniture there sat a man who Dr. Theresa swore was the late Truman Capote. Anyway, we vowed at the time that we would go sit in that elegant recess with the nice furniture on a future evening. Well! I thought it was time. Dr. Theresa wasn't so sure. I kept saying how much fun it would be to sit in the elegant recess and "people watch." Finally, I talked her into it. She sat there grudgingly sipping a ranch water as I tried out a towering wingback chair such as Mr. Burns might use on THE SIMPSONS. Anyway, we were sitting there like that when a woman in leather pants walked by and did a double take. Then she came back and - Dr. Theresa reenacted this gesture often in the aftermath - sort of displayed her palms and circled them in the air as if trying to encompass her wondrous vision (me). "You look regal!" she informed me from across the lobby. So I looked at Dr. Theresa like, "Huh? Huh? I guess 'people watching' was the greatest idea ever!" She laughed and we realized we were feeling pretty great, so we went up to the room and ordered an after-dinner pizza. That's right! We decided we were even because recently the guy who was restocking the greeting cards at Walmart tried to pick up Dr. Theresa. I don't think he was wearing leather pants. In the morning, Dr. Theresa had a few things to take care of, so I went downstairs before her to get some coffee and wait for her to join me for breakfast. As I would be alone for a short time, I brought along my anniversary reading material, Seneca's version of OEDIPUS, translated by Emily Wilson, because I know how to have a good time. A guy got on the elevator with me and said, "You a stoic fan?" I didn't know what the hell he was talking about until I looked down and recollected the Seneca book in my hand. I said, "Sure." He said something about admiring Seneca's letters and I replied, and I think this is an exact quotation, "Yeah, well, the plays are nasty." Thus ended our discussion of stoicism. Sitting there with my coffee, I started thinking about that book I read about ancient Greece not too long ago, from which I learned that the hyper-masculine bros of the "manosphere" are really into the Stoics these days. I wondered, was that guy a "manosphere" guy? Did he think I was part of his special "manosphere"? Well, it's my own fault for carrying around a collection of Seneca tragedies like some kind of secret handshake. As Oedipus says in Emily Wilson's translation, "The guilt of my times is mine." On the way back home, Jon Langford called, and I answered Dr. Theresa's cellphone because she was driving. See, Dr. Theresa is bringing Jon here (to Oxford, Mississippi) for some events soon, including a concert on Saturday the 25th, which you should really attend, though I know you don't exist. But anyway, please "click" on this "link" and get informed! I know you won't. So I kept getting disconnected and finally had to give up because we were tooling down the Natchez Trace, and for the first time in my life, I felt I was in that contrived horror-movie situation... as you know, in a contemporary setting, there must always be a reason for the protagonist's phone not to work. That seemed interesting when I started typing it. As we continued our journey home, the satellite radio with which our rental car came equipped began to play a song I could have sworn was called "Everybody Dance Now," but, as I learned from the accompanying dashboard display, is actually called "Gonna Make You Sweat," which I guess everyone knew but me. Dr. Theresa was very concerned when she believed she heard the narrator of the song declaring that he would make us, the listeners, "sweat until [we] bleed." Sweating until He bled is what the Savior did in the Garden of Gethsemane, as you probably know from Luke 22:44. Well, I looked it up when we got home and yes, the guy in that song wants people to sweat until they bleed. Is this a good way to end this "post"?

Perfect

Allow me to quote THE POSSESSED by Witold Gombrowicz, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, one of the books I am reading right now: "He drank a shot of vodka. It did him good. He had another. Then a large glass of lager, a herring sandwich and two more shots of vodka. Perfect." Yes! That does sound perfect. And I don't even care for vodka or lager. I miss sandwiches, though. They have me on this special diet and I haven't had a sandwich in many months. Anyway, I had feelings of envy toward the fictional character who was drinking vodka and lager and eating a sandwich. I put myself in his place through the workings of my innocent childlike imagination, and the whole experience seemed pleasing indeed, though the character is in a state of turmoil as he begins his enviable meal. Look, I would be allowed the herring, and even the vodka, but not the lager or the bread. Hmm, this reminds me of when my mom kept saying she wanted to have a slice of pizza and a beer for her 50th birthday, though she had never had even a sip of beer in her life... she just thought it looked so good on TV! In the end, she did not succumb to that temptation, nor has she to this very day.

The Prominence of Corn Flakes

In my friend Tom Bissell's book - the one in which he visits the graves of all twelve apostles - Eusebius does something "owlishly," according to Tom, and you know what that means: Tom's book goes on my big long list of books with owls in them. I happened to notice in Tom's index that Domino's Pizza gets four separate page citations. Curious! Tom and a friend have just spent an evening at a place called "The Disco Room" in Patras, and yet "The Disco Room" does not appear in the index. So I expect big things, in a religious or historical context, from Domino's Pizza. DOMINUS PIZZA? No, I'm not going to read ahead and spoil it for myself. It's a mystery akin to the prominence of corn flakes in the autobiography of Hal Needham.

Movie Theater Pizza

About a month ago, when DIRTY GRANDPA opened, I mentioned in an ADVENTURE TIME meeting (in which I regularly participate from Oxford, Mississippi, while everyone else is in Burbank), that I wished Kent were in town so we could go see DIRTY GRANDPA together. Kent reminded me that he was coming here for a visit soon. I said I wasn't sure whether DIRTY GRANDPA would be playing, and Kent predicted it would still be "the number one movie in the country, like TITANIC." We shared a chuckle, you may be sure! So Kent finally got to town, and DIRTY GRANDPA was still playing, and we went to see it, accompanied by Bill Boyle, a De Niro expert and completist. Kent and I arrived at the movie theater an hour early, ha ha! But it is not a joke, despite my ha ha. Kent ordered himself a little cheese pizza from the movie theater's kitchen. I prayed to God he would consume it before Bill arrived. Bill, as you know, makes the best pizza in town, and such a movie theater cheese pizza would be an affront to him!

So Bill arrived and we all stepped into the movie theater to watch DIRTY GRANDPA, on practically the one-year anniversary of when Kent and I went to see 50 SHADES OF GREY in Silver Lake. Bill and Kent and I had the whole place to ourselves for DIRTY GRANDPA! But just before the movie started (or was it just after?) an earnest young couple came in to test the boundaries of their tender new love by going to see DIRTY GRANDPA. The credit sequence was striking, as you may see above. "It's like a Godard movie!" I kept screaming into the emptiness. I was also proud to notice that Dirty Grandpa wore a hat just like a hat I wore when I was twenty. Here you can see it on the movie poster Kent photographed right outside the theater. I think a bird has pooped on the Plexiglas, just under the "n" in "Grandpa."

Or that may be the designer's flourish, emphasizing the dirtiness of the Dirty Grandpa. After the movie, Bill and Kent and I adjourned to the City Grocery Bar to discuss many aspects of DIRTY GRANDPA.

Worlds Collide

Look! My brother-in-law just sent me this recent photo of our old neighborhood pizza parlor from way back when we lived in Atlanta. (I mean, he still lives there but you know what I mean.) The new mural on the window is a representation of my current job. As I recall, they had a huge painting of the Marvel character Warlock inside. That's how you know it's an authentic pizza joint. It's no secret that pizza makers traditionally love the philosophical alien superhero Warlock. My memory may be playing tricks on me but this is exactly what the painting looked like, I think:

The Ten Greatest Moments of 2015

10. This cat staring at this statue head. 9. The pitcher that didn't get fixed. 8. I forced a guy to make his first chicken Alfredo pizza. 7. Lawrence Welk's sexy daughter-in-law. 6. Burt Reynolds tattoo. 5. Mice sleeping under the snow. 4. Elaine Stritch in a western. 3. The dog that could hop on its hind legs with rhythmic precision. 2. Just now, while typing up this list, I dropped an olive pit on the floor and had to crawl around on my hands and knees to find it. 1. And now I just dropped a piece of cantaloupe and caught it between my knees before it hit the floor!

Heartbroken Mope

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

He's Got to Learn

Hey I went back to Funky's and ordered a pizza to go again. I chose the chicken Alfredo pizza. The bartender went back into the kitchen and told the skinny guy who was standing there my order and then, as I could see, he had a lot of questions and she was pointing at the menu where the ingredients for the chicken Alfredo pizza were listed and he was scratching his head and I was like, "uh-oh." So I was sitting there at the bar reading EVE'S HOLLYWOOD and it really made me think of Elizabeth Kaiser. And then I thought about Padgett Powell for two reasons simultaneously: he and Elizabeth lived together mysteriously yet platonically in France at some point; the last time Padgett Powell was in town I hear he ate at Funky's. Ha ha! Why is that funny? Mainly because they call it Funky's, I guess. And if you don't know who Padgett Powell is, he is one of our great living authors of experimental literature (I guess you'd call it) and he ate pizza at Funky's! Where Katy Perry drinks with collegiate rowdies. I asked Elizabeth whether I could mention that she lived mysteriously but platonically with Padgett Powell and she said yes and she also said "I remember he had glued a picture of a grizzly bear to the refrigerator." But that's Elizabeth for you! Like the time she landed in Montana (?) and just wandered into a random bar and happened to make friends with James Crumley. While I was thinking about all these things, I noticed that the skinny lad in the kitchen was on the phone. The music was loud - an "ironic" "indie rock" cover (I guess) of "The Roof Is On Fire" - but I could tell that he was asking somebody how to make a chicken Alfredo pizza. I asked the bartender whether that's what the kid was doing and she said, "Yes. He's new." I said, "That's okay, I can order something else. I'm not married to Alfredo." And she said, "He's got to learn." I thought that was a good answer! The end of the story is the kid made us a perfectly acceptable pizza.

Melted Fezzes

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

Alone and Funky

Speaking of Funk! I was supposed to bring over some food to Lee Durkee's because we were gonna watch BARRY LYNDON. (Last time I watched BARRY LYNDON it was with Megan Abbott and Kent Osborne. What a combo!) Some place in town - which shall remain nameless - said, "We're not doing takeout right now." So I called Lee and told him so and he said, "Three people have told me that Funky's has the best pizza in town." Okay! FIRST! Understand that Oxford, Mississippi, is not the pizza capital of the world. The only person in town who makes good pizza is Bill Boyle. SECOND! "Funky's" is a "college bar." I've never been there before. I don't want to go to no "college bar." It's not where a self-respecting grown man such as myself would go! It's where Katy Perry went when she was in town. Look: So I was walking up the square to order some pizza from Funky's when I ran into Kaitlyn and her good friend the poet Caroline Randall Williams, and I said I was going to Funky's and Caroline Randall Williams said, "Order the Taylor Swift. While you're waiting!" And who am I to question the wisdom of youth? And so I did. I was the only customer. I guess it was early. I sat entirely alone at the long wooden bar. The "Taylor Swift" tasted like cotton candy and smelled like rubbing alcohol. Two boys in the kitchen were beating a big glob of dough into submission with their fists. Everybody was nice. Lee and I found the pizza acceptable, more than acceptable. Reader, we ate it.

Your Life Will Change

You HAVE to come to the Powerhouse Theatre in Oxford tomorrow (tonight? THURSDAY!) to have a life-changing experience. Once again, that's TOMORROW NIGHT (Thursday the 19th) at the Powerhouse Theatre. Did you hear me? I GUARANTEE it will change your life! I know firsthand. The people performing there LITERALLY changed my life, as you can see in this old "link" ("click" it, you lazy fool! It's much better than this). Dr. Theresa and I had dinner tonight with Bill Taft and Caroline Young and Will Fratesi (drummer for Cat Power; you super cool dummies have heard of that!). Tomorrow they'll be performing at the Powerhouse, as I said. You may recall Bill from the day we had a tornado and he blew all my students' minds anyway, more than a tornado. COME LET HIM BLOW YOUR MIND MORE THAN A TORNADO. Tonight we found out that Bill's daughter is at Yale and writing for the school paper there! WHAT! I thought she was a baby! (See also.) Tonight Caroline and I recalled when we were eating Chinese food in Washington, D.C., the night Bill's daughter was born, and taking bets on what her name would be. I said "Lily" and Caroline said "Veronica." I was closer. "You had more letters," Caroline admitted tonight. Caroline (as you will see if you "click" on that interview, you goober) has had perhaps the greatest influence of any human on my life... she introduced me to Dr. Theresa for example! Bill and Caroline were in our wedding. Patti Smith and Bill once played together! WHAT, are you better than Patti Smith? I kind of thought not! COME ON OUT. Will and I were talking about when he used to deliver pizza to Dr. Theresa and me. Those were good times! I think he was even playing with Cat Power then. Musicians have to hold down many jobs! Being a musician is hard! Will would come over bearing a pizza we had ordered and then we'd all sit down and watch THE SIMPSONS together. Here's the point: COME TO THE POWERHOUSE THURSDAY AT SEVEN. The hard-to-find and truly life-changing documentary BENJAMIN SMOKE will be playing then too! Once I rode illegally in the back of a furniture truck with Benjamin and we peed in a coffee can and he coerced me into stealing a shirt. I DON'T STEAL! Come see the movie and maybe you'll "get it." And there is free food THURSDAY NIGHT - made by the geniuses at Oxford Canteen! - and free vodka. I guess you'd have to be an idiot of the highest order to stay home. If your life doesn't change I WILL GIVE YOUR MONEY BACK even though IT IS ALL ABSOLUTELY FREE.

Beer Tastes Good

Just got back from the final meeting of Good Idea Club. "What is Good Idea Club?" you ask. And as always I answer, "Go to hell!" The inner workings of Good Idea Club are a secret. Just today McKay was asked to describe Good Idea Club on videotape and she said, "TURN THE CAMERA OFF!" She refused to go on. That's a true story! By McKay's reckoning I have probably already said too much! But I was walking down the street to Good Idea Club and the last purple light was in the sky and I ran into Jimmy. "Bats!" Jimmy said, pointing at the sky. And I looked up and saw three little bats with translucent wings chasing each other. "There's lots of bats at Faulkner's grave," Jimmy said mysteriously. He did not elaborate! When I got to Good Idea Club I wrote down what Jimmy had said on a torn-off part of a brown paper bag. We had champagne and pizza at the last-ever meeting of Good Idea Club. McKay used her grandmother's champagne glasses, which she had never used before. It was my favorite kind of champagne glass, the coupe. On many a New Year's Eve Dr. Theresa and I have had champagne out of a martini glass because it was the closest thing we had on hand to a coupe. But these were the real thing, and when we ran out of champagne we drank beer. Beer tastes good out of somebody's grandmother's champagne coupe. And that is all you will ever know about Good Idea Club and goodbye forever from Good Idea Club.

Dax Shepard: Took a Slice

Speaking of comedians you never heard of for the third time today, did you guys see the Oscars when they handed out pizza to the stars? There was an oddly formal newspaper list of who ate pizza and who didn't, formatted like so: "Dax Shepard: Took a slice" - and it made me think somehow of the old Red Buttons routine "Betsy Ross... never got a dinner," a fact which I lamely tweeted, and two very young persons on twitter astonished me by knowing what I was talking about! It was a first. Did it give me hope for the future? Of course not. Maybe it even depressed me! For some reason! I am pretty sure they are young because one of them keeps tweeting about her dad listening to Taylor Swift (I oversimplify the variety and majesty of her tweets!). This has nothing to do with that, but I just saw that the Twain biographer Justin Kaplan died. Please "click" on this old "post" in which I quote him on a crazy New Year's Eve party attended by Mark Twain. Which reminds me. Megan Abbott reminded me the other day that Billy Wilder once met Freud and tried to interview him, which reminded me that Freud once went to see Mark Twain give a reading, which means that there are two degrees of separation (or is it three? don't tell me; I don't care) between Marilyn Monroe and Mark Twain, and three between Marilyn and U.S. Grant, and four between Marilyn Monroe and Abraham Lincoln, and that is all of the garbage that came out of my brain today, goodbye.

True Lettuce Story

Want to hear about my most recent trip to Los Angeles? No? Great! Let's get right to it. Pen took me to lunch at Musso & Frank's, the oldest dining spot in Hollywood, I guess. He said he used to go there and work on the very beginnings of ADVENTURE TIME. We both ordered the "romaine salad" to start with and received a head of lettuce that someone had chopped in two to split between us. Nothing on it or anything. A saucer of dressing on the side. And a pepper grinder on the table. And that's all you need, man, although it looked kind of funny just lying there by itself on the plate. I know what a classic wedge is, but this was stark. Starkly delicious! Then we went to a writer's meeting and Tom Herpich, one of the great storyboard artists and writers on ADVENTURE TIME, doodled a picture of my head and gave it to me. I looked at it and thought, "Wow, I'm fat!" Hey if you are a skinny, scrawny person like I used to be for the first half of my life, it will be a constant astonishment to yourself when you get fat. Every time you suddenly remember you are fat, you will be surprised! At the meeting, Kent and I had a big argument about the original meaning of the phrase "A rolling stone gathers no moss." I just couldn't believe some wise man in ancient times was going around telling people, "You should get some moss growing on you! It's fantastic!" But Kent's argument was forceful and compelling, filled with verbal footnotes. He cited Philip K. Dick, for example. And later it dawned on me that the Bob Dylan song "Like a Rolling Stone" is on Kent's side, too. So I admitted I was wrong. The writers ordered pizza. Somebody wanted a pizza with just basil and nothing else. Somebody wanted a pizza with just garlic and nothing else. Inside, I was like, What other kinds of pizzas will they order with a single herb or spice on it and nothing else? Somvilay seemed to think it was funny, too. He tried to get Pen to order a pizza with just mint on it and nothing else. Kent and I ate at that same restaurant I told you about some months ago, the one where Bob Hope used to eat. This time we were utterly forgotten by the staff for an incredible length of time. Kent drily pretended it was part of the historic ambience. "You know," he said, "Dean Martin used to be ignored in this very booth." He said, "Bob Hope used to put his elbows on this table and find out it hadn't been wiped down." The next morning I had breakfast at a diner with Verdell. That was the best, because I hadn't seen Verdell for five years then there she was, same as ever. We laughed constantly. The diner was called The Tallyrand. It was also called The Tally Rand and the The TallyRand. If you walk around the restaurant you can see the name spelled at least three different ways. Above please enjoy the photo Verdell took of "Sid and Sandy Sausage," who adorn the window. They are a couple of sausage links who are deeply in love. Verdell and I agreed that The Tallyrand reminded us in some ways of Mary Mac's Tea Room in Atlanta, the city where we met. There was a lime tree in the parking lot of The Tally Rand, bursting with healthful limes. Verdell parked right next to it and I was stabbed and scratched by vicious lime branches as I struggled out of the car through the sliver of door I was able to open. After breakfast, Verdell dropped me off at the auction of Bob Hope's personal items. I can't tell you about that because I'm writing an article about it for a magazine. I called Dr. Theresa and told her I was on my way to Beverly Hills and she said "Be careful," and I said "Oh no, what do you think is going to happen to me in Beverly Hills?" and she said "You could be torn apart by a pack of coyotes in front of the closed gates of a mansion," and I said, "All right sweetie." But Dr. Theresa was onto something because Verdell almost killed me twice - once swooping around Mulholland Drive and again when a tour bus nearly backed into us. As I say, we were laughing the whole time, an okay way to get killed.

Jerk Tomato Kid

By the way, Kent tells me that thing about the Olsen twins putting junk on a pizza "went viral" God knows how long ago, and here I am presenting it like it's the latest news, what a sad old fool. But still, what about that part where that kid holds up some tomatoes and says he's going to put "these fried green tomatoes" on the pizza? Those tomatoes are raw! What a jerk.

Today's Musical Jamboree

Hey, I'm listening to that psychedelic compilation NUGGETS and there's a song with this chorus: "I just can't accept an invitation to cry." Pretty formal! In other music news, my grad student Lizzie sent me a video of the Olsen twins putting gross crap on a pizza and singing about it. Only get this! It has been slowed down considerably by some madman so the Olsen twins and their buddies sound like the creepy gnome who chastises John Lithgow in RAISING CAIN. It's horrifying for more reasons than I have gone into, or feel capable of going into. I have to warn you now not to "click" on it.

A Rat Who Owns a Pizza Shop

Now that I am working on ADVENTURE TIME I watch a lot of Cartoon Network and as a consequence I see a lot of Chuck E. Cheese commercials. Most of the time Chuck E. Cheese - a rat who owns a pizza shop - is going nuts and having a wonderful time with all the kids. But there is this one commercial where Chuck E. Cheese locks the place up (I think) and sits in the dark in a certain way - a "folksy" way, maybe? With one knee propped up in front of him? - and talks directly to the viewer, really soberly and quietly, about his "philosophy." Anyway it gives me the creeps. Remember when the guy who owned Men's Warehouse used to rant like a lunatic in his commercials? That was years ago, before you were born. Eventually the marketing department told him to calm down and from then on he whispered huskily until they fired him. Hey I just remembered when I went to freshman orientation in college and made friends with a girl named Lynn who worked at Chuck E. Cheese, and after orientation she took me over there for a free slice of pizza and I thought, "Wow! Life will never get any better than this!"

Pizza Reading

You know I don't usually care for "readings" but tonight all the graduating MFA students read and it was pretty okay. Everybody was really good and then SKIN MAG read probably the second-best poems I have ever heard about TEEN WOLF and SEINFELD. Afterward there was pizza.

Hipster Chimp Shoot

Mr. Ward writes to remind me that the time we saw George Hamilton eating lunch we were in Los Angeles for our "hipster chimp shoot." Don't ask. Okay, I will tell you. I think you could win a lot of awful pizza by watching SAVED BY THE BELL. So Mr. Ward and I made this contest spot featuring various tattooed youngsters having a swinging dance party on a helicopter pad on the roof of a downtown office building with their baby chimp sidekick, just like in real life. I forgot to tell you, our main hipster character LIVED on the roof of the building, apparently. He had a couch and a lamp and a TV set up there and everything. We dollied in a hipster angel who threw glitter and I am pretty sure she fell off the dolly and sued TBS. FUN FACT: It is cold and windy on a helicopter pad, and your teeth will chatter and you will shiver and shake, yet the sun will fry and burn your delicate flesh and poison your very blood! They finally had to wrap me in a blanket. It was very sad. Mr. Ward found the George Hamilton photo but he didn't send it in a format I could download here. While we wait, I will just warn you that it is completely disappointing.

The President's Challenge

This is part three of our continuing coverage of SKIN MAG, the human literary magazine. If you need to catch up, please "click" here for part one or here for part two. Pictured: SKIN MAG scampering away down the sidewalk from the City Grocery Bar (not pictured). That extra set of legs? Why, they belong to none other than poet Beth Ann Fennelly, who accompanied SKIN MAG to the preordained spot for a series of President's Challenge push-ups. Reports say that Fennelly did 20 President's Challenge push-ups in a grand show of moral support. It is assumed that SKIN MAG went on to complete the promised number of 55.