Big Peanut Inside You

Speaking of M&Ms and unpublished novels, one of my unpublished novels contains this paragraph: "I thought up a commercial where a doctor shows an anthropomorphic M&M an x-ray and says, 'You’ve got this big peanut inside you. I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do.' And the M&M bursts into uncontrollable sobs, but he eventually gets a grip. He walks out in the waiting room and there’s his wife sitting with her pocketbook on her lap. She’s an M&M too. She has this beautiful, expectant look on her face. Close-up on the M&M. His eyes are vacant. He’s in total shock. What’s he going to tell her? His life is spinning out of control!" End of quote. Scientists of the future will be able to piece together all my unpublished works from the pathetic shards provided here over the decades. By the way, I am proud to confirm that, yes, March 2026 is the month with the most "blog" "posts" since April of 2016, infamous as the period in which our TV blew up and I stomped my little hoof and swore never to "blog" again. Then we had the pandemic, leading to what I have creatively taken to calling "these times we live in," during which, little by little, I began to "blog" more and more, just to put a little smile on the face of the world. How’s that going?

Marvelous McNeil's Mad Martian Movie Musings

Anyway, McNeil wrote to say he recently watched the brand new UFO documentary that, I assume, has the very nation abuzz. I said oh, should I watch it, and McNeil said no. His favorite part was how the interviewees were placed in settings that, to quote McNeil, "were all different, but they were all very Dino-ish. Cozy. Sophisticated." With the characteristic adjective "Dino-ish," McNeil alludes to 20th-century entertainment icon Dean Martin. McNeil went on to note that one interview subject was not afforded the same luxury as the others. He, to again quote McNeil, "was in a black t-shirt in front of a chalkboard. Walking around a lake, alone, cold, hands in pockets. Sitting at the foot of some national monument - alone. Hahaha."

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!

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bit #7

I can hardly believe it's already time for another Li'l Bogie Bit! But I'll tell you: I just ended a job, and I've already gone over all the other reasons that I no longer say I've quit "blogging," even though most people don't even know what "blogging" is or was, including me. What was I saying? Oh, yes, McNeil sent another of his li'l bogie bits. I'll quote it directly from his virtual mouth! "Bogie had trouble crying on demand for a director, and his second wife, Mary, thought that odd because offscreen he cried at card tricks." One thing I love about our popular (with McNeil) recurring feature "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" is the mystery. The things unsaid! But that's why they are bits and not... boulders. Like... what kind of card trick could make Humphrey Bogart cry? Sure, I can see you crying if someone pulled a coin out of your ear. "How'd that get in there? Waaah!" Or if you're worried about the welfare of a magician's pigeon as it is being stuffed into a lacquered box. But to weep at the sight of the three or clubs or whatever, even if you find it unexpectedly in your own pocket, well, I frankly find it excessive. Pull yourself together, Bogie! In conclusion, I hear some of you griping that I have given you TWO li'l bogie bits, one about Bogart not being able to cry on demand and another about him crying in his spare time. You are wrong. Those are interlocking parts of a single bogie bit. If you don't like it, go somewhere else for your bogie bits! I'm getting sick and tired of your constant complaining.

Fly As Ever

Here's a photo from Kent's party. Look at all these geniuses. There's Adam in the foreground, as well he should be. And the back of Lyle Partridge's head is deep in conversation with Rebecca Sugar. And then I thought that was the back of Aleks Sennwald's head but Kent says that is the back of Tom Herpich's head! In fact, Kent pointed out, Aleks is visible way back there in the background, in another room, or another plane, ethereal and floating in a violet-blue (?) light. I just assumed she was a ghost! Oh, but continuing along toward the poster on the back wall we see Jesse Balmer and why there's none other than Seo Kim herself, thoughtfully musing! Meanwhile Jesse Moynihan leans against the other wall, as fly as ever in his downy sweater. I also see an elbow and a pocket flap and the back of another head. I'm not "blogging" anymore, but come on, you have to let me get the rest of this ADVENTURE TIME stuff off my chest. You don't want me to bottle it up inside, do you? DO YOU?

McNeil Log

In what may be a perverse secret campaign to keep me "blogging" against my wishes, McNeil sends the following email: "If you die before me, and if there is a viewing, I'm going to act like your tie needs straightening. When I pull my hands out I'll snap a ten dollar bill by the ends, hold it up to the light, then fold it up, put it in the pocket of my swimming trunks, put my hand against my side in a defining gesture and exit." I like how he saves the swimming trunks detail, and the casual way in which it is revealed. He adds, "You know who else does that gesture a lot? Major Healey!" And as soon as I read it, I could picture Roger Healey with his hand in just that position. But does that make it true? I have always intended to keep a log of McNeil's activities, even in the absence of the "blog."

Final note: McNeil and I have spent our whole lives spelling it "Healy," but according to imdb it's "Healey." Also: I just remembered something else from THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. Burton talks about something you're compelled to do "will or nill," meaning whether you want to or not. And I wondered whether the roots of the adverb "willy-nilly" lie in that phrase. It makes a kind of sense! But I don't care enough to look it up.

Bakery Heiress

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

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

Colors That Don't Have Names

I've seen a lot of interesting things about lighters lately but I'm not even going to tell you. Remember when I wrote a book about cigarette lighters? And then occasionally I would run across some tidbit I was sad not to have put in the book? Well, as the months advance, my feelings of urgency grow remote. BUT! I was watching PARIS HOLIDAY yesterday and Anita Ekberg cozies up to Bob Hope and asks for a light (as a pretext for picking his pocket). "If we were any closer, we wouldn't need the lighter," cracks Bob. And I know if I had seen it in time, that scene would have gone straight in to my lengthy section on sexual aspects of cigarette-lighting - ha ha, yes, my nonfiction book about cigarette lighters is just as thrilling as it sounds. Now I will change the subject! But I will return to the subject. PARIS HOLIDAY has a scene in which Bob's head appears in the business end of a guillotine. So often his movies contain a fantasy of official (usually public) execution, whether by axe, noose, electric chair, or some other means. I'd bet a million dollars he faces a firing squad in one. What's going on, Bob? I'll say again that somebody should write a paper about it but I'm too tired. Speaking of gruesome scholarly papers, I had an email from Liam. He has moved away, so he caught me up on some of his recent activities: "I was going to medical history lectures where I learned about 'mumia' (which, as you may know, was a cure-all made from mummies) and about people who thought/think that people can't see colors that don't have names." Later in our correspondence he sent me an extraordinarily gruesome article by the person who had lectured on "mumia." AND! It contained more than one point very relevant to my cigarette lighter book, particularly clarifying or confirming some of the more harrowing tales of terror that Ted Ballard told me in his metal barn filled with his collection of 30,000 lighters on a lonesome stretch of road in Oklahoma. I can't "link" to the article because it's just too gruesome. And I can't quote from it because quoting from it without "linking" to it would be rude.

An Unforgettable Adventure

Once in a great while I like to astound you with one of my spine-tingling adventures from real life. So! The other day I went to the dry cleaners with a jacket and also the white shirt upon which a friendly jostle from Pat McHale had caused me to spill a quantity of red wine. As I was about to get out of the car, I reached into the pocket of the jacket and pulled out a coaster from The Temple Bar in NYC, upon the reverse side of which Pen (or Kent? - something in the curve and thickness of that forefinger makes me think Pen) had drawn a happy little "thumbs-up" character. Now, it was raining! You must understand the meteorological aspect of the situation to thoroughly enjoy the ins and outs of my rousing tale. I sat in the car figuring out where to put the coaster so I wouldn't forget it and it wouldn't get rained on, made of paper as it was. I was so preoccupied with the matter that - "as in uffish thought [I] stood" (Lewis Carroll) - I locked my keys in the car! Not having a cellphone, I had to use the dry cleaners' phone to leave a message for Dr. Theresa. A message I prayed she would receive! After transacting the business for which I had embarked upon this ill-omened journey I stood in front of the dry cleaners, a conveniently extended portion of the roof sparing me from the weather. Every time someone pulled into the parking lot I made eye contact. Who knew what vehicular form my salvation might take? Many unspoken - indeed, telepathic! - communications, conveying human feeling in all its glorious and abysmal range, blossomed in these numerous though brief encounters. At last the dapper manager of the dry cleaners himself stepped forth and offered me a ride somewhere far away from the dry cleaners. Perhaps I was too scruffy and emotionally confrontational to be standing outside a respectable dry cleaning establishment! But I think he was just being nice. My faith in Dr. Theresa and her network of generous acquaintances being what it was, I declined his offer. And at last, here came Blair Hobbs, graciously transporting Dr. Theresa, who had brought her own set of car keys. "I'll drive," said Dr. Theresa. We stopped to get some cat food since we were near the place where we get cat food.

Tree Fire Man

Just got back from mailing a copy of my cigarette lighter book to Roy Blount Jr., because it's dedicated to him (and co-dedicated to Ted Ballard, the man who showed me his collection of 30,000 lighters). While I was writing the book I tried to think of what Roy would do. I couldn't do it myself, but at least I tried to think of it. As I drove home from mailing the book I was regretting all the times I wrote that someone "noted" or "observed" something... when you have a lot of secondary sources, as I did, somebody is always "noting" or "observing" something in your stupid book. And that made me think of Stephen J. Pyne, a "historian of fire" I quote in the book (why did I put quotation marks around "historian of fire"? Well, it's what I call him in the book. Isn't it? [It isn't. - ed.] Are you supposed to put quotation marks around your own quotations? Yes, that seems certain enough. Who am I talking to?). I think I was so tired of "notes" and "observes" I had him "sniff" something... No, I made him "pout": "'The ancient bonds of fire tending and codes of fire-related behavior disappeared into pants pockets,' pouts fire historian Stephen J. Pyne." And that made me ashamed. And then I was sorry that I didn't make a pun based on the fact that he's named after a tree and he writes about fire. Roy would have found something funny to do with that. But it was too late. I had already mailed the book. And written the book.

Santa's Face

I'm cooking a goose for Christmas. Believe it or not we don't really have any goose-cooking supplies around here. So I went out today. First I stopped by The End of All Music to see Bill Boyle, whom you can usually find behind the counter on a Sunday. I saw that the new arrivals bin was stocked with interesting things and Bill said that many of them were the abandoned records of a mutual friend (should I reveal his name? It's probably nobody's beeswax!) who's moving out of town. Speaking of none of your beeswax, I had an email from my old pal Abby Greenbaum, full of juicy music biz gossip about big-name country stars. But I can't tell you any of it! I can only give you some of the last part of the email: "The next day I hung out at Santa's Pub and, in honor of Christmas, did tarot readings for my roadie friends. Have you ever been to Santa's Pub? It is a triple wide trailer in South Nashville that is also a bar. Beers cost $2, and Santa's face is painted on the outside." But back to the goose! I was grousing to Bill that I really shouldn't buy any LPs because I had to spend my money on goose supplies, and Bill insisted on buying my stack of records for me. (Pictured above, one of them.) How often do you walk into a place and the guy working there buys your stuff for you? Talk about Christmas cheer! Speaking of which, I couldn't find any cooking twine at the grocery store so this guy who works there walked back behind the mysterious doors of the meat department and came back with a length of cooking twine for me. "Just stick that in your pocket," he said. Dang! I forgot to tell you that after I saw Bill I stopped for a bite to eat at Big Bad Breakfast, where, to my alarm, the Food Network had set up and was shooting something. I sat at the counter, not too far from an intensely glowing young couple they were interviewing. ("Random customers, I don't think they're from here," my server told me.) The Food Network had forced these clean-cut sweethearts to order a Pylon apiece. Now, these trim and fresh-faced matinee idols looked as if they'd barely be able to finish half a Pylon between them. Have I told you about the Pylon? It's named for the Faulkner novel, natch. It's a waffle with lots of stuff on top. Slaw and chopped-up hot dogs and chili and oyster crackers and hot peppers and I can't remember what all. Mustard, for instance. The Pylon cures your hangover. Now, this rosy-cheeked ingenue and her all-American beau have never had a hangover in their tender lives, I avow. But they cautiously approached their Pylons in the spirit of good sportsmanship. The funny part was that the interviewer would ask them things like, "Why do you think this place is named 'Big Bad Breakfast'?" "I don't know," was their reasonable answer. (It is named for Larry Brown's book BIG BAD LOVE, but how are they supposed to know that?) "What do you think is the origin of the Pylon?" asked the interviewer. "I don't know," the young woman said.

The Victorian Match Industry

I was so antsy about hosting the Square Books Q&A with Patton Oswalt that I left the house three hours early! I paced around the square. I went to Square Books and saw a new hardcover called THE MATCH GIRL AND THE HEIRESS or maybe it was THE HEIRESS AND THE MATCH GIRL and I thought, "Oh no, am I going to buy this for 'research'?" I looked through it and there was a lot about "the match industry" in the nineteenth century and the hellish (I assume) condition of Victorian match factories (I didn't let myself read about that) and the plight of the little match girls on the street, oh no! But my book is about cigarette lighters (though - spoiler alert! - matches make an appearance). Anyway, I decided to pretend I never saw that book, let's never speak of it again. (I feel like I've mentioned this before, but I remember when I was in eighth grade with McNeil and he read a report he had written about matches in front of the class! A report about matches! I thought that was hilarious for some reason. I should see if he still has it, maybe I could put it in my bibliography.) But back to the fascinating story of how I killed time. I looked through a biography of Marilyn Monroe. I found out she had some therapy sessions with Anna Freud, which places her at two degrees of separation from Mark Twain... AGAIN. I was like, "When I get home I need to tweet Megan Abbott about this!" The Freud part I mean. But guess what? She already knew. She knows all. You can't stump Megan on Freud stuff. Or much of anything else. Then Kaitlyn of Square Books showed me a good trick for making my pocket square look nice. Talk about a full-service bookstore! And yes, I wore a jaunty polka-dotted pocket square of the finest silk for Patton Oswalt! Soon enough it was "Megan Abbott time," speaking of Megan Abbott, so I went up to City Grocery Bar and had a slug of rye to soothe the old nerves. Just enough time before meeting Patton Oswalt. At one point, I put my wallet on the bar, which made me remember TWO THINGS SIMULTANEOUSLY. 1) Once I put my wallet on a bar in New York City and when I looked down it had vanished! Famed mischief-maker Amanda Stern handed it to me and said, "You don't do that in New York." She had taught me a lesson! 2) On one of our first visits to Oxford - maybe the very first; it may have been 2003, I don't know - I was up on the balcony of City Grocery Bar having a good time. But when we got back to the hotel, my wallet was gone. I ranted to Dr. Theresa, "We're getting out of here. THIS IS A CITY OF THIEVES!" Ha ha, I remember saying that. I was sure my pocket had been picked by an expert. When I got back to the bar, my wallet was just lying there on the balcony where I had dropped it, its contents untouched. What a rube. I met Patton Oswalt and he was very nice. I knew I would bring up Jerry Lewis - I can't help myself! - so I tried to get all of that out of the way "backstage" (in the back of Off Square Books, before the Q&A). I don't think Mr. Oswalt entirely shares my deep feelings about Jerry Lewis! He compared Jerry to Bono of U2 in a way that was unflattering to both gentlemen! Anyway, I got the Jerry out of my system. There are a couple of good stories about Jerry Lewis in Mr. Oswalt's highly engaging new book SILVER SCREEN FIEND. Then we talked about THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, among other things, and then, just when we were about to go out to face the packed bookstore and start the "show," Patton said, "Jack!" And I said, "What!" And in reply he played the rousing theme from THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE on his phone. Maybe it was to "pump me up" so I wouldn't be nervous! Whatever the intent, it was a fine gesture.

The Only Explanation Was Offered By Our Dentist

Yesterday I picked up some good research items from that used book stall I like so much. It's in that strip mall across from Big Bad Breakfast, way in the back of the antique store. Check it out! One thing I found might be the most interesting self-published book I've come across since THE SCRAPBOOK OF A DETECTIVE. This one is by a livestock inspector named Dr. Harold Wallman, and it's a lavishly produced overview of his many collections of things. It's called 640 OF MY COLLECTIONS. They're put into alphabetical order and numbered. For example, collection #5 is "Alligators." The paragraph about his alligator collection begins, "The most intriguing alligator is controlled by two buttons." No set-up or anything, he just gets right to it. I don't think I'm getting across how unusual this book is. I'll keep trying. Collection #141 is "Cinema Photographs." He found most of these "in a Chicago alley. There were way more than I could take in a car, but I kept some... I had some fun with them by putting captions on them as to what I thought each character was saying. In one for 'Bed Time for Bonzo,' Ronald Reagen [sic] is standing there and he says, 'Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle.' The lady holding the chimp says, 'You mean father, Ha Ha Ha.'" Dr. Wallman also has a collection of newspaper articles and cartoons containing the name Arnold. The description is somewhat muddled, but they seem to be a tribute to his friend Arnold Cohn, and he put together a scrapbook that is partly (I think) about the real Arnold Cohn and partly about other people who happen to be named Arnold that he pretends are Arnold Cohn (?), including, writes Dr. Wallman, and note the quotation marks, "a picture of 'him' on a motorcycle, as a wrestler, and with a great body. It ends with his car accidents, death, services and auction. Many entries are completely anachronistic." Collection #155 is "Coffins." The descriptive paragraph begins, "One of my skeletons came in a rosewood coffin." So right away you know that he has a collection of skeletons, and indeed there it is, collection #507: "Skeletons - Human." Here we learn that his RV caught fire in 1986, and the only skeleton he owned at the time was destroyed: "I soon tried to replace it at dealers in Texas and Chicago, IL. I was told that human skeletons were no longer available." He finally got one but "it is light brown in color. The only explanation was offered by our dentist who said it got that way from being kept in the dark." And yes, I read between the lines that he was driving around in an RV with a human skeleton, and you'll have to trust me that it's only one of the disturbing things I've read between the lines - and in the lines - in this book. In a closing thought, Dr. Wallman regrets all the collections he couldn't include. "Too late to be more than mentioned are dolls, scout parapernalia [sic], bird feeders and houses, feathers, crutches, lead sinkers, enema cans, and cloth patches." Speaking of dolls, I believe he claims to have a pornographic Charlie Chaplin doll...? Details are vague, though the doll is mentioned in collection #432, "Pornography." Hmm, it seems that the thermos mentioned there is definitely pornographic (don't ask) and maybe the Chaplin doll is something he picked up in the same lot. "There is also a 'dirty' pocket watch and wrist watch," concludes Dr. Wallman. Such is the fascination of this book that only now do I find time to mention that Dr. Wallman's 392nd collection consists of owls, of course.

Halloween Gets Real

I know I have bored you with my fascinating story of how our Halloween Film Festival will probably be shorter than ever this year because of all my October travels. We have managed to squeeze in THE MUMMY'S SHROUD and RE-ANIMATOR if you are keeping score. Ha ha! Who are you, person who doesn't exist? Yesterday we were distracted by something else that had many horrific elements and some "downer" aspects with which you know I hate to trouble you, but there is a happy ending... though not for every creature involved! You have been warned. So anyway we have been feeding this feral but sweet-natured blue-eyed cat that hangs around our neighborhood. Many times when Lee Durkee has been walking past our yard he has seen the cat. He became quite taken with it. (It is the kitten we were trying to coax off the roof in another unforgettable "blog" "post" you may have forgotten.) He said if we ever caught it he'd like to try to bring it into his house and make it a pet. Now, Dr. Theresa had already caught this fellow - the cat, I mean - once and had him fixed and got all his shots and had him tested for dangerous diseases and everything. She does that out of her own pocket when she finds a feral cat, just to help out and keep the population down and make sure they're healthy. So on Wednesday she saw that the cat - we cleverly call him "Bandit" because of the black "bandit" mask across his blue eyes - had a hurt leg. Fearing he had been hit by a car, Dr. Theresa caught him and took him to the vet again. He had only fallen from a great height and twisted his leg and scratched up his nose a little, the doctor reported. So, now that he was drugged and compliant, a perfect opportunity to take him over to Lee's house so he could recuperate inside and find himself in a new home! The exciting and terrifying parts of the story that will make you question the meaning of existence are coming up soon, don't worry. So Dr. Theresa and Lee set up the cat in a safe, small space: Lee's bathroom. That night our pal Joey and her practically brand new husband Brian came to town so we all went out for a big night on the town square. Everyone came out. Semmes (the man who was once almost in a plane crash with Werner Herzog) told a story about peeing next to Bob Hope. (You know, I should do a "post" about the time I peed next to Rob Reiner and the time Ward McCarthy peed next to Robert Mitchum, but I am getting far afield of the existential horror I mean to express here. OR AM I?) Joey told about when Vince Vaughn gave Buck Owens a prop knife from the PSYCHO remake, only it was a real knife, but Buck Owens didn't get that part - he thought it was some kind of trick knife and started slashing it madly at everybody (including Joey) and laughing with glee while people fled in actual terror that Buck Owens might jokingly kill them. SO! Now we are coming up on the part of the story that will trouble and alarm you! And then it turns almost into a David Lynch movie. When Lee got home, he couldn't find the cat anywhere. And then he noticed that the CAT HAD CLIMBED UP SOMEHOW AND OPENED THE WINDOW and escaped. This is a window that is hard to open. It sticks! And Dr. Theresa had shut it securely herself, expressly so that the cat could not get out of it. But this cat displayed remarkable dexterity and cunning. Not only did it manually slide open the difficult window, it pushed out the screen and dropped from a height of 10 yards (Lee's house is on a steep slope) and vanished. We found out the next morning. We feared the worst! The cat was already injured! And Lee's house overlooks a heavily wooded ravine filled with wild animals. Dr. Theresa set out walking the neighborhood for signs of the cat. I soon followed. In my haste I forgot my glasses. At one point I met Dr. Theresa coming from the opposite direction and I pointed at something I saw moving and said, "What is that?" And Dr. Theresa said, "It's a raccoon." It was a sick raccoon! A poor sick raccoon stumbling and circling and appearing confused in the broad daylight. To add to the nightmarish quality of the scene (made more impressionistic by my blurred vision) the raccoon was on the street in front of what appeared to be a gulley filled with colorful rubble. There's some kind of construction going on. And three guys are taking a break from work, saying and doing nothing but sitting there in the bed of a pickup truck wearing red-tinted sunglasses and expressionlessly, without comment, watching this dying raccoon try to make sense of the world. It was truly a hellish scene. Dispirited and with little hope we went on looking for the cat. We walked through the parking lot of the Chevron on the corner and it was deserted - like weirdly OMEGA MAN deserted - except for two large crows who were just WALKING AROUND the empty, silent parking lot like they owned it. Silent except for their eerie cries, that is! As we went on into the neighborhood I began to notice that the Halloween decorations seemed sinister. So many skeletons! We were forced to pass by the raccoon a few more times, and on one of those times it had died. We found all sorts of weird things in the neighborhood, things we had never seen before, like a tumbled-down shack filled with rusty machinery and glass. All this time Lee was out looking for the cat too. Finally we gave up. When it was close to getting dark, Dr. Theresa decided to go back out. (I couldn't join her because I was in an ADVENTURE TIME meeting. I was not feeling it! Pen and Kent cheered me up by singing funny songs they were making up and then I showed them this Little Rascals clip ["click" here] that Kelly Hogan sent me a long time ago, and we all got a lot of enjoyment out of it. Art helps!) On Dr. Theresa's lonely way in the gathering dusk she met Lee, who had a forlorn expression and told of a harrowing experience. He had heard an otherworldly shrieking from the woods behind his house! He said it was the worst sound he had ever heard. And as he walked deeper into the brush, he came upon the omen-like vision of A BUNCH OF GROUNDHOGS ALL STANDING ON THEIR HIND LEGS AS IF FROZEN IN ETERNITY AND GAZING IN HORROR IN THE SAME DIRECTION, the direction from which the scream had come that had also haunted Lee. Things did not look (or sound) good. Lee and Dr. Theresa split up. Dr. Theresa walked deep into the treacherous woods and sat on the ground and softly called again and again. She was about to get up and head home when she heard a response. She called again. The response came louder. Finally she saw in the distance the feral cat actually running toward her! This is not something feral cats do. Somehow she scooped it up (this is not easy to do with a feral cat; in fact it is impossible) and carried it in her arms UP THE STEEP BRAMBLY HILL back to Lee's place. And Lee came walking back forlorn and when Dr. Theresa, covered in dirt and thorns, told him she had the cat he couldn't believe it. But that's Dr. Theresa for you! She's my hero. So anyway, they blocked up that window real good.

To and Fro

Hey remember in the Geneva Bible when God asks the devil, "Where commeft thou?" and the devil says, "From copafsing the earth to and fro, and from walking in it"? You're probably wondering about my recent travels in the same way! Okay, you twisted my arm. But to understand my wandering properly we have to go way back to when my glasses fell off my head in the lobby of a swank New York City hotel some months ago. I lost a very nice silver pen in that same lobby! And Megan Abbott gave me a pen to replace it. Was the replacement a fancy silver pen? No! It was one Megan picked up in a hotel during her own travels. This pen was a gift from the heart! And cheap though it may have been, it was of an unusual and pleasing shade of blue, its body made of a sturdy, semi-opaque plastic, I believe. It advertised a company called Kimpton, which owns hotels and restaurants, apparently. So on my recent trip to Birmingham to do a reading, I thought I had left the pen Megan gave me behind in a bank! But when I came home it was just sitting there on the TV tray. While in my Birmingham hotel room, I distractedly watched the shoe factory show. Hey remember on GILMORE GIRLS when Luke had a daughter with another woman and that woman was angry when Lorelai (who was dating Luke at the time) hung out with the daughter and it caused problems in Lorelai's relationship? Well, now they are making Lauren Graham go through that plot line again on the shoe factory show, just like the other time they stole a plot from GILMORE GIRLS and marched Lorelai, I mean, Lauren Graham, through it. Lauren Graham is like some doomed soul, forced always to reenact the same torments! What a bummer. While I was watching the shoe factory show, Dr. Theresa was back in Oxford, having an elegant dinner with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls and T. Cooper, whom she had introduced on the Thacker Mountain radio program earlier in the evening. THEN! It was on to New Orleans, where I saw many of my fave former students from back when I used to teach: Abby, Elizabeth (wearing her mother's prom dress from 1968!), Burke, Rachel and SKIN MAG, Ryan, and Anya (wearing a wedding dress because IT WAS HER WEDDING DAY, a happy occasion I wouldn't have missed for the world). It was a lovely ceremony on the porch of an old house, the kind of house where I kept looking up at the attic windows expecting to see a gently approving ghost but I didn't. Burke gave me a book with this great first sentence: "Art has a way of undermining all aesthetic theories." Just like Jerry Lewis! I added the part about Jerry Lewis. On the drive back to Oxford, "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys came on the radio and I suddenly remembered going to see a feature-length documentary about the theremin back in Atlanta with Dr. Theresa - I think it was just called THEREMIN - and Brian Wilson was interviewed in it about the memorable theremin part in "Good Vibrations." You know how Brian Wilson thinks and talks. He's a genius! And he comes off very open and vulnerable and eccentric sometimes. And I think he said the theremin was scary and made him think of sex. Is that what he said? So, the director of THEREMIN was there for this screening (and as I recall, so was Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesizer!) and in the Q&A session afterward, some fool in the audience asked the director if it was "hard not to laugh" when interviewing Brian Wilson and the director shot back with shocked sincerity, "No, it's hard not to cry." And that came back to me so vividly while I was driving that I was completely absorbed in experiencing that memory and sort of forgot I was driving. Has that ever happened to you? Don't do that! It's not safe! Dr. Theresa snapped me out of it. And then I started thinking that Brian Wilson's genius might be profitably compared to Jerry Lewis's in its directness. When Kelly Hogan was just visiting us, she was trying to learn a Brian Wilson song for an upcoming performance. Hogan expounded thoughtfully on the lyrics "I wrote a number down but I lost it/ So I searched through my pocket book, I couldn't find it/ So I sat and concentrated on the number and/ Slowly it came to me so I dialed it/ And I let it ring a few times, there was no answer/ So I let it ring a little more, still no answer" and their relationship to the complex transparency of Brian Wilson (which is different than Jerry's complex transparency). Complex transparency! (It comes to me just now that the theremin documentary featured a clip of Jerry's encounter with a theremin in THE DELICATE DELINQUENT.)

Discussing Literature

Our friend J. was passing through town. I believe it is okay to mention him without permission on the "blog" as I am protecting his anonymity to some extent. I happened to run into him at Square Books. He was with his friend Cary, who directed a movie version of JANE EYRE that I liked a lot. J. mentioned that he and Cary were having dinner with Wright Thompson later in the evening. Well, then I went to City Grocery Bar to meet Ace Atkins and Bill Boyle, where we, uh, discussed literature. It was just after four, "Megan Abbott Time" as we call it around here. Ace left at one point and walked next door to Square Books and bought each of us a different Travis McGee novel tailor-made to our individual tastes. Square Books has sold so many books to drunk people! You sit up there at the Grocery and get excited talking about some book you love and next thing you know you're somewhere else and the old cash register is ringing. Not to say that Ace was drunk. In fact he was in more of a sipping mood. Sipping and contemplative. My own mood was somewhat different. I got home and told Dr. Theresa about J. being in town - they once bonded over the horrific experience of going to see COWBOYS AND ALIENS together, and really it has united them in a way that few can fathom - so she wanted me to bring him a little note saying how sorry she was to miss him. So I went to the restaurant with the note in my pocket but no one was there so I had no choice but to drink some more. We have reached 8:30 in the evening in our tale. Wright showed up and politely asked me whether I'd like to join the table, and I impolitely - boorishly, even - accepted the invitation. Then I babbled about JANE EYRE to the director for a million hours without managing to produce a single insight. Stuff like, "You did a great job!" At a lull in the babbling, J. said, "Hey, Jack? Did you know he directed a version of JANE EYRE?" A chuckle was enjoyed by all. Why, only that day I had seen Kaitlyn at Off Square Books and one of the books there reminded me of the sad death of Meriwether Lewis, which I started babbling about, and Kaitlyn said, "I heard it might have been murder!" And then she realized, "Oh, I think it was you who told me that." And I realized that I have only two or three topics of conversation, one of them being the sad death of Meriwether Lewis. Another is crows, as I discovered at a dinner party when everyone gently hinted that I should shut up about crows. Wow, I'm learning a lot of miserable things about myself as I type this. And yet I have no feeling that I might ever become a better person. Things reached such a state at the dinner last night, the JANE EYRE dinner, that we decided to drunk dial Jerry Lewis. I think it was Wright's idea. So Wright called Dr. Theresa to ask her to read him Jerry Lewis's phone number, which I have taped to my office wall, natch, but luckily Dr. Theresa did not pick up the phone because Dr. Theresa never picks up the phone, so we didn't call Jerry Lewis. Oh my God! That was a close one.

Maybe Kangaroos

Reading that biography of John Wayne, I was particularly mesmerized by the allusions to a movie produced by John Wayne, a brainchild of his boozy sidekick Jimmy Grant, a circus movie starring Mickey Spillane as himself - RING OF FEAR! It says something about me that I also watched ISLAND IN THE SKY, a very interesting John Wayne movie that starts out interesting and just gets more and more interesting as it goes along, a really fine movie, and yet I have no desire to "blog" about it. I'd much rather "blog" about RING OF FEAR, which is, as I just informed you, a circus movie starring Mickey Spillane. As himself! Many spoilers follow, ha ha. RING OF FEAR begins with thudding timpani and roaring lions. The theme song goes, "Here comes the circus/ Marching down the street/ Hear that thrilling beat/ The band... the band... the band is playing, Yay!" and that's the whole song. (See also.) The narrator lists all the animals in the circus, ending his litany with "maybe kangaroos." Maybe! Sounds ominous. Then we cut to a big, scary sign: STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION, and a guy saying, "I tell you I'm not crazy, gentlemen." We're less than 5 minutes in! Oh boy! Then the guy says something I didn't quite catch about "building a fence around the universe." He's in trouble for talking to a picture of a "circus girl." Then he escapes! I thought they were setting him up to be sympathetic but then he tossed a random guy under an oncoming train, so I guess not. He meets up with his pal, a guy named Twitchy. I thought I had that wrong until a surly clown said, "Twitchy must be hitting the bottle again," thereby confirming the name Twitchy. Twenty-five minutes in, here's Mickey Spillane for some reason. Somebody says, "Say, ain't you Mickey Spillane?" Spillane mumbles, "Yeah, that's right." Poor Mickey! As an actor he doesn't even seem convinced of his own name. He does walk around with copies of his new paperback in his jacket pocket and hand them out to strangers. Lots of circus acts in this movie. I hate to see them taunting the tigers with the whip and the chair, though, so I fast forwarded through that stuff, I must admit (though to come clean I enjoyed it - very guiltily - when some elephants danced to "Turkey in the Straw" - God have mercy!). Twitchy is a drunk clown, like so many sad clowns before him, but I wasn't sure I could safely categorize him as a sad clown until I saw that he was being blackmailed for murder. That would make anybody sad! Now we meet, for a few sparkling moments, an acrobat named Tiny. Boy, I liked her. Her "bum" of a husband works part-time as a department-store Santa. Golly, I would have watched a whole movie about them! But that's all we get of Tiny. Mickey Spillane calls somebody "a windy character" and Pat O'Brien responds, "Yeah, he's windy and he's a character." I am not sure what that exchange of dialogue got us! The sword swallower wants peppermint polish for her swords because her swords taste so terrible. (Hey, I've got eight pages of notes here.) She has a weird way of introducing herself: "Hello, Mr. Spillane, are you married?" Mickey says, "It slips my mind at the moment," a pretty good Mickey Spillane line, but the incongruous set-up is unforgivable. I have here in my notes that Mickey Spillane chews gum and squints. Half an hour in or so I find out that the crazy madman is named "Dublin O'Malley." He's Irish, by the way. Meanwhile, back at the circus! A clown comes out holding an umbrella. Cut to the crowd laughing hysterically. Cut back to the clown holding his umbrella. A clown holding an umbrella really seems to get to everybody. (See also.) By an hour in, Dublin O'Malley seems kind of like an interesting, complicated psychopath, or am I going soft? (Also about an hour in, a kangaroo actually appears - a kangaroo with, forgive me for saying so, surprisingly prominent testicles.) I did enjoy watching Mickey Spillane eat an ice cream cone. It seemed authentic. Was he getting more comfortable onscreen? Or was I getting more full of rye? Around this time, for example, I started thinking of the actor who played Dublin O'Malley as a poor man's Orson Welles, which is funny, because Dr. Theresa, who was in the next room and not even paying attention, later told me that she thought he sounded just like Orson Welles in LADY FROM SHANGHAI. Suddenly Mickey Spillane is wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Later, he will put on a tight sweater, too, before suddenly reverting to the usual baggy jacket, loose tie, and fedora. Turns out Twitchy used to be an aerialist, which reminded me of something that Bill Taft once said to me in a circus performers' graveyard. Dublin has a long, intricate monologue describing death by cyanide to Twitchy and yes, this scene clinches it, Twitchy is a super sad clown. Dublin O'Malley drowns that clown! Reaction shots of disapproving circus animals! Pat O'Brien gives a deadpan read of the immortal line, "Valerie, I'm sorry. We just got news that Dublin is a kill-happy maniac." Dublin is eaten by a tiger, cutting immediately to a song about the circus being "a magic wonderland" of "angels and clowns." THE END

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!

Dumb

Finished this book about Philip Roth and he made a funny remark to the author about Bach's compositional style, said Bach was "like a guy constantly checking his pockets." Now, I recall that years ago I was infuriated by some really dumb things David Byrne casually said about Bach in a BELIEVER interview, but now that I think of it, he was saying the same thing Philip Roth was saying, but somehow I am still irritated and annoyed by David Byrne's snide pronouncements, while what Philip Roth said made me laugh and even agree. Think about it, I guess. Or don't. Who cares.

All Bets Are Off

Lee Durkee heard about McNeil's trouble with the misprinted book, and McNeil's feelings of being all alone in the matter, so Lee wrote me with a message of encouragement to pass along to McNeil, a little story of something that happened to Lee, which I quote for you now: "I once, on a flight to Sri Lanka, was reading a book by Tobias Wolff, IN THE PHARAOH'S ARMY, and midway through the memoir due to a publishing error the book switched into a novel by a different author and kinda blew my mind. I thought Wolff had gone all experimental on me. Later I noticed it was a slightly different typeset. I left the book at a hostel where perhaps it is still bewildering people. It was really odd. I kept reading and reading trying to figure out how Wolff was gonna wrap this all together." Last night I saw Lee at a party, and he told me that what further confounded him was how the change happened between the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. I forwarded the email on to McNeil, who responded: "Well, obviously, what happened to Lee isn't at all the fault of the publisher, but rather a result of longitudinal chicanery by that longitudinal laugh riot of the universe - the globe. You see, in order to get to Sri Lanka, you have to cross the 'International Date Line,' which of course means 'all bets are off!' I forget who said that. Once you cross that imaginary (not so imaginary in my book!) line, ships often sink, standardized language melts away, gold flies out of your teeth, and typeface often changes type. I wouldn't be surprised if my Jerry Lewis book had been shipped from Hong Kong. It's a nice touch the way Lee left the novel in a hostel. Now someone we know needs to accidentally buy it used online and the circle will be complete." Cutting-and-pasting these messages for "blog" "publication," I note that both Lee and McNeil adhere to the elegant and traditional practice of following each period they type with two spaces. Classy! I gave up on that years ago. Think of all the energy I've saved. BUT AT WHAT PRICE? (I removed their "extra" spaces so that the "post" would "adhere" to "blog" "standards." Think of all the work I did to reduce the quality here. Is that "ironic"?) Hey, I'm just going to keep typing. "All bets are off!" as McNeil once observed. Nobody reads these long "posts," or the short ones either, but perversely that's what keeps me typing. Like, yesterday I wrote a long "post" containing the words and phrases "Joycean technique" and "Faulkner" and "palimpsest" and "portent" and "unspoken emotion" but then I deleted it. WHY? For all practical purposes, a deleted "post" is the same as a "posted" "post." It was about this sentence in Adrienne Barbeau's autobiography: "We were married four months later, on New Years Day 1979, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, by a one-armed judge who years earlier had lost his hand in the mixer at the bakery where we'd gotten our wedding cake." I'm way past that now. The marriage is over. Adrienne Barbeau has just met a man who has "the ability to alter bacteria with his hands." She says of him, "I wonder who gave him the huge pearl ring he's wearing. I wonder why the nails on his pinkie fingers are so long." In other book news, I was lurching around Square Books yesterday and found myself strangely drawn to a paperback of JUNKY by William S. Burroughs. I found myself wondering why I've never read it. I read the first couple of pages and thought they were pretty good. So I bought it. It was only afterward, going through the introduction as I sat at the counter at Ajax, that I put it together: Old Bull Lee from ON THE ROAD is Burroughs, as I well knew. What I didn't know is that this edition of JUNKY has, as an appendix, a whole deleted chapter about William Reich, fave theorist of Adrienne Barbeau and Norman Mailer! Who cares? Randy, the owner of Ajax, saw me eating a hamburger and asked, "Why aren't you eating a Pendarvis sandwich? I can't remember the right name." I reminded him that he was thinking of "The Osborne Sandwich." Don't worry! I still think it's going to catch on. Books! As you know, I always like to have a little pocket-sized book to carry around in my little pocket-sized pocket as I promenade about the town like Blazes Boylan. And the other day when I was at Off Square Books I found just such an item, filled with poems using the great old spelling I love: "YEE dainty Nimphs that in this blessed Brooke/ Doo bath your brest;/ Forsake your watry Bowers, and hether looke/ At my request." There are a lot of "hey ho's," so that even the most dire subject matter takes on a jaunty hue: "But whether in painfull love I pine,/ hey hoe pinching pain:/ Or thrive in wealth, she shall be mine,/ but if thou can her obtaine./ And if for gracelesse greefe I dye/ hey hoe gracelesse greefe:/ Witnesse, she slew me with her eye,/ let thy folly be the preefe." He's talking to his sheep. All the narrators in this book are talking to sheep. Pretty early in that poem, the narrator sees "the bouncing Bellybone/ hey hoe Bonny-bell:/ Tripping over the Dale alone,/ shee can trip it very well." Bellybone! I have no idea. Bonnibel (sp?) is Princess Bubblegum's first name, FYI.