Abalone Biscuit Stick

1. McNeil dreamed - shortly before I left for Burbank on a bureaucratic mission that would stun and bore you - that I was transformed into a toddler and Donald Trump hand-fed me a biscuit. I did not report the dream at the time because I was about to leave on my trip and it struck me as a dream of ill-omen, best blocked out of my mind until my safe return. 2. I know you want to know what book I read on the airplane. Well, you're going to be so glad you asked. See, I had this one Virginia Woolf novel all picked out. It was the right size for the airplane. The content, delightful though I am sure it would have turned out to be, was of secondary interest. You see, I like to print out my boarding passes and slip them between the back cover and last page of whatever book I am reading on the airplane, and I don't like it if the edges of the boarding passes stick out too much. My boarding passes are printed on letter-sized sheets of paper, which I fold over once, maintaining the creaseless integrity of the printed matter. I told you you'd be glad you asked! Let's move to a new numbered section as I explain why I print out my boarding passes rather than checking in via an app on my phone. 3. My phone is too old! It rejects the app! 4. Anyway, I'm going to quote an email from Jimmy Cajoleas now. I don't think Jimmy will mind. "[Have you] read Water Margin? I'm halfway through the Sidney Shapiro translation (he calls it Outlaws of the Marsh) and I think it's one of the greatest things I've ever read in my life." 5. That made me remember I have a copy of that very translation! When I go to bed at night, I often lie on my side facing a bookcase where, as I recline in that position, Outlaws of the Marsh finds itself in my eyeline. I bought it in 2007, I think, and never opened it. And just about every night I look at it from bed and think, "Will I ever read that? I certainly doubt it! It's in a cardboard box containing four volumes!" I bought it at Square Books because when we first moved to Oxford, we had some people over for dinner, and one of them was teaching it in a class, and I got so excited hearing about Outlaws of the Marsh that I ran out and bought it and didn't open it for almost 20 years. So, the night before my flight, I separated Volume 1 from its cardboard-bound brethren. Though it is part of a larger set, the first book is the size of an old-timey mass-market paperback, hardly sufficient for securing my boarding pass in the required fashion. This was a new experience for me. Just when I thought I had done it all in this old world. Walking around with most of my boarding pass sticking out! Like some kind of hippie! 6. My seatmate on the airplane saw my iPod. Unlike the last person who saw my iPod on an airplane, she was not impressed. She said, "My husband has one of those and it drives me crazy." She didn't say why. 7. On a more positive note, she announced that she was from the same town as the woman who wrote the book THE EGG AND I, and she knew the descendants of the book's characters. She couldn't remember the name of the female lead in the movie version and I blew her freaking mind by saying "Claudette Colbert." Anyway, she was saying that Ma and Pa Kettle (supporting characters in the movie) were real people and I speculated that later movies about Ma and Pa Kettle (are you still reading this?), such as MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO HAWAII, were probably not based on true stories, as they were about fanciful things like winning a trip to Hawaii in an advertising slogan contest. Anyway, I don't have time to explain Ma and Pa Kettle to you. I "posted" a publicity still of them above, and I'll let that do the work. The important thing is that despite my know-it-all attitude about Claudette Colbert there is no movie called MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO HAWAII, as I learned when I looked it up minutes ago. It's called MA AND PA KETTLE AT WAIKIKI. And they're just working on a pineapple farm in that one! They didn't win a contest, as I needlessly misinformed my seatmate. Further research (WHY?) led me to discover that Pa Kettle does compose a prize-winning jingle in MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN. And that is the story of how all the Ma and Pa Kettle movies I watched as a kid eventually got mixed up in my head. Most of all, I was shocked to learn that Ma and Pa Kettle were from this woman's hometown in the state of Washington! I don't know where I assumed they were from, but it wasn't there. Sadly, we must now move on from Ma and Pa Kettle. I know you're disappointed. 8. My Uber driver's wife makes a living singing the national anthem at sporting events! You'd think he would have an interesting story about how someone gets into that line of work, but he didn't. 9. I broke my glasses. 10. I saw Kate, who brought with her a treat from Hong Kong: abalone-and-oyster-sauce flavored "biscuit sticks" (the latter two words in English on the box). They were thin, crispy little sticks and I could eat them all day. Savory, with, as Kate remarked, a little of the sweetness of the abalone coming through. 11. She also brought something from a side-trip to Japan: a sake-flavored Kit Kat bar. We tried that, too, and it made us want to throw up. 12. I ran into Cole Sanchez, who remarked, of my shirt, "Do we have the same shirt?" (He was not wearing the shirt - let me be clear: he was wearing a shirt, just not that one - but yes, it did turn out he had the same shirt at home.) Now, you must know, in order to truly appreciate this story, that we consulted Cole while writing the sartorially concerned Adventure Time episode "Bespoken For," because he is a stylish man who knows everything about clothes. So hearing that Cole and I have the same shirt made it a big night for me. I was telling everyone who would listen, "Cole and I have the same shirt!" Cole went home and rethought his life. 13. At the departure gate for my trip home, I sat next to a Pepsi vending machine. A man came and stood in front of it and coughed down into my face a couple of times. He stood in front of the Pepsi machine for five minutes, examining the various Pepsi products on display. Then he walked away, never to be seen again. 14. Dolph Lundgren is on my flight! Yeah! He's speaking Swedish! In the middle of a Swedish phrase, I hear him say "tough guys" in English. I thought, "If anything bad happens on this flight, he'll save us!" Dolph Lundgren's drink of choice? Cranberry juice. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he was doing some kind of seated shadow boxing. His feet were subtly and elegantly "dancing," as I believe it's called in the boxing ring, as he cast some punches toward the seat back in front of him. He put on his shades before shadow boxing. "I'm living in paradise!" I jotted in my jotting book. The very sweet flight attendant, Diana by name, turned out to be a Dolph Lundgren fanatic, and addressed him with such giddy enthusiasm as the plane began its descent, to which he responded in such a cheerful and gracious manner, that I felt emboldened to turn around and tell him that he had given me confidence and peace in case of emergency.

No One Tells Me Anything

I just saw a commercial indicating, or so I thought, that there are purple M&Ms. I felt very upset because no one tells me anything. Then I looked it up and I guess you can't find a purple M&M in the bag. She is just a fanciful mascot for promotional purposes. I know this will be a "zombie" "link" one day, but on the M&M "web" site you can examine her workout routine and the advice she would give her teenage self. That's right, this M&M was once a teenager. I would have expected their life cycle to last three years at most. Oh, this really takes me back! The Hawaiian Punch FAQ upon which I doted once is just a "zombie" "link" now. Thank God, then, that I had the foresight to quote it: "Punchy has been revamped with contemporary fashion and music to appeal to modern consumers. He still has the punch! ... The long-time spokesman for Hawaiian Punch was given a more contemporary look that appeals to teens." That's my favorite kind of writing, which may clue you in about why most of my novels remain unpublished.

The History of Literature

Never thought I'd run across the phrase "She was going to turn me into an owl one time" in an Elmore Leonard novel, but I did... twice! The second time, it's "gonna" instead of "going to," the kind of distinction you notice only if you've wasted a good portion of your life cataloging every time a book has an owl in it. Anyway, after I read that (in KILLSHOT), I got in bed and came by coincidence to the part of THE ODYSSEY where the guys get turned into pigs. That's the history of literature for you, from THE ODYSSEY to Elmore Leonard: people getting turned into owls or pigs. What else have I been reading lately? Some Jack Kerouac journals that McNeil gave me for my birthday. He (Kerouac, not McNeil) is struggling to finish writing his novel THE TOWN AND THE CITY... which made me recall one of Dr. Theresa's former bosses, who told me that her favorite Kerouac novel was THE TOWN AND THE CITY, so I marched right down to Square Books and bought a paperback of it and stuck it on a shelf and never read it. Well, after reading some of those journal entries, I took THE TOWN AND THE CITY off the shelf, opened it, and the receipt fell out... May 27, 2013. And the pages of the book had turned brown with age! Look. That's not necessary. Once, when Dr. Theresa was still just an undergrad, we went to her Latin teacher's house, where fruit punch was served! And her Latin teacher brought out a book from the 15th century for us to pass around, and the pages were as white as snow! So my guess is that the people at Harcourt were like, "What are we going to do with this cheap paper we have lying around? Let's give it to the beatniks, they like that kind of crap." Related: there's a blurb from Johnny Depp on the back cover - ?! - in which the word "Kerouac" is misspelled... with two c's! "Yeah, I saw it. The beatniks won't care." (See also: the cheap glue used by Scribner.)

The Garbage Story

Well, it's Thursday, the day I take the garbage to the end of the driveway to be picked up, as I'm sure Elon Musk and his doe-eyed teen protégé Big Balls know from examining my personal records. It's no secret anymore! Anyhow, I could barely tilt the garbage can back on its wheels to roll it down. It was like Dr. Theresa had thrown away a burlap sack filled with bowling balls without my knowledge! And then, once I got the garbage can rolling, it was all I could do to hold it back. It was so damn heavy that it was pulling me down the steep driveway beyond - and I'm sure this is no exaggeration - the speed of sound! I was like the Chuck Yeager of garbage cans. So, anyway, I'm sure you'll recall when the tree fell on our house. It turns out that the tree also made a hole in the garbage can lid, so that, in addition to garbage, the can was filled with rainwater, the heaviest substance known to science. I wrote about it in my diary, of course. And I was like, "I can't wait to tell Ace about it on our daily walk around the neighborhood!" But then I was like, "That's not enough! The people need to know my story!" I just wish my grandparents could be alive to know that a kid named Big Balls is helping run the government. They'd be so excited! After washing my mouth out with soap. Speaking of which, McNeil wrote to say that he saw a commercial where a guy sprays deodorant down the back of his pants. Once again, I thought of my grandparents and how much they'd be vomiting all the time and punching holes in walls with their bloody fists if only they could see us now. And they weren't even violent or especially emotional people. They had regular emotions! Still, I doubt George Washington himself would find it any harder to grasp our fascinating modern times when it's so exciting to be alive and guessing what's next. Anyway, I really pulled a lot of muscles and hurt myself in various ways today with the garbage can. Pity me!

Le Bits de Boyer

Don't worry, your mind isn't freaking out on you! We're preempting "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" for some bits about ginchy French heartthrob Charles Boyer. Our tale begins with some of McNeil's li'l bogie bits. He was telling me how after the Boyer/Bacall movie CONFIDENTIAL AGENT turned out to be a dud, they went back and... well, let's see. I need to consult McNeil's email. They "had Hawks/Bogart/Bacall and a few others get together and film several new scenes to punch up The Big Sleep even more to give Bacall more 'ooompf.'" McNeil goes on to explain that "ooompf" is his own paraphrasing of whatever they were giving Bacall more of, not that she needed it. So he was telling me this and I was like, WHAT! I just recorded CONFIDENTIAL AGENT from a TCM showing, because Dr. Theresa and I had enjoyed Charles Boyer so much in a recent viewing of CLUNY BROWN, which I had also recorded off of TCM. And then McNeil came back at me saying THAT was weird because he had recently conducted a small, informal poll about the handsomeness of Charles Boyer. I don't wish to venture into McNeil's private life, but suffice to say, in McNeil's words, "a man has to know where he stands!!!" (Triple exclamation points are McNeil's.) One will no doubt be reminded of the time that Dr. Theresa blew my mind by saying that she might well prefer the charms of Fredric March over those of Gary Cooper. That was eight years ago and I still don't believe it. I think about it every night as I toss and turn in bed!

Going

It seems that I have six books going at once, a feat (?) not equaled since July 2020. I don’t know what it means, but it can’t be good, can it, given that timing? Troubled times! The usual number of books “going” is one or two. I have calculated, in fact, that it is always one or two, with the twin exceptions, from now and then, of six. It is never three, four, five, or seven. How can this be true? At some point they must have piled up, one by one. Furthermore, as two books cannot be finished simultaneously (can they?), the stack must likewise dwindle, 5, 4, 3, if only for the span of a word or two. One must also consider, I suppose, whether a "next book" is waiting to slide into its spot, complicating matters, but I'm already so tired. Now, I thought for a moment that I might escalate to seven, but I (ironically?) finished Megan Abbott’s new novel (maybe her best yet: dreamy and dangerous, with a gothic punch!) just before I was due to start another book that Megan Abbott and I are reading in our tiny book club consisting of only ourselves. Now! You may ask how I know a book is “going.” I can only answer that I know when a book is NOT going – when it has been abandoned. Not one of these books has been abandoned. Two of them may look that way to the untrained observer, but they are merely being read at a rate impossible to detect, much as someone told me in a dorm room once (was it McNeil?) that glass is nothing but a very slow-moving liquid (a claim for which I have sought no evidence in the three decades or so since I passively absorbed it - the claim, not the glass). For example, I was only a couple of pages into a Stephen King novel when Megan’s book arrived. The former, therefore, may appear as though I have not even begun to read it. But I have. In the case of Mann’s DOCTOR FAUSTUS, I may have come close to abandonment, but now I am too far along. It has attained a kind of glacial momentum. Here, I must admit that I was tempted to abandon THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN quite a few times during the first hundred pages or so. I’m glad I didn’t, as the final 800 or 900 pages really rollick along. They have a rootin’ tootin’ time in that tuberculosis sanatorium! In conclusion, for a book to be “going,” it must be made for reading (from cover to cover), as opposed to browsing, a distinction that I regret to say is not up for further exploration within our current framework.

Kinda Scary

I half-watched some of a Frank Capra movie on TCM last night and I'm not gonna say it reminded me of David Lynch, even though it did, but I am aware that everything reminds me of David Lynch now because I just watched a lot of David Lynch.

(Megan Abbott did point out the IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE quality of the recent TWIN PEAKS finale.) But the title of the Capra movie I half-watched is A HOLE IN THE HEAD, which isn't comforting, is it? So Frank Sinatra and his little son are trying to sleep and Carolyn Jones suddenly appears in their window, dancing in her swimsuit and long gloves. It was supposed to be funny! But it struck me as eerie. Once again, this is all my own fault. Then Carolyn Jones shows up with a whole apple in her mouth and strikes a Laura Palmer pose:

The way Sinatra expresses affection for his son is to say he's gonna sock him or punch him or "flatten" him. He's consistently violent in his love imagery, but we never think he's really gonna flatten his son. At one point he says wistfully, "He's a funny kid, you know? I could beat him up, anything, leave him someplace, and I bet he'd still love me. Kinda scary." KINDA!

The background (and foreground) is filled with strange, silent animals, for which I choose this monkey that blows bubbles as representative. The monkey that blows bubbles is next to a photo of Eleanor Parker's husband and son, whom she matter-of-factly describes drowning together before her eyes. Frank Sinatra's little boy is immediately taken with Eleanor Parker because (I think it's obvious) she is like his dead mother come back to life.

She catches the little boy staring at her because she reminds him so much of his dead mother (I believe is the subtext) and gives him a sultry wink as he peeps at her from behind a porcelain dog. Oh, and Dub Taylor works the desk at Frank Sinatra's hotel, where they use the same kind of keychains you get at the Great Northern.

You know, I really have more screen shots than I know what to do with. You should see the ones I'm skipping. There was this disturbingly infantile character (below), a very poor man's Jerry Lewis, who, in his father's words, "runs to the toilet" whenever there's a customer in the store (the same father, Edward G. Robinson, who complains about his "underwear crawling up" on him, a complaint I do not recall hearing expressed so bluntly - or indeed at all - in any other 50s movies; does he say "crawling" or "creeping"? Does it matter?) and you know how much Jerry Lewis reminds me of David Lynch, even though this is not Jerry Lewis, just a tulpa.

I hardly know what to end with.

Well, here's a guy in a white dinner jacket with a pistol on a diving board. Moments later he will pretend to shoot himself in the head with a blank for a laugh, but I don't think that's where the title comes from.

The Ninety Paths to Jerry

Soon it will be Jerry Lewis's 90th birthday. So I have "punched up" an old "post." In the old days there were only fifty, but now there are NINETY different ways to approach Jerry, should you find him unapproachable. I present this as a public service. Choose the path that's right for you! 1. How is Edgar Allan Poe like Jerry Lewis? 2. For that matter, what would Kierkegaard say about Jerry Lewis? 3. Bob Dylan got "deeply into" Jerry Lewis. 4. Jerry was a hero to Richard Pryor. 5. Jerry shares expressionistic instincts with iconic rappers. 6. He made Orson Welles laugh. 7. Freudian aspects of Jerry. 8. He played a gig with Thelonious Monk. 9. A trusted method of immersing yourself in Jerryness. 10. Don't believe me? Take it from bestselling novelist Laura Lippman! 11. Don't believe Laura Lippman? Perhaps famed method actor Edward Norton is more to your taste. 12. Consider Jerry Lewis as the forefather of David Lynch. 13. So can it be a coincidence that Louis CK cast Lynch in a part originally written for Jerry Lewis? 14. As muse to hardboiled Don Carpenter. 15. Jerry's spectacular use of color. 16. Jerry is the inventor of anti-comedy, his aesthetic also appropriated by the cinematic underground. 17. Read the great Jerry monograph by Chris Fujiwara. 18. Jerry a hero to Michael Palin of the Monty Python comedy troupe. 19. Jerry an inspiration for the British version of THE OFFICE that everyone used to love so much. 20. Jerry makes me think of the French painter Henri Rosseau. 21. Do you think Jerry is redundant? No, he is "unfolding redundancy." Joke's on you!

22. Do you like Godard? Well, Godard based some of his scenes on Jerry Lewis scenes. Like this and that. 23. Some maintain that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY would have been better with Jerry in it. 24. Speaking of which, was Jerry an influence on Boorman's groundbreaking POINT BLANK? I don't know, but he should have starred in it. 25. How about that prescient scene in THE BELLBOY that anticipates Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY? 26. The Cinderfella dance! 27. Jerry frequently appears in THE BELIEVER magazine, if that's your cup of tea. 28. I intuit a connection between Jerry and J.D. Salinger. 29. And supposedly Salinger considered Jerry to direct the movie version of CATCHER IN THE RYE, maybe. I said maybe! 30. Jerry's influence on GOODFELLAS. 31. Jerry Lewis is part of Philip K. Dick's mystic vision of the entire universe. 32. You should watch lots of Jerry Lewis so you can practice the fun habit of saying things like Jerry Lewis. 33. Even nature itself aspires to sound like Jerry Lewis. 34. Jerry Lewis is a good singer. 35. Maybe you identify with Jerry's world-weary attitude. 36. He hung out in a diner with Marilyn Monroe. 37. Blair Hobbs detects an aesthetic kinship between Jerry and the photographer William Eggleston. 38. Jerry was an inspiration to Bruce Springsteen. 39. Think of Jerry as a poet. 40. Need a dissertation topic? How about "Medical Ethics in the Films of Jerry Lewis"? 41. In a hilarious practical joke, Jerry ruined Dick van Dyke's meeting with the queen! 42. Jerry was instrumental in getting the great Stan Laurel his honorary Oscar. 43. Jerry is handsome! 44. Maybe you are a "conspiracy theory buff." Well, for real the CIA tampered with one of Jerry's movies. 45. Maybe you're an animal lover. Well, Jerry bought a hearing aid for his dog. 46. Jerry is subversive! 47. Quentin Tarantino + Jerry Lewis = True Love 4ever. 48. (Maybe because he anticipated one of Tarantino's more radical and disruptive narrative decisions by 40 years.) 49. Does he irritate you and make you uncomfortable? MAYBE THAT'S JUST WHAT JERRY WANTS! 50. For example, he once stuck his nose in Frank Sinatra's eye. 51. And took some of the starch out of Tony Curtis by flicking ashes on his jacket. 52. Jerry is complicated. He "both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure." - J. Hoberman. 53. Jerry's influence on the Beastie Boys. 54. Jerry appears in works by acknowledged comic geniuses John Hodgman and Michael Kupperman.

55. But perhaps you prefer authors from Mississippi, a chunk of land with a notable literary history. If so, you should be aware that Tom Franklin and Frederick Barthelme have put Jerry Lewis in their well-regarded "Mississippi" novels. 56. So has Don DeLillo, though he is not from Mississippi, nor are his novels set there. 57. ARE you a historian, by the way? Then consider Jerry's breakup with Dean in its implications as "a national trauma." 58. Francis Ford Coppola cites Jerry as an influence. 59. Which reminds me: I recently read an interview that Scorsese did with Lewis in which he (Scorsese) cites THE LADIES MAN as an influence. I always assumed the scene in question was drawn from SATYRICON. But SATYRICON came out after THE LADIES MAN, so maybe SATYRICON was influenced by Jerry too! I just now decided that, while typing this. 60. Jerry's darker side a fruitful subject for literary speculation. 61. Speaking of which, John Waters said Jerry Lewis was "probably a monster!" Can there be a higher compliment? 62. Although (see previous "link") John Waters went on to praise his taste in costuming. So that subject is worth contemplation. 63. Though, intriguingly, to Waters's original hypothesis, Jerry repeatedly acknowledges the collusion of the innocent with the monstrous, especially within a single individual. (See also.) 64. Jerry's art provides some of the same challenges and rewards as Sun Ra's. 65. Jerry envisioned hosting Queen Elizabeth, Jimmy Hoffa and Helen Keller on a talk show. I still want to write that play.

66. Fascinating undercurrents to his on- and off-screen chemistry with Dean Martin. 67. I wrote a pretty good article about him once if you can find it. 68. And this "post" is all right. 69. Try to solve Jerry's universal problem. 70. The complex transparency of Jerry's genius can be profitably compared to Brian Wilson's. 71. Jerry reveals the intrinsic flaws in the very notion of successful human communication. 72. Maybe that's why he's constantly "rewriting his own being." 73. But before he rewrote himself too much, here's a 13-minute clip of young Jerry at his brashest and most engaging. 74. Jerry's anarchic devouring of the hand that feeds him. 75. Maybe you are from the "dance world." Did you know that many highbrow choreographers turn to Jerry Lewis for inspiration? 76. Similarities between Jerry and the great Italian giallo director Mario Bava, if that's your thing. 77. Jerry is a model of tact and restraint compared to the makers of Jason Bateman movies. 78. As Jerry is, so you will be. As you are, so once was he. 79. Jerry, like Elvis, was a target of snobbery and classism. 80. I mean, even when he ended the Oscar broadcast EARLY, the powers-that-be still despised him. He gets under "the man's" skin. 81. For example, when everybody in "the establishment" was dumping on Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE, Jerry was one of the first to proclaim its greatness. 82. Did he inspire a character in a Wes Anderson movie? Probably not. But I think he inspired a character in a Noah Baumbach movie. 83. Touchstone for towering cartoonists Lynda Barry and Gilbert Hernandez. 84. Jerry deemed a subject worthy of the Savannah College of Art and Design. 85. Jerry cut short his formal education and set out to educate himself. 86. Jonathan Rosenbaum knows a lot about movies and he loves Jerry Lewis. 87. Tough-to-please James Wolcott likewise. 88. Camille Paglia seems happy about Jerry Lewis. 89. Jerry blurs assumptions about gender. 90. Hey, Sandra Bullock likes Jerry Lewis.

Doing the Thing

You know, sometimes I reap writing lessons from ADVENTURE TIME meetings, such as who to punch and what not to punch. Yesterday I got a good one! I had typed up a line of clichéd dialogue for Jake, which Adam called out, and I oh-so-cleverly explained that it was SUPPOSED to be a cliché. I had done it on purpose! Adam replied, "If you're doing the thing, you're also doing the thing." Well! That hit me with a certain brilliant force. I stopped everything to jot it down in one of my famous books of jottings, even as Adam started trying to phrase it in what he thought was a "better" way, but it was too late: I had already jotted. And besides, there was no better way to say it. I kept thinking about it for the rest of the day, kind of chanting it to myself. "If you're doing the thing, you're also doing the thing." For a second it reminded me of Beckett, and then I thought, no, Gertrude Stein.

Christmas

Christmas. Listening to a Johnny Rivers LP. Dr. Theresa making figgy pudding. A gigantic spider descends swiftly on a thread from the ceiling, straight down for the uncovered sugar bowl, providing Christmas drama. Report from Los Angeles, where my parents are visiting my brother and the grandkids: Mom says that Dad saw Larry King in a bagel shop and hugged him on Christmas morning. "I was overcome," Dad explained. I switched the record to an old compilation called "Jingle Bell Jazz" that always got on my nerves. Who can explain my complex behavior? It has rained all day. The yard is flooded. Sixty-three degrees fahrenheit. Yesterday afternoon the thawing goose was still frozen in the middle and I was unable to extract the giblets. Now some jazz flute dude is going to town on "We Three Kings." Reading Norman Mailer for Christmas. Just got out of a flashback that lasted almost 800 pages, and I can remember little of what is going on in the novel's "present." (By ominous coincidence I come to a passage about Allen Dulles falling fatally ill on Christmas Eve.) While in the shower, I recall that I dreamed about M. Emmett Walsh. He threatened someone with a pistol, then ate it and said, "It's no secret this gun was made of chocolate." Figgy pudding has come out of the oven and looks and smells spectacular. I fear that my goose could never measure up! Christmas tweeting with Hogan. She says Christmas spiders are good luck. I play an LP she gave me a long time ago, Paul Williams's "Here Comes Inspiration." His version of "Rainy Days and Mondays" (a song he wrote) sounds especially appropriate today. I see a cocktail fork that I bought from Bob Hope's estate among the drying dishes. Dr. Theresa says she used it to test the consistency of the figgy pudding. Am I upset? Far from it! Wassail is simmering. Megan Abbott suggested wassail. She was somewhat upset that I found a wassail recipe with bourbon in it. "Surely Bob Cratchit didn't have bourbon?" she objected. We switched from LPs to Bing Crosby on iPod, because it's hard to flip over records while you're cooking a goose. Chris Offutt and Melissa Ginsburg came over. Chris soon tired of Bing. He asked me to play some Frank Sinatra. Chris stood with his head respectfully bowed for several minutes, listening to Frank do a live version of "I Could Have Danced All Night." Then he compared the rhyme scheme of "Come Fly With Me" to Bob Dylan, which got us listening to Bob Dylan. Chris dramatically acted out Dylan's entire song "Isis," thrillingly grabbing me by the shoulders during some verses. He also carved the goose (as seen above).

River Rowdies

I don't suppose any of us will forget where we were on July 27, 2012, the day I lost dozens of "twitter followers" by live-tweeting KING RALPH. It was a massacre! Looking back, I can't blame them. How many times since then have I my own self become heavy-hearted at the excessive tweeting rate of some well-meaning wag or another? And that is why I have decided to help everybody out by putting my live-tweeting of STRIKING DISTANCE into the following handy virtual live-tweeting format, rather than clogging up everyone's "timeline" with it. I promise you all the excruciating boredom of the live-tweet experience with half the mess. Before we begin, it occurs to me that not only did Donald Barthelme invent the TV recap, he simultaneously invented the live-tweet. With preliminaries concluded, come with me as I list the things I see in STRIKING DISTANCE. A police car races toward the camera. Lightning strikes! Words say STRIKING DISTANCE!... Boots sloshing in the rain. Dr. Theresa just walked in and saw me furrowing my brow watching STRIKING DISTANCE and said, "Your seriousness is humorous."... Bruce Willis is disgraced... Bruce's dad is Frasier's dad from FRASIER! He's a cop, JUST LIKE IN FRASIER! Frasier's dad says a very Frasier's dad-like thing about Bruce's "mother's side of the family."... All his former cop friends think Bruce Willis is a "rat."... Bruce drives all crazy, like he's in a cop movie!... Frasier's dad is blasé about all the near collisions, making idle chit chat during the near-death experiences. This really IS like a FRASIER episode! Eight minutes in and we have our first action-movie fireball!... I have a feeling Frasier's dad is about to bite it. ... Ten minutes in: SECOND FIREBALL. ... Dr. Theresa says I should comment on the bad guy's driving gloves, which I totally meant to do... Cars hopping in the air like rabbits! Frasier's dad is still alive for the moment... Uh-oh. I take it back. Here's the reliable Dennis Farina as Uncle Nick? Uncle Rick? He's a cop too. ... They "caught the killer" and Bruce deduces in literally half a second they got the wrong man, just by looking at him... but the other cops don't want Bruce to rock the boat. Not even Uncle Nick or Rick! Uncle Rick/Nick's kid is jumping off a bridge! It's Bruce Willis's own cousin he ratted on! Well, there goes Cousin Jimmy. And here comes the rain. Like God himself is crying for Cousin Jimmy!... TWO YEARS LATER... It sure feels like it ha ha! ... Bruce Willis has a cat. A rat with a cat! Get it? ... Alka Seltzer... microwaving a hot towel... that's Bruce's version of breakfast! ... Now he's a boat cop. All the boat cops are standing around in their short pants. Short pants cops! ... I think Bruce Willis just dumped his crabby boss in the river as a prank. He'll never get anywhere with an attitude like that!... Bruce's name is Tom Hardy! Like the depressing novelist!... Everywhere Bruce Willis goes, other cops try to beat him up... Bruce: sensitive, weepy. The thinking man's cop!... Tom Sizemore, another cop cousin... Bruce Willis lives on a houseboat. Hey! Tom Sizemore talks about THE SIMPSONS! Tom Sizemore's brother AND mother jumped in the river. Stay away from the river, everybody. Do they want to make me suspect that Tom Sizemore is the killer? Because it's working. But it's too easy. He says ominous things like "I... I gotta meet a girl." And just when he comes back to town the killings start again. Too easy... Bruce Willis's new boat cop partner is SARAH JESSICA PARKER! She's introduced to him as a "qualified diver." I wonder if that will come into play! [It doesn't. Chekhov would be ashamed. - ed.]... Rowdies in a speedboat!... Oh, I see. Bruce Willis bends the rules and SJP is "by the book." ME: "What's that guy wearing, a neckerchief?" DR. THERESA (sounding sad about my decline): "It's a tattoo, sweetie."... Bruce Willis knocked somebody down a hole. "Down the hole!" shouted Dr. Theresa... Bruce Willis just shot three or four guys, I lost count. SJP helped him by yelling. Now he has grudging respect for her! You can see it in his eyes... I think I'll have some rye. I might miss something... Thinking, those guys Bruce shot were probably pirates, technically!... "There's an old Italian saying: 'Don't scald your tongue on another man's soup.'" Wise words, Dennis Farina. "Hey, Hardy, we're out of our patrol zone," warns by-the-book Sarah Jessica Parker. You really think Bruce Willis cares?... SJP and Bruce are dramatically acting at each other!... Aw, suddenly SJP spies Bruce behaving tenderly when he doesn't know she's looking! Maybe there's something to this gruff boat cop after all... They're really piling on the Tom Sizemore circumstantial evidence. I ain't buying it! No matter how unnervingly he giggles. Dennis Farina just had this line of dialogue: "Go up there. Go up there. GO UP THERE! Go up there."... This movie has a lot of blue language!... Andre Braugher! He's as young as a baby!... Tom Sizemore sure talks about the river a lot... SJP invites Bruce to the Policeman's Ball, which seems like a great place for him to be beaten to a pulp, which he is. Angry cops conveniently tear off his shirt, exposing him sexily. Tom Sizemore drinks heavily while a fireworks display goes off over his head. This one cop who hates Bruce the most is the guy who played the studio head in THE PLAYER.

Can't think of his name. But boy does he hate Bruce Willis. ... SJP pours Bruce's booze down the sink. She doesn't even know him! That's presumptuous. She hasn't even seen him drunk. I don't even think he's BEEN drunk in this movie (?), though the angriest cop calls him a "lush" once. ... Bruce Willis's cat watches as Bruce and SJP express themselves with an intimacy that is usually reserved for the conjugal bower. The cat seems bored. But POV suggests a creepy killer is probably watching too! ... Ha ha, now SJP and Bruce are chasing a car, but they're in a boat! This doesn't seem practical. THIRD FIREBALL. One hour, seven minutes in. ... It is suddenly revealed that Sarah Jessica Parker's character has a daughter... NAMED SARAH. ... Bruce just had the hoary old line, "I don't know how high up this goes." Dennis Farina: "He's been under surveillance for three weeks." Guy from The Player: "CLOSE surveillance?" Ha ha ha, I don't know why that exchange made me laugh so hard. I guess it was the way the guy said "CLOSE surveillance?" But it's clear that SJP has been spying on Bruce! NOW who's the rat? "Thank you very much, detective, you may step down," says Andre Braugher in that super sarcastic way that only Andre Braugher can deliver! He's not thanking the detective at all! Bruce Willis's cat is hungry. "Go catch a rat," says Bruce Willis to his cat. Ironic!... Somebody's "dead in the water." Literally! I can't tell who it is, even though Bruce is saying "NOOOOOOO!!!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!!" But then again I thought that pirate's tattoo was a neckerchief. ... Bruce Willis thinks Tom Sizemore is the killer. I guess he's not so smart after all. Well! The killer is Cousin Jimmy! He ain't dead! I think Cousin Jimmy is the guy who was in MURPHY BROWN. The killer is the dude from MURPHY BROWN! I think. A guy from MURPHY BROWN killed a guy from FRASIER! What's the world coming to? "Are you too proud to drink with a dead man?" - Cousin Jimmy. I'm going to start saying that at bars. That guy's hair! The guy from MURPHY BROWN. He seriously looks worse than Donald Trump. Plus he's a psychotic murderer. Oh, wait! Dennis Farina killed Frasier's dad. So never mind. Ha ha, SJP just stuck out her foot and tripped the guy from MURPHY BROWN. Boat chase! Foot chase! We're back on the bridge. "You'll never beat me!" screams the guy from MURPHY BROWN at Bruce Willis. So I wonder who's going to win! Underwater fight! Lots of bubbles when you're fighting underwater. ... The angriest cop admits he was wrong. Bruce Willis punches him. SJP runs up. They smooch. Flowers on a grave. We see SJP's alleged daughter for the first time. They're all at the cemetery together like a regular family. THE END.

The Opprobrium of Hans Christian Andersen

I haven't told you about this ghost book I'm reading and I think it's because I don't like the way they punctuated the title. It's GHOSTS A NATURAL HISTORY: 500 YEARS OF SEARCHING FOR PROOF by Roger Clarke. If you're going to call it that, I guess you need two colons, but two colons would look weird, so don't call it that! I see in the fine print that the original British title was A NATURAL HISTORY OF GHOSTS. That's so much better. I can just imagine some jerk American publishing executive saying, "No, Roger, we have to LEAD with the GHOSTS or PEOPLE won't GET IT!" But that's not my point. I think it might be the best ghost book I've ever read, and I've read lots of ghost books. That's my point! Let me just quote three or four brief fragments to give you some flavor. 1) "In 1821, syphilitic, mercury-poisoned and deranged, he had his bed removed to a gardener's cottage and called in the dilapidators, watching with satisfaction as they knocked the house down." 2) "Mrs Crowe... possibly had a drug habit, which drew the opprobrium of Hans Christian Andersen on a visit to Scotland. On 17 August 1847, he describes her inhaling ether with another woman at a party, and with a frisson of misogynistic horror he describes 'the feeling of being with two mad creatures - they smiled with open dead eyes...'" 3) "Manning said of the man she had murdered and buried under the flagstones of her kitchen, 'I never liked him and I beat his skull with a ripping chisel.'" 4) "From around the time of the Hammersmith ghost, people's attitude toward ghosts was becoming confrontational. Young men sought to conquer their fears. Every evening, groups of them would be seen prowling the area, looking for the ghost, and anyone wearing light clothing could become a target." Clarke goes on to describe the sad story of a bricklayer named Thomas Milward who "wore the apparel traditional to his trade - white linen trousers, a white flannel waistcoat and a white apron." Some dummy mistook him for a ghost and he "threatened to punch the man's head." His mother-in-law told him to stop wearing white linen for his own safety but he was like, "No way!" (I paraphrase.) Then: "As he walked down Black Lion Lane, he was shot dead with a fowling gun by a frightened excise officer named Francis Smith, egged on after a drinking session with local watchman William Girder in the nearby White Hart pub. They had been exchanging tales about the ghost that had frightened the wife of a locksmith to death." Long story short, the king pardoned Francis Smith on the grounds of (and here I paraphrase again), "Hey, he thought he was shooting a ghost!" This is the same illustration of the Hammersmith Ghost that appears in the book.

******* Owl

Ace Atkins loaned me his copy of RUM PUNCH by Elmore Leonard as research for a project I'm doing and also because it's fun to read. This is one of the few books I've ever read where I thought with great deliberation, "Well, there's no way there will be an owl in this book." I was like, "Owls are not for Elmore Leonard! He is actually too cool for owls." And then on page 199 we get, "I go, 'Man, you sound like a ******* owl.'" When will I learn my lesson that every book has an owl in it? I edited out the cuss word for you!

Aaoogah!

Hey yeah so last night I watched ESCAPE PLAN, a Sylvester Stallone movie featuring a jaunty spotlight turn from Arnold Schwarzenegger. I swear that Schwarzenegger ended most of his conversations with Stallone with a pretty good wisecrack that sounded like a natural button - like, okay, that was a good wisecrack, we're moving on to another scene now - but then Stallone would have to tack on an extra wisecrack that was just gilding the lily, an inferior wisecrack, like Stallone had it in his contract that he always had to make the last wisecrack, like he had a guy on set to write toppers for him on the spur of the moment, like Bob Hope would have had, only this guy wasn't up to it. I feel sure my analysis would not stand up to the most basic level of scrutiny, but that's how it felt. One thing I enjoyed was when Stallone punched a guy in the gut a couple of times and the guy said "Aaoogah!" each time, like an old-time car horn: "Aaoogah! Aaoogah!" Or it may have been Stallone saying "Aaoogah! Aaoogah!" with the exertion of his punching. One of them was saying "Aaoogah! Aaoogah!" Once again, I am not sure my fleeting impressions of the moment would stand up in a court of law. Arnold Schwarzenegger had a "mad scene" more or less like Ophelia's! And I have to say he did a good job of it. He played that whole section in German. He sold it, man, and I was buying it all the way! Genius and madness glimmered in his eyes! In equal measure! And now I would like to warn you about the very major spoiler that is going to take up almost all the rest of this "post." It's about the ending. Okay. So, Stallone is about to wreak a mighty vengeance on evil warden Jim Caviezel by blowing him up. In the split second before the explosion, Jim Caviezel, realizing what is about to happen, just cocks his head to the side very slightly, like a curious little dog, and squeaks. He squeaks! An anticlimactic and fascinating choice. I could not find an "internet" image of Jim Caviezel squeaking like an interested puppy, but here is Sylvester Stallone about to set off the explosion with his gun, and someone has gone to the trouble of labeling it in yellow letters. While I am not sure I agree with his or her assessment, I admire the effort. (A late postscript! It strikes me that Schwarzenegger's "madness" - an act designed to confound an authority figure - has more to do with Hamlet's than Ophelia's.)

SINATRA HIT BY EGGS

I still don't like this book about Sinatra. But I'm still reading it, so credit where credit is due. I just read the part where this kid named Alexander J. Dorogokupetz is sick of all the girls loving Sinatra so much, so he goes to a Sinatra concert and pelts him with raw eggs: "'I vowed to put an end to this monotony of two years of consecutive swooning,' Dorogokupetz said... 'I took aim and threw... it hit him... his mouth was open... I felt good.'" I don't know whether that last series of ellipses is from the original newspaper account or comes courtesy of the author. If that's the author's edit I have to acknowledge his skill. "I took aim and threw... it hit him... his mouth was open... I felt good." That's the best prose in the book so far! I thought I was reading Céline for a minute, and in fact throwing eggs at Frank Sinatra is something a Céline character would do. Maybe the credit goes to Alexander J. Dorogokupetz. The author also has the good instinct to quote the headline SINATRA HIT BY EGGS, which sounds like something from a Frank O'Hara poem... or at least has the punch of LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED! from that one Frank O'Hara poem. "I took aim and threw... it hit him... his mouth was open... I felt good."

Don't Punch a Mountain

I think I suggested that Jake should punch a mountain? In yesterday's ADVENTURE TIME meeting? And Pen said, "If you're looking at a mountain, you're not going to punch it." That struck me as wise, so I jotted it down. It was also a writing lesson, not as revelatory as the first writing lesson Pen taught me, which also involved punching ("click" here to learn), but a helpful one. What else about writing? Megan Abbott and I have been talking a lot about Philip Roth lately. I remembered that when I was still but a lad I found a sort of curdled and corroded yellow paperback of PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT for ten cents at one of the library book sales I loved so much. But I was too ashamed to take it out and read it publicly (the poorly treated paperback was even physically repulsive!), so I stuck it in a drawer and forgot it forever. So I have never read PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT of all things! So yesterday, on the way to meet Tom Franklin for one of our lunches, I stopped by Square Books for a fresh copy. Then I sat reading the first few pages while waiting for Tom to show up, and I was laughing so much! What really got me was the narrator describing his father's almost mystical case of constipation. Roth brings constipation into the realm of legend and myth! (For contrast see Mailer's approach in ANCIENT EVENINGS.) Finally, Lisa Howorth writes in to suggest that maybe they said something about eating "a banana whole" in DOCTOR FAUSTUS, not "banana hole," as we were certain we had heard. "They def ate a banana," Lisa wrote. I replied that maybe I should not watch Elizabethan plays drunk, though I'm sure the Elizabethans did.

Good Wool

Hey that crazy Doris Day movie is on again. Turns out her husband in it runs a wool company. He makes a speech about what "damn good wool" this wool company has. Then when he talks about shaking up the wool business, some indignant wool expert sputters, "Sir, we sell woolens!" Very dramatic stuff. You know, a lot of Doris Day movies are about her being married to jerks and then at the end we're supposed to be happy when she decides to get along with the jerk. I have a feeling that's where this one is heading. But that's not why I summoned you here. I saw most of A STAR IS BORN on TCM the other day, the original version, and now I see why Scorsese put Lionel Stander into NEW YORK, NEW YORK, his STAR IS BORN style movie (though it owes more of a debt to the Vincent Minnelli remake). Lionel Stander (pictured) sure is hardboiled as the studio PR man. I'd say he might be one of the most hardboiled characters I ever saw in a movie. The movie is strange and compelling. It veers tonally from goofy slapstick (a grumpy landlord smashes a light fixture with his head; there's comical fainting and dish-dropping) to screaming, hellish nightmare by the end. Plus you've got that hardboiled Lionel Stander. Some of his dialogue is just great old-fashioned hardboiled cracking wise, like when he runs into Frederic March at the racetrack and March asks him, "What do they do with the actors when you're not around?" and Stander says, "They cut 'em into slices and fry 'em with eggs." There are lots more bitter gems, and you can see the scene on the TCM "web" site by "clicking" here. By the end, though, Stander is so hardboiled it's shocking. Big and depressing spoiler here... Frederic March, an alcoholic, drowns himself. Stander sits at a bar reading about it in the newspaper. He says, "First drink of water he had in years," and "How do you send a telegram of congratulations to the Pacific Ocean?" Whoa! The bartender laughs it up. Unlike the grumpy landlord, there is no comeuppance for Lionel Stander! I kind of wanted to see Janet Gaynor pop up out of nowhere and punch him in the gut. But his cold cynicism was triumphant.

The Owl "Who" Wasn't There

Now that I have had almost three cups of coffee I have the energy to tell you about reading another book with an owl in it - you know how extremely tired I am of every book having an owl in it. It used to be a fun parlor game, "spotting the owl," but now every owl is just a punch in the gut. Gee if there were something a little off about my mind I could really have a nice-sized breakdown right now, like, WHY IS THE GOVERNMENT PUTTING OWLS IN EVERY BOOK? (See also.) But I'm normal, ha ha! Normal, I tell you! Finished THE GO-BETWEEN ("you insular owl" was handed out as an insult from one character to another) and grabbed some de Maupassant stories off the shelf. My buddy Jim Whorton recommended them many years ago. I cracked open the book at random to a story called "A Woman's Confession." A ha! Sounds spicy! So I dug right in and came quickly upon an owl. Or rather there wasn't an owl. If I may quote the translator, "in the deep gloom which weighed upon the world not even the hoot of an owl could be heard." Now, I am sure there is some famous philosophical or mathematical argument about proving a thing by its absence - and isn't there a "dog that didn't bark" in Sherlock Holmes? - so I am going to spend the rest of my life thinking about why a book that specifically says there is no owl in it is for that reason a book with an owl in it. Goodbye forever.

Warm Last Night

It was strangely warm last night. Here we are on the balcony of the City Grocery Bar: Dr. Theresa, Bill Boyle, Megan Abbott, me (creeping around in the background as usual), and Ace Atkins. We were there to mark various milestones. One of the happiest is Bill's debut novel GRAVESEND, which is finally out in physical form. We all got one. You should get one too! GRAVESEND by William Boyle. Look for it wherever fine books are sold, and tell 'em "Bloggy" the "Blog" Mascot sent you! Ace and Bill rightly smoked big fat cigars to celebrate. It took us a while to nab a spot on the balcony: at first it was occupied completely by an Elaine Stritch convention! Ha ha, they didn't really look exactly like Elaine Stritch circa Stephen Sondheim's COMPANY, but a distinct "Ladies Who Lunch" vibe was coming off the balcony. The first time Dr. Theresa and Ace went to scope out the situation, one of the Elaine Stritches grabbed the lone empty chair on the balcony and pulled it slowly toward herself with forbidding proprietary certitude. Much in the spirit of the feisty Elaine Stritch! Before stepping over to the bar I bought so many books at Square Books I don't even want to tell you. (Look: you can see the overstuffed, wrinkled brown paper bag of books right there on the table.) My eye fell upon George Singleton's recent story collection STRAY DECORUM, for example, and what could I do but get it, especially after the one-two punch of that great interview with George in LENT MAGAZINE? But what sealed the deal was opening it at random and seeing my new favorite short-story title. George also came up with my former favorite short-story title, "This Itches, Y'all." And here is the new winner: "I Think I Have What Sharon's Got."

Three Things and I'll Let You Go

1) I caught a little of that LIFE OF PI last night. It was a scene with a hyena and a tiger and an orangutan and a dead zebra and some dude all hanging out together in a little boat. THINGS WERE NOT GOING WELL. 2) It's fun having Megan Abbott around because of the way she talks. Like yesterday she used the word "wild" and I asked her to clarify what she meant by "wild" and she said "Going to roadhouses and dancing with men." AND SHE MEANT IT. 3) I thought tonight's ADVENTURE TIME was great! Written and storyboarded by Cole Sanchez and Kent Osborne and all about a sandwich. It was one of the first ones I worked on and I remember trying to pitch a really baroque ending and I went on and on and on and on and on and on describing every elaborate detail then Pen said, "But it would be more satisfying if he just punched him in the face." AND IT WAS. That was one of the best writing lessons I ever got.