Four Quotations

1. "Poor ruffians, their lives vanished like a dream." - OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH 2. Okay, so when I got back from my travels, my schedule was a little mixed up, so once I was up when I should have been sleeping, watching TCM instead, and they aired an old trailer for the Bobby Van movie SMALL TOWN GIRL. You may recall it as the movie, previously mentioned, but not by name, on the "blog," in which Bobby Van hops around. Anyway, the trailer announcer says, of Bobby Van, "His dancing is as new as a rocket trip to the moon." And I thought, well, that's not true. It wasn't true then. It's not true now. And, in fact, it was never true. 3. I was going to call this "post" "Two Quotations," which is a much better title for reasons I cannot fully explain... not even to myself! For one thing, "two" is a cool word and "four" is a punk-ass word. And not in the good way! But something bugged me last night and I keep thinking about it and even though I know that no one will care about it, I also don't care that no one will care about it. So, my current "nighttime book" is I REMEMBER by the famed Oulipo writer Georges Perec. I should mention that it is, put simply, a list of things that Georges Perec remembered. So I'm lying there reading and I'm thinking, hey, I remember a number of these things. Hey, maybe I should count the number of things I remember that Georges Perec also rememebered. Hey, no, I'm not going to do that, what a waste of time, which has never stopped me before. Hey, but I'm already done with half of the book. To go back and start over seems like a lot of work. I'm not into that! BUT! I said to myself, BUT! When I skimmed over the introduction and the translator's note, didn't they kind of imply that I would remember none of this, and that I'd lie here scratching my head and crying my way through the experience? So I looked at the translator's note (by Philip Terry), which quotes ANOTHER translator calling I REMEMBER Perec's "most untranslatable book... a collection of brief rembrances of things and people that are indecipherable to anyone not French and not of his generation," which isn't true at all... and it must be admitted that a small dab of skepticism is applied by Philip Terry to the quotation. (As for Perec's generation, he was born in 1936, if you care. I don't.) 4. HOWEVER! In the introduction, the co-translator and co-editor David Bellos claims - of a stage adaptation performed in 2003 - that the "majority of the spectators of the show cannot conceivably share any of Perec's memories directly." Well, that's not true, is it? It's the "conceivably" and the "any" to which I principally object. Like... okay. Here's one example. Perec remembers that Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister. It's probably an exaggeration to say that everybody knows that. But everybody knows that. And they remember it the same way Perec remembered it, from hearing it or reading it somewhere. I doubt that Warren Beatty came over to Perec's house and said, "Hey, guess what? Shirley MacLaine is my sister!" So we all remember it just the way Perec did. In fact, both Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty are alive as I type this. It's not like Perec lived on a different planet a million years ago. So maybe Warren Beatty WILL come to your house and tell you who his sister is. It could happen! That's all I'm saying. I guess I should also stipulate that sure, a lot of the time I don't know what the hell Perec is talking about. But I've always enjoyed reading things I don't understand. Other people have told me that they "look things up." I get it. But I don't do it.

Big Stuff Going On

Well, Dr. Theresa and I have finally done it. We found a way for one of our cats to pick lottery numbers. Result? We've won $18 so far. The cat correctly picked three numbers on a "Match 5" ticket and the "powerball" on another. I informed McNeil first, as it dovetailed so perfectly with his plans to teach a dog to win at blackjack. Let's see what else is in the news. This just over the wire! It seems the Million Dollar Book Club finished reading a biography of Lord Byron, then I grabbed up a mass-market paperback with 3/4 of the cover torn off and the pages all brown with age and sadness, something I found in the big barrel of orphaned books no one wants in the park. And okay! Here comes some of that sweet, sweet synchronicity McNeil loves so much: in a postscript to the Byron book, kind of like the end of AMERICAN GRAFFITI or ANIMAL HOUSE, they tell you what happened to some of the "characters" later in life. For example, Byron's daughter Ada, we are told, "is remembered as the world's first computer programmer." Well! For just that reason, she also turns out to be a character in this random book I happened to snatch from the garbage pile of life. The book is some kind of "steam punk" or "speculative fiction" or I don't know what the hell it is.

Important

By now you are intimately familiar with my new habit of reading old comic books at the close of each busy day. Among the most recent delivery from Tom Franklin was nestled one about Zatanna, the superhero who is also a magician. As you can see in the illustration above, there was an allusion to Phyllis Diller in the old Zatanna comic book. This is important information that I need to relay to McNeil right away. As he is, for all practical purposes, the only person still reading the "blog," I believe that my mission has already been accomplished. But I am going to check in with him privately as well, because I also need to tell him about a double entendre accidentally (?) made by the Flash in the same comic. It is too saucy to be printed here on the "blog." Now, I am sure you will never forget the time I found an owl in an Alan Moore Swamp Thing comic book. And I know you feel as strongly as I do about the time I found out Jan Potocki thought he was a werewolf. (You know, you can "click" on all these "links" to refresh your memory of these matters.) The latter incident caused me, somewhat indirectly, to purchase a copy of Potocki's novel THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA from Square Books. I could almost swear I already had a copy of it at some remote time in the past, but that mystery is forever shrouded in the mists of my mellow golden yesterdays. Anyhow! This paperback of THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA features as its cover the very same Goya etching lovingly reproduced in Swamp Thing, bestowing the presence of its own scary owl upon the later work. Whether there is an owl in the text of Potocki's novel, I have not yet had an opportunity to ascertain. However, my happiness remains unmuted, as the coincidence allows me to inform you that one of the old comic books I read last night in bed happened to be a pre-Moore Swamp Thing, in which some punk-rock vampires used hollowed-out pinball machines as coffins. One punk-rock vampire explained the uncanny similarities between being in a mosh pit and his existence as one of the bloodthirsty undead, a monologue that put me in mind of the fear of beatniks exhibited in pop art of an even earlier era.

Mr. Frazzlebottom

I saw a tiny bit of THE GUNFIGHTER on TCM last night. Some no-good punk is trying to rile up Gregory Peck, so he calls him "Mr. Frazzlebottom." He calls him "Mr. Frazzlebottom" about ten times in quick succession. "Say, Mr. Frazzlebottom, can I buy you a drink?" And so on. Ten times, I bet! "What's the matter, Mr. Frazzlebottom, you feeling okay?" I paraphrase. It truly is irritating, this kid is onto something. Now, I don't "blog" anymore, so I don't know why I'm typing this. Now that I don't "blog" anymore, I generally just email this type of thing straight to McNeil.

The Golden Rule

As is well documented, I don't "blog" anymore unless I stumble across something I should have put in my cigarette lighter book but didn't know about in time. So! Megan Abbott and I are reading a Hollywood memoir by Shirley MacLaine, and she tells about how Dean Martin "would light a cigarette with his solid gold lighter, blow out the flame, and toss the gold lighter from the window as if it was a used match." So! This naturally reminded me of something I DID put in my cigarette lighter book: the time Hal Needham maliciously tossed his friend's gold cigarette lighter from the window of a speeding car as a joke. If only I had known about Dean's habit. What a study in contrasts Dino and Needham would have made! As MacLaine notes, someone always retrieved Dean's lighter for him, whereas (Shirley MacLaine does not note this part; how could she?) the lighter of Needham's friend was seemingly lost forever. So Needham's act is more "punk rock" (I guess? Jon Langford once told me that being "punk rock" does not necessarily call for unmannerly behavior) while Dean's is ironic (maybe? I have no idea what I'm talking about. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't know about this in time to put it in the book). But I think we can agree that Dean is on firmer ground morally. I'm glad that's settled.

Flickering Existence

Not by any plan, I have been watching and enjoying a number of John Huston movies lately: UNDER THE VOLCANO, MOBY-DICK and the one he made about Toulouse-Lautrec. So last night I watched THE DEAD. I didn't even consider that today would be St. Patrick's day! No, I just live by the seat of my pants, free and easy. I liked THE DEAD much better than the first time I saw it, back when it came out. Then I was a young punk who was very offended about the way they chopped up the last paragraph of James Joyce's short story, which I probably called "my favorite paragraph" at the time. This time I knew it was coming, so I was all right. Here's a funny fact. I don't think it's a spoiler or will get me in any kind of trouble because it was nipped in the bud. But not long ago I got the urgent idea to end an ADVENTURE TIME outline with Princess Bubblegum reading the last paragraph of "The Dead" to Finn and Jake. Ha ha! I knew it would never get into the show. It didn't make much sense, even. But I convinced myself that it flowed naturally from what had come before. Not the whole last paragraph! I'm not totally crazy! I had Princess Bubblegum starting with "Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland." I probably used to call that "one of my favorite sentences in literature" when I was a young smarty, and I probably still feel that way. Adam was very nice about it. He made the note "I'm not deleting this" on the document. Ha ha! But he did go on to provide some reasonable notes about why this particular episode we were working on should possibly not end with Princess Bubblegum reciting the conclusion of "The Dead." Dr. Theresa didn't watch THE DEAD with me last night, but she told me a funny story about going to see it when it came out. She was just a teenager at the time and saw the title THE DEAD on a marquee and assumed it was a horror movie. You know how she likes horror movies! So she went in expecting a good scare. Ha ha! Well, the short story does have these lines in it, which sound fairly Lovecraftian out of context: "His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence." Scary! So after I watched THE DEAD I wanted to read the short story again. So I got out my paperback of DUBLINERS. And I was like, this is a neat old paperback from the 1950s with a crease in the cover. I know I didn't have this paperback originally. I think I bought it to replace my first copy of DUBLINERS, which I gave away. And then I remembered the circumstances. I was in my 20s and a French girl came to visit Mobile, Alabama. I don't say "girl" condescendingly - I mean to express that we were naive boys and girls then. So three of us boys were keen to escort her around all the time. And we were so jealous of one another that all three of us took her everywhere. Like, if we went to a restaurant, it was a table for four: her and three guys, frantically jostling for position at the table. I recall the restaurant: The Ivory Chopstick. I remember that we all ordered two desserts. Two desserts apiece, I mean. We were so thin in those days. The Ivory Chopstick didn't have a liquor license and they got around it by offering strawberries floating in red wine and an obscenely soaked baba au rhum after dinner. I remember that we took her to a party on the water at Jimmy Buffett's mother's house (!?!). Long story. We all knew Jimmy Buffett's mother in those days. Tom Franklin was at that party and we delighted in strutting around the dock with our new French friend in front of him. I remember that we took her to somebody's house and showed her THE AFRICAN QUEEN on a tiny TV such as poor people like us had in those days. We thought she'd be impressed! (Strange coincidence! Another John Huston movie.) I remember that after the movie she said, "It was not so good." Ha ha! Thus we failed American culture. But I did get to drive her out to my hometown of Bayou La Batre without the other two guys coming along. And that's where I gave her my copy of DUBLINERS. And that's the exciting story of why I eventually purchased this strange but attractive 1950s edition of DUBLINERS instead of that one Penguin paperback everybody else has. So! After watching the movie last night, I wanted to read the story again. But I wanted a little noise on in the background. Don't you ever want just a little noise in the background while you're reading? So I turned on TCM, and because it was Jerry Lewis's birthday, they were showing CRACKING UP! And I thought: this is perfect. I just watched CRACKING UP the other night, so it won't be distracting. But I kept pausing in my reading of "The Dead" to laugh at CRACKING UP. For example, I'd happen to glance up and Jerry would be staring at me, straight into the camera. He does that a lot in CRACKING UP. Or he'd grunt or yelp or do what I can only call his "vocalise." And that was "cracking me up" especially last night. And then there was the scene when a server in a restaurant offers him a choice of many different kinds of salad dressing, including "bleu cheese" and "brown cheese." The phrase "brown cheese" really got me! Was it Joycean, "brown cheese," or that impossibly long and incantatory list of salad dressings, was THAT Joycean? Have I called Jerry "Joycean" before? I'll check. Yes, "click" here!

Drumstick Adventure

You know, just about every Monday, my coworker Ashly Burch asks me "How was your weekend?" and it's a very pleasant and considerate query but I sit there in silence with a dumb look on my face because I can't think of anything to say because nothing happened that weekend. Well, today is gonna be different, says I! Went out to Faulkner's house to play accordion on the Thacker Mountain Radio Show. They never had a radio show there before, and hardly even a radio. Faulkner hated the radio. There's a story about that but you'll have to go to Faulkner's house and ask Bill Griffith. He runs the place! I don't know how Faulkner felt about accordions. Kelly Hogan got in trouble for sitting - with no malice aforethought - on Faulkner's freezer. Because guess what? It's not just a freezer, it's a museum exhibit! Anyway, they had made Faulkner's kitchen into a green room for musicians, which I'm sure stressed out even the chill Bill Griffith. And I was thinking, yeah, but Hogan is probably the first person to sit on the lid of that freezer since Faulkner! It's like their very butts touched through the fabric of time!

Here's a picture that Megan Abbott took of Dr. Theresa (waving her hands in the air like she just doesn't care... but she does!) and Thacker producer Kathryn McGaw York grooving out on the sight of all their crazy hard work coming to fruition. Note Lopez's fetching hat, clearly visible in two photos thus far. Saw David Swider of The End of All Music. He said I should bring my Emmy to the record store for "Touch the Emmy Day," and people will come by and touch my Emmy while I spin records under the name "DJ Emmy." It seemed like a hilarious idea while we drank whiskey in Faulkner's yard and swooned companionably in the blazing hot sun! I feel like everybody sang about ghosts. Is that an exaggeration? I'm not sure! Must have been the unconscious pull of the setting. Or maybe songwriters just happen to like ghosts. I remember once many years ago a friend of mine claimed that she didn't like any song with the word "ghost" in it, which I found stunningly arbitrary. Okay, I'm leaving a lot of stuff out. But later that night, there was another show (not on Faulkner's lawn), and I was happy to hear great musicians like Amy Ray and Laurie Stirratt literally singing Dr. Theresa's praises (well, not literally! They were speaking, not singing, at those moments) from the stage. But before that late-night show, Dr. Theresa, who was in charge, was faced with some emergencies! Like: an amp that shocked a famous session guitarist with its electricity! Or: a drum kit but NO DRUMSTICKS! Jennifer and I were sent out into the night to scour the town for drumsticks. We went to a bar called Proud Larry's, where there is usually a band playing, to see whether the drummer might have an extra pair of sticks. But as we approached the door I noticed that the band's name had been ominously rubbed from the chalkboard outside! And sure enough, the band had been canceled because everybody wanted to watch the University of Mississippi play at Alabama, a big game. BUT! A thoughtful waiter told us that one of the bartenders was a drummer. And the bartender kindly went to check his car and found a drumstick. A single drumstick! It felt like a kind of triumph. A useless triumph! But I encouraged Jennifer to hold the pointless drumstick aloft in a victorious gesture as we returned. By the time we got back they had already found two more drumsticks. So we actually had one more drumstick than was absolutely necessary! Chris Lopez played first, under his solo guise "Tenement Halls." ("Click" here to listen to my favorite Tenement Halls song: you won't be sorry!) He kept taunting us with the first few bars of "Black Ice" (a Rock*A*Teens song which I have written about in the New York Times! or their "web" site anyway) but couldn't remember the lyrics. Finally he called out from the stage, "Theresa, what's the first line?" And we yelled back at him from the back table, but we didn't quite have them right either. Turns out the first line is "In a town up north of Nashville, where the Crackers go to learn how to play..." (I think) But (though we had the second half right) I had always heard it as something like, "In a town outta nada of Naughahooga" or something like that. Anyway, it got Chris rolling! After Chris's set, Rock*A*Teens fan Bill Boyle and I discussed the lyrics of "Black Ice" and how many different, incorrect ways we had heard them over the years. One thing I enjoyed was the fluid spirit of the proceedings. It didn't seem like five or six different bands playing, but more like one larger band that kept undulating and changing its shape in a lovely way. Lopez played drums for Amy Ray and Jon Langford and Hogan... Langford played guitar for Hogan... Hogan sang harmonies for Langford and Ray... like that. I really enjoyed hearing the Amy Ray/Rock*A*Teens collaboration "Black Heart Today." I found an older, milder, more "acoustic" performance of it on the "internet," which is good, but if you "click" here you will miss Lopez's rabid drum fills, for one thing, which had grown in majestic stature as the night drew to a close. I hope somebody recorded it! And all its mystical punk rock vibrations of glory.

I played accordion on three songs for Hogan, I think, including one I wrote a couple of decades ago (ugh! what a thought! decades! "click" here if you'd like to hear it, false starts and all). I played on Hogan's cover of the Magnetic Fields song "Papa Was a Rodeo" (really, I just noodled along) and I got so concerned with my noodling that I didn't even notice that Amy Ray had come up to join in, and I happened to glance out of the corner of my eye to see Amy Ray and Kelly Hogan gracefully two-stepping together.

Here's a still photo of that moment (post-dancing, I think). I stole it from somebody's twitter, sorry! There was a giant in a cowboy hat who was VERY enthusiastic about Langford's set. He whooped with such frightening intensity that Langford had to stop the show and calm him down with vinegary Welsh quips. Later I went to the men's room and found that giant cowboy in there with his girlfriend! They were just hanging out, no funny business, don't get me wrong. But then as he stood at the urinal he was going "OOOHHHHH! OUCH! ARRGHHHHH! AAAAAHHHWWWWWW!" like a person in the greatest human agony, which perhaps he was. Why did I mention that when there were so many nicer things to mention instead? Like breakfast the next day with Julie and Barry and Langford? John Currence surprised us by coming up behind us stomping on the floor, shaking the very building with his mighty tread! What the hell, it's his building, he can do what he wants! Then he bought champagne for the table as you can plainly see from this photo of the occasion.

Currence (not pictured) was pumped up and celebrating the University's triumph over its rival, to which I have already alluded. Sorry, Ashly, a lot of other stuff happened but my mind is going.

Exit Joan Trash

BARTHOLOMEW FAIR by Ben Jonson really picks up when these punk rock characters Leatherhead and Trash show up. Of course it was 1614 and they didn't have punk rock then as far as I know. And then I'm reading along and there's a stage direction, "Exit Joan Trash." And so it made me even happier that Trash's first name is Joan, somehow that's even MORE punk rock. The characters use the word "punk" a lot, as a matter of fact, though back then it meant "prostitute." When I looked at the dramatis personae to confirm Trash's first name, I noticed that there's a character named "Punk Alice" in the wings.

Chandelier Hat

I was kissing everybody on the cheek. Everybody in town! I kissed Bill Taft on the cheek. "Punk rock!" he exclaimed in response. (I finally understood the time Barry Mills kissed everybody in New York City, did I ever tell you about that? I think he wrote a song about it that went "Come here, girl, I'm gonna kiss you/ Hey there, boy, I'll kiss you too") Indulge me. Or don't. I'm just trying to remember why I was so happy for the past few days. This "blog" now works as my substitute memory. You're free to go. Bill and Caroline and Will came to town. Look! Bill Boyle took this picture of Bill and Will playing at the Powerhouse while Caroline sits ready to spring to the poetry podium and read some poetry. Caroline read some poems about the time the awful tornado tore through Cabbagetown. And guess what? Shana came all the way from Atlanta just to hear it. And guess what else! Last time Shana visited we were sitting on the balcony of City Grocery Bar and she started getting a million texts because THAT WAS THE NIGHT THE AWFUL TORNADO TORE THROUGH CABBAGETOWN.

Shana came back for some of that emotion recollected in tranquility you always hear about. Here's Caroline laying down some poetry on the people, photo by Kevin from the Isom Center. Caroline! A benevolent being who appears whenever she is needed! Whether you know it or not! Why, she appeared in Ohio (was it Ohio?) in a hotel room with Bill Taft and Kelly Hogan and me and the band They Might Be Giants. Did I know Caroline at all? In any case, my extensive knowledge of THE BRADY BUNCH (much to the annoyance of They Might Be Giants, as Caroline and I choose to remember it) stuck in her mind and led Caroline, eventually, to get me my first job that a human adult would have. And she has led me from milestone to milestone ever since... introducing me to Dr. Theresa, for example, as I have repeated several times. IT BEARS REPEATING. (Late addendum: I just now recalled - I think - that the very first time I met Caroline, she was Kelly Hogan's next-door neighbor and Kelly and I were out in the gravelly yard drinking wine from her grandmother's red Jell-O glasses; Caroline and her boyfriend were returning - why do I remember this? - from some unwanted and socially enforced visit to a gimmicky restaurant owned by some reactionary Georgia politician, can that be true?) The night before the music and poetry show, Dr. Theresa and I took Bill and Will and Caroline out to dinner and the restaurant was dark and everybody was holding up the menus to their eyes and moving the atmospheric candle around because we're all old now and Caroline had the idea for a chandelier that is also a hat. Or a hat that is also a chandelier? It sounded like a great idea at the time. Before the Powerhouse show Bill and Will played on the Thacker Mountain Radio show, our live local weekly fun fest. Introducing one song, Bill said that when he read Hamlet as a youngster he thought Hamlet was a real cool guy, but now that he's a dad, he really understands Claudius! "A middle-aged man trying to get things done," Bill said, but not exactly. Bill said it better. I sat next to Melissa Ginsburg! SHE HAD JUST SOLD HER FIRST NOVEL THAT VERY DAY. It's a thriller! I think this is okay to "announce." I think everybody knows. Melissa can write poetry AND thrillers! An enchantress she is! She liked Bill so much she wanted me to make her a mix tape of the awesome Atlanta music of my callow young adulthood. Okay, I was in my 30s. I was a late bloomer for callow young adulthood. Melissa and I slipped out and had a drink to celebrate. A twin celebration! Because also on that very same day I had sent off my cigarette lighter book to my editor.

Finished! Until I get notes. NO MORE THINKING ABOUT CIGARETTE LIGHTERS ALL DAY EVERY DAY. After the poetry and music it was back to City Grocery Bar. Shana came along with her friend Kerri, who has an extremely detailed tattoo of Burt Reynolds on her arm! Needless to say, we became fast friends. The next morning I was sitting with Bill and Will at Big Bad Breakfast and Jill, who runs the place, came up to say hello, and there was a nice "Bill and Will this is Jill" moment. Then Shana and Kerri popped in! Will's macaroni and cheese looked so good they had to get a couple of side orders. Kerri told me about how she developed her first-ever crush, and it was Burt Reynolds,

and it happened when she was four years old and saw SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. Then she had a dream, the first dream she can ever remember having, and in the dream Burt Reynolds kidnapped her in the car from THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. But it was pleasant! In the dream. Sadly, Bill and Will had to hit the road (Caroline had vanished like a dewdrop - yes, let's say dewdrop! - early in the morning) but Shana and Kerri were up for anything! I took them across the parking lot to that used book stall I like. Below is a "selfie" of Shana and Kerri. Shana found an old red-and-white checked cookbook with a recipe for "Cinnamon Prunes"! And the previous owner had left little scraps of papers in the book with notes written on them.

Always a bonus! Shana and Bill and Caroline are the kind of friends that are FRIENDS FOR LIFE, even though I never keep in touch with anybody because I'm the worst. I mean, you see them, and all the love in your heart comes flooding out. I'm not leaving Will out! We never hung out with him quite as much, though he is fine and good and endlessly creative and interesting and someone we love knowing. He keeps his own counsel. Or maybe we do! Somebody's keeping it somewhere. SIDENOTE: I realize that I romanticize the past. My friends are unbelievably tough people who weathered unbelievably tough times. END SIDENOTE. Will walked through the woods near Faulkner's house holding a bowl of lima beans from the Oxford Canteen and made up a funny story we almost believed about a bear being attracted by the aroma. I found this used book:

As you can see, the front and back covers must have come off at some point, so they are held in place by silver tape. But other than that, the book is in fine condition. It has that severe polite formality I so enjoy: "When the President fell into the arms of Detective Geary he coolly asked: 'Am I shot?'" Geary unbuttoned the President's vest, and, seeing blood, replied: 'I fear you are, Mr. President.'" The book is, as the title page promises, "Superbly Illustrated." Here are some lovely photos of Mrs. McKinley, the former Ida Saxton. Now I'm not saying she's any Frances Cleveland! But in the bottom right photo, doesn't she look like Gaby Hoffman's character on GIRLS?

And of course the book is filled with fascinating, uh, what's the word for it? When you reveal stuff without meaning to, like a Browning character? For example, the bodyguards pay no attention to the actual assassin because they are busy checking out an "Italian, whose dark, shaggy brows and black mustache caused the professional protectors to regard him with suspicion." Talk about profiling! Eyebrow profiling! And see where that gets you. After the books, Shana and Kerri and I went to The End of All Music, which they were more than taken with. They were ecstatic! They kept saying, "We should move here!" Lots of people say that. Dr. Theresa and I used to say it. I'd be happy if Bill and Caroline and Will and Shana and Kerri moved here. But then what? You have to ask yourself. What happens to the magic? And just yesterday the dopes who can do such things suddenly dumped our fine, progressive university chancellor for their own shady reasons. What if Shana and Kerri and Bill and Caroline and Will come back and have to search for us in a dystopian wasteland?

Kingdom of the Grackles

I keep hinting around about some project like it's some big secret, but it's not a secret and it's not a secret project, it's just a project, I guess it's a project. Hey! Remember when I went to an auction of Bob Hope's personal effects and then I wrote an essay about Bob Hope's ice buckets, and ice buckets in general, for THE ATLANTIC, and this was before the "Ice Bucket Challenge" became popular (remember the "Ice Bucket Challenge"?) so now my article is totally obsolete? Well, that essay series is related to a series of books that Bloomsbury is putting out and they asked me if I could think of an object I wanted to write about - another object - and I scratched my head and said "Cigarette lighters?" And looking back, I think I only said that because I had a lot of leftover notes about Bob Hope's cigarette lighters. But anyway, now I am writing a book about cigarette lighters and that is my so-called "secret project." So I flew to Oklahoma City to view a large private collection of cigarette lighters. (The lighters are actually in nearby Guthrie.) But I'm not going to tell you about that or it would spoil the book! Ha ha, you're not going to read that book, are you? TELL ME THE TRUTH! But here, let me look at my famous little notebook of famous jottings I always famously jot when I travel and see how many jottings are useless for the book and thus safe for me to share. Well! As always the question was what to read on the airplane. I looked around the shelves here at home and I just wasn't feeling anything. So I went to Square Books and leafed through Martin Short's autobiography again. I would never buy Martin Short's autobiography! I don't know why! Sorry, Martin Short! I like Martin Short. And I'd sit in a bookstore and read his autobiography for free - no better than a thief! - but I just can't make myself buy it. On the cover of his autobiography his head forms the "O" in "SHORT." But! His mouth is wide open, so maybe his mouth is the "O" in "SHORT." Or maybe his head is the solid part of the "O" and his mouth is the emptiness in the middle of the "O." I read some stuff about how he met Danny Thomas and Danny Thomas always carried a pistol in a holster on his hip! And then I put Martin Short's autobiography back in its proper place and went upstairs and started looking for a small paperback suitable for airplane reading. As I described some of my likings to the booksellers Kate and Kaitlyn, Kate exclaimed, "Do you like vampires?" Now, there is no way that Kate could have known I am currently working on a Marceline story for ADVENTURE TIME - a meeting about which story was to take place later that very afternoon! - so vampires and all their peculiar habits had been particularly on my mind.

(That's not a spoiler, is it? You know Marceline the Vampire Queen is a character on the show, right? Besides, Adam Muto himself recently tweeted these drawings of Marceline from the thing we've been working on - sketches by Hanna K.) So Kate and Kaitlyn tried to get me to buy a book called THE QUICK by Lauren Owen. "I'm a hundred pages in and there are no vampires yet," said Kaitlyn. I replied that that was fine. I reminded Kaitlyn of a book I had recommended to her, THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters, and how you had to wait a long time for the ghost, and Kaitlyn said, "There ARE NO GHOSTS in THE LITTLE STRANGER!" (This is an argument I've had before with other people.) So Kaitlyn and I argued about that in a friendly fashion while Kate thrust the vampire book into my hand. A big clunky hardback! Too big and heavy to carry through airports with my fragile arms. But I opened it up to page one just to be nice and the first sentence is this: "There were owls in the nursery when James was a boy." AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! So I said, "Sold!" And I left Square Books fully convinced that I would grit my teeth and lug this monster of a novel (523 pages, that's not so terrible) onto all the airplanes. BUT! I stopped by Ace Atkins's office and he had a nice, light paperback copy of LABRAVA by Elmore Leonard on his desk because he had been wanting me to read it. Ah, that's more like it. Sorry, Kaitlyn and Kate! But you almost had me. The vampires will be here for me when I get back. Ace urged me to stay at the Skirvin in Oklahoma City (he was there a lot when he was researching his Machine Gun Kelly book). Ace said the Skirvin was famous for being haunted and he sent me a New York Times article (!) about how professional basketball players who stay at the Skirvin get most especially haunted (!!). But I had already made reservations somewhere else. Ace also told me about a good steak place, but I had already - on Wright Thompson's recommendation - made reservations at Junior's, which Wright described in a tweet as an "old school 80s oil money cocaine rich dark red leather whiskey and T-bone joint."

And yes, that was a recommendation! So I guess my unintended message to Ace was "Screw your thoughtful suggestions!" Though I did bring that book he loaned me. I looked up the Oklahoma City weather on the "internet" and asked Dr. Theresa if she thought I should bring my overcoat. I wanted her to say no! We had an overcoat debate. Then it was time for my ADVENTURE TIME meeting. Kent popped up on my computer screen and started agreeing with Dr. Theresa! They were ganging up on me. But I didn't want to drag my bulky overcoat through the airport. Finally, Pen joined the meeting. "How many degrees should it be before I wear an overcoat?" I asked him. "Overcoats are fun, so I say any degrees," Pen replied. I explained that I prefer to travel light. One carry-on messenger bag, one book, and the clothes on my back! That's it! Pen suggested turning the overcoat into a hobo bindle and putting all my stuff in it. I said, "Yes, that's what they like to see at airports." When Pen found out I would ALSO be wearing my blue smoking jacket (under the OVERcoat) he had second thoughts and came around to my side! "I've seen Pen walking around with no jacket when it's FREEZING!" Kent objected, hinting that Pen was no judge of when to wear an overcoat. Now let's get to the jottings you've been craving. I'm skipping some good stuff because I'm tired. Too bad for you. 1. Went to Junior's on my first night in town, just as Wright had suggested. The cab driver, Cecil, took me past a strange building. I couldn't get a really good look - it was a pale, imposing lump in the dark - but I was intrigued enough to ask him what it was. Cecil said it was the "Gold Dome," a vestige of the glory days of Route 66. Cecil also mentioned the "Milk Bottle Building," but I didn't see that and don't know what it is.

I was reminded of the only other time I've been through Oklahoma City. It must have been 1988 or so. I got fired from my job and my friend Tony and I decided to drive across the country, often sticking to the old Route 66. When we drove through Oklahoma City it was literally covered in a white fog, the whole city. We didn't see a single thing. I later turned that incident into a short story for the fine Oklahoma literary magazine THIS LAND. We pulled up at Junior's. It appeared to be an office building! I walked into a sterile corridor with many doors and wasn't even sure I had the right place: it looked like the door to a dentist office waiting room. But as soon as I opened it up I was in Narnia! I literally walked into a different world. (I may as well mention here that Junior's was the second Oklahoma City restaurant I had walked into with "NO WEAPONS" etched in frosted glass at the entrance.) 2. That publicity picture earlier in this "post" can't do Junior's justice. I felt like I was in VERTIGO, TWIN PEAKS, THE SHINING and a Megan Abbott novel,

all in the best way, and I ate a princely meal that James Garner would have eaten in THE WHEELER DEALERS. 3. My table! They put me at a weird table, which felt like the best table in the house to me. It was a two-top nudged right up against a plate glass window, and on the other side of that window, inches from my left, was the blackness, flecked with gold and red, of a dark bar, with people wearing bolo ties and fur stoles and laughing and SMOKING! It was like a membrane through which I could see another time, and because it was soundproofed it really had the effect of a dream, a thin membrane providing a tempting glimpse of a whole other existence I could almost reach out and touch. 4. After dinner I had to go through that looking glass. It smelled like smoke! I never wanted to leave. 5. I spilled rye all over Ace's copy of LABRAVA. 6. I met three nice women who were out for a night on the town together. One was a realtor, one was an aspiring poet and one was drinking expensive cabernet and studying from an enormous textbook entitled HUMAN ANATOMY at the end of the bar! 7. The next day I went out to Guthrie to visit my contact with the lighter collection. I hired a driver named David to take me. He was born in Ethiopia. He said he works at the Skirvin a lot and Ace will be pleased to hear that he brought up the ghosts. Many of David's passengers have told him about being haunted at the Skirvin. David thinks it's a bunch of baloney. He doesn't believe in ghosts. He is a believer in science and evidence. He had a lot of very interesting psychological theories to explain why and how people fool themselves into thinking they see ghosts at the Skirvin. David's a big reader so we talked about books a lot and he told me interesting stories of his mother and father back in Ethiopia. 8. I can't tell you anything about the lighters because I'm saving it for my book. But I just stared at one of my notes ("Frankenstein nose" is all it said) for several minutes in total panic, thinking, "Oh my God! My notes are useless! I can't write this book!" But then I realized it was "Frankenstein noise." One of the lighters made a noise like the machines that brought Frankenstein's monster to life in the old movie. That's what that note meant. And that's all you're getting out of me! 9. My friends Sarah Marine and her husband Bayard Godsave live in a small town an hour away from Oklahoma City and they were nice enough to come all that way to meet me for dinner. As I stood outside the hotel waiting for them I saw a large group of young women approaching from a nearby park. Their leader was wearing a tiara and a satiny black sash! But they turned the corner before they got to me and I could not read the sash. It was not a parade of any kind, just an informal gathering or stroll with a tiara and sash. 10. Like Dr. Theresa and myself, Sarah Marine and Bayard are early diners. So early, in fact, that the restaurant wasn't open when we got there. We had some minutes to wait. Sarah Marine suddenly realized that we were very close to the memorial for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. So we walked over there and it was a very moving and deeply solemn place to be. I heard a solitary bird make a an eerie and prehistoric but, I thought, weirdly beautiful sound. 11. Sarah Marine pointed out the bird in its tree and told me it was a grackle. 12. Boy, let me tell you, Sarah Marine is down on grackles. "They don't fly, they run," she said disdainfully. "But that one is in a tree," I said. Sarah Marine said, "I'm talking about the REAL grackles, the parking lot grackles." She said no two grackles look alike, they're all ragged and mangy in different ways, missing different feathers, slovenly, and she seemed to resent the grackle in the tree as a poser, I guess, a pretentious grackle that thought he was too damn good to represent his squalid kind. And yet I detected no affection for the punk grackles she apparently considered more authentic. She talked about a grackle standing on a corner gnawing on a chicken bone. She saw this same grackle eating discarded chicken wings in an ugly way in the same spot on two separate occasions!

Bayard kind of tried to take up for the grackles a little bit, but had to admit that they stand around chewing on cigarette butts. Bayard and Sarah Marine quoted an ornithologist who hates grackles. An ornithologist! (More on this later.) I could not help but recall the poor cormorant, and that book I have about how everybody hates cormorants. 13. Bayard, on grackles: "Our friend says they look like gasoline." Sarah Marine: "They're shimmery." Bayard: "They're the color of gasoline in a puddle." I must say all of this sounded kind of exotic and tantalizing to me, but Sarah Marine would have none of my sympathetic grackle talk. Sarah Marine: "They sound like something broken." Bayard: "A broken toy." Sarah Marine: "A broken toy of nightmares." I remarked that I kind of liked the way that one grackle sounded. "You haven't heard them when they start grinding," said Sarah Marine. 14. It's a cliché, but the walk back to the restaurant in the gathering darkness took on a Hitchcockian feeling as grackles gathered all around us - I guess I should call them a "flock" but they seemed more like a swarm or a horde - numberless grackles! - and they did make an uncanny racket, and it may have been terrible, but it struck me as unearthly, and for that reason kind of thrilling. INTERESTING SIDE NOTE! Just before I hit the button to publish this "post" I received an email from Sarah Marine: "I'd been thinking that as we stood at the edge of the glimmering reflecting pool at the Oklahoma City Federal Building Memorial, I may have been unfair to the grackle in my musings. Then, I pulled Fifty Common Birds of Oklahoma by the ornithologist George Miksch Sutton off the bookshelf & again feel mostly disgust and pity for the Common Grackle. I've attached a section from the entry on the Common Grackle. Sorry, not sorry, grackles!"

15. At dinner, Sarah Marine told me there's a statue of James Garner in Norman, Oklahoma, and the waitress said, "It's all covered in flowers now," referring to Mr. Garner's fairly recent passing. 16. The restaurant music (before it shifted to "Tears For Fears" mode a bit later in the evening) consisted of popular tunes with a "surf guitar" twist. The theme from GOLDFINGER was one. I mentioned that it was Dr. Theresa's go-to karaoke number. Bayard asked whether I had ever seen the FRASIER episode when Frasier and Niles sing "Goldfinger." I had to say no! Bayard said that the old piano player in the episode can only play "Goldfinger." With Martin's encouragement, Frasier and Niles sing along - reluctantly at first, but with growing enthusiasm. That sounded like a good one! I was sorry not to recall it. I mentioned an episode of FRASIER that had recently disturbed and troubled me and Sarah Marine said, "I have a problem with an entire era of FRASIER." We discussed it. "Why did they give Daphne bangs?" is one thing that Sarah Marine asked plaintively. 17. Sarah Marine said their hometown consisted of "a grain elevator and an intersection." Bayard added, "We have a liquor store that sells Samurai swords." 18. The bottled water in my hotel room had a Bible verse printed next to the expiration date! Not the whole verse, just a citation: "John 5:15." I made a note to myself to look it up in my Geneva Bible when I got home and see what it's all about. "The man departed, and told the Jewes that it was Jesus, which had made him whole." Hmm. Gee. That's what it said on my bottled water! 19. David drove me to the airport the next day and proved himself once again a delightfully wide-ranging conversationalist. He had much of interest to say on the subjects of Christopher Hitchens, Agatha Christie, Karl Marx, Field Marshal Rommel, asceticism, tribalism, and democracy. He was proud that Ethiopia (which he called "the second oldest Christian country in the world," and gave me some history on that) had never been colonized. He told about having to kill goats and oxen as a young man and how his people hardly ever eat a female animal - they eat the rooster, for example, instead of the chicken. "Meat is for rich people," he said. He described being a poor child and - as a kind of entertainment - watching strangers eat meat. "That was our window shopping," he said. 20. I forgot to tell you about the earthquakes! I wasn't in one. But when I was looking at the lighter collection, the collector showed me where several of his lighters had fallen and some had been damaged, and he said, "That's what happens with the earthquakes. We had five earthquakes last week." I think that's what he said. It was something like that. I haven't transcribed the recordings yet. But he is 82, and I thought maybe it was just a strange hyperbolic thing that an 82-year-old man might say. On the drive back to the city, I asked David whether Oklahoma City has a lot of earthquakes and he said, "We had 4,000 earthquakes last year." WHAT! I haven't looked up anything to corroborate that, but Megan sent me an article from THE ATLANTIC detailing a large number of earthquakes in Oklahoma. I didn't see a number so mind-boggling as 4,000 (I haven't looked into it very carefully) but the article did mention a single recent weekend in which Oklahoma had SEVEN EARTHQUAKES! Seven earthquakes in one weekend, I said! David says that the oil men try to tell everybody it's just nature at work, but David knows it's the fracking. 21. Announcement at the Oklahoma airport: "Will the passenger who left the big bag of money at the eastern checkpoint please come get it." 22. "He told Cundo, watching him pick at his cole slaw, he ate like a ******** owl." - LABRAVA

The Pills Kick In

1. There is no bar at the Tupelo Airport. There is a War Museum, which I skipped. The flight was delayed: some outfit called Silver Airways. They discontinue service to Atlanta in a few days, so I was crossing my fingers that their heart was still in it a little. It wasn't, I think. 2. Lots of posters about history on the walls of the Tupelo Airport. One poster recounted a Chickasaw legend about the naming of Alabama. It involved some Native Americans strolling around tossing a stick in the air. I'd only ever heard it from my dad before. It's a pretty good story! I had recently incorporated it into a short story in my supposedly forthcoming collection MOVIE STARS (2016). And there it is on a poster at the Tupelo airport. And so begins my traditional jotting in my precious little notebook, recording my eventful travels for grateful future generations. 3. Dr. Theresa had flown Silver Airways before and assured me that John T. Edge - a world traveler! - uses it all the time. I saw him at a party and when I brought it up, seeking comfort, he didn't seem quite so sure about Dr. Theresa's characterization of his travel habits. Was he bemused, even? Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls flew Silver Airways when she came to Oxford recently. Only upon my return did Dr. Theresa happen to mention that Ms. Ray compared her experience to the John Lithgow section of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE. 4. Well, what with the delayed flight, these pills are kicking in too early. I feel like Elaine Dundy somehow. 5. I must give props to the old-fashioned office-style water cooler in the Silver Airways waiting room, with its exceptionally cold and bracing water. 6. I can tell you what I plan to read on the plane if it ever gets here: THE DRINKING DEN by Zola. Expectation of owls in it is low. It's a gritty human drama of the streets of Paris... laundresses, blacksmiths, roofers. When will they have the chance to hear an owl? Some bird imagery when two blacksmiths are showing off their skills for a laundress: "they were like two great red cockerels strutting around in front of a little white hen. What would they think of next? Sometimes, the heart really does have a strange way of declaring its feelings." The shy blacksmith shows the laundress some rivet-making machines. He's ashamed at the precision of the machine-made rivets compared to his own. The laundress objects: "'See what I mean?' she yelled passionately. 'They are TOO well made. I prefer yours. There, at least, you can feel the hand of an artist.'" I liked that part. 7. I resisted THE DRINKING DEN at first - squalid in the name of so-called "realism" and a little prurient it seemed to me, but I really got caught up in the story. Zola lets something nice happen just for the pleasure of pulling the rug from under these poor so-and-sos. It's cruel, but it keeps you turning pages with sickly, burning hope. 8. The loudspeakers of Silver Airways - why isn't their logo the Silver Surfer? - made a cryptic announcement that our pilot was "in the air" and headed our way. But from where? Across the street? Pills wearing off. The iPod is on shuffle. Harry Partch is singing about monkeys. I have various superstitions and rituals involving the iPod I shan't go into here. 9. A young woman is taking up an entire row of these vinyl waiting room seats. She's sprawled out on her stomach. Her face is pressed flat against the very spot where strangers' butts go. Ah, youth! Impervious youth. 10. The tiny plane landed and it had a slogan printed on the side: "BUILDING BLOCKS." I don't know what that meant, but it didn't strike me as a reassuring thing to stencil on the side of an airplane; I felt the airplane should demonstrate a surer sense of already having been put together properly. The engines were painted fuchsia, a bold choice! I decided to ignore that Blackalicious was performing "It's Going Down" on my iPod as I settled into my seat. 11. Late! A missed connection in Atlanta. Sitting at an airport piano bar reading THE DRINKING DEN (among other things, a catalogue of downfalls instigated by demon liquor) while drinking rye and listening to a lookalike of actor Mike Starr (pictured, the real Mike Starr, I mean) tinkling out a syrupy version of my favorite Chi-Lites song.

I was just happy to be on the ground for a few minutes and about how nice the Delta guy had been about getting me a good seat on the next plane out, so when the bridge came up I belted, "Whhhyyyyyyy Oh Why! Did she leave and go away?" as everyone pretended to ignore me. 12. (One day I'll go back and fill in all the jottings I left out from our punk rock trip to NYC. Like the great steaks Dr. Theresa and I had at LaGuardia! You have to cut them with a plastic knife for security reasons. "But you could kill somebody with this fork," said Dr. Theresa, jabbing to demonstrate. "Shh!" I said. But it was a real fork and she had a point.) 13. Savannah at last! Elizabeth picked me up at the hotel and treated me to a fancy dinner. When we left the restaurant, her car had been towed! She refused to take the cab with me, insisting that she lived "a couple of blocks away." So I couldn't get her on the phone for the rest of the night and spent a troubled evening fearing unspeakable calamity. 14. I finally talked to Elizabeth at eight the next morning as I ate my $36 room-service oatmeal, and she was alive! 15. I spoke to a "humor class" and then the writer Lee Griffith drove me to lunch. Quite unexpectedly we spotted Elizabeth walking down a sidewalk like a glamorous spy in sunglasses. OR WAS IT HER? We turned around and drove back to find out. But she HAD VANISHED! We spotted her headed down a different street. We circled the block to catch up with her. GONE AGAIN! This went on for a while until I insisted she was driving the car behind us. By this time Lee was convinced I had been hallucinating everything. But it was Elizabeth! Her car had not even been towed. She had parked it a block away from her house and forgotten. 16. At one point I needed a tissue and Lee gave me A REAL CLOTH HANDKERCHIEF. TO KEEP! 17. Yes, I got up in front of a packed auditorium of hundreds of young innocent college students and rambled about Jerry Lewis. I remember some of what I said. 18. I praised Jerry's DIY and punk spirit in making THE BELLBOY, though I think I forgot to tell them the title of the movie. 18. When demonstrating Dean Martin's approach to art, the opposite of Jerry's, yet equally valid (no matter what that one guy whom I'll never ever forgive said in that one grad class that time), I eased into a brief, unplanned Dean Martin impersonation. It was really more like Perry Como, but they'll never know that. 19. I drew a line from Jerry to John Waters to Andy Kaufman to Tim and Eric to argue against the importance of "laughing" at comedy. 20. I argued for the influence of THE LADIES MAN on MOONRISE KINGDOM. They applauded at the mention of the latter title because (I think) I had finally mentioned something they had heard of. 21. I encouraged them to emulate Jerry Lewis, who cut his education short when he smashed his high school principal in the face for making an anti-Semitic remark. 22. The Q&A session. Nearly all the Qs were about ADVENTURE TIME. I managed to finesse some of the answers so that they came back to Jerry. I summoned the hubris, for example, to compare Kent Osborne and myself to Dean and Jerry while pontificating on the importance of serendipitous friendships to the development of unanticipated new forms of artistic expression. 23. One kid asked about the influence of Charlie Chaplin on Jerry Lewis, God bless him! God bless that wonderful little bastard. 24. I was very pleased to stay for an hour after the lecture as a long line of young people wanted to talk about ADVENTURE TIME some more. 25. Dinner at a lovely restaurant with a view of riverboats chugging by. The waiter said something about "assorted heirloom carrots" but it sounded like "sordid heirloom carrots" ha ha! Good times. 26. HERE IS SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED! It turned out that Beth Concepcion, the Dean of Liberal Arts, with whom we were having dinner, USED TO DATE BARRY MILLS! That's right, "Barry B." of "blog" "fame"! "The only ghost story I was ever a part of involved Barry Mills," she said. To which I replied, "Was it the old sea captain?" To which she cried, "Yes!" I knew all about the ghost in Barry's old house. But SHE had heard the relentless footsteps of the mysterious old salt himself! 27. It must have been about this time that I splashed seafood broth all over the lapels of my purplish jacket, and that's okay. Like the "magic jacket" before it, it may be up for retirement. Oh, purplish jacket, you are too much for this sad world! 28. Elizabeth and I had a nightcap at the hotel bar, where they were trying to sell an oil painting of a lion for $30,500.

Here I am pretending to kiss it for reasons that seemed amusing and even sensible at the time. 29. Let's skip straight to the tiny airplane that would take me from Atlanta to Tupelo. "For weight and balance purposes, we need all of you to sit in rows 9-12, no matter what your ticket says," announced the flight attendant. Weight and balance purposes! I don't want to hear about your weight and balance purposes when the airplane is about to take off. One guy just kept sitting there in row 7 and he was really freaking me out! Didn't he care about the weight and balance purposes? 30. A fellow passenger - she in awesome zebra-print pants and elaborately tooled boots - volunteered that she liked my jacket! Broth-spattered as it was. 31. I fell asleep on the runway and was awakened by the distinct feeling of someone vigorously shaking my shoulder. No one was there, of course. "Well, this is a good sign," I reckoned. 32. I have to get on just seven more freaking airplanes in the next few weeks. 33. We got off the ground. The airplane started pitching around and making ghost noises, like, Woooooo! Wooooooo! Zebra Pants moved up next to a nice guy she had met. She was across the aisle from me now. This guy was a trucker who was set to haul a load to Kansas when he landed. I said to Z.P., "This plane is making ghost noises!" She said, "I'M SCARED!" And then she said, "You can reach over and grab my hand if you want." I declined. 34. But I noticed that by the end of the flight she was holding hands with the trucker. Aw! Their names were Veronica and Ray. Safe travels! 35. I don't want to be too hard on Silver Airways. Back on the ground in Tupelo a worker raced across the tarmac toward me, clutching the paperback of THE DRINKING DEN I had accidentally left behind on the plane.

Auditory Hallucinations

Hogan and I had lunch at the Oxford Canteen and Paul Williams showed up! He remembered us. Hogan and I had just been talking about our favorite (well, my favorite, I'm not sure it's Kelly's favorite, though she certainly likes it a lot) verse of Williams's composition "The Rainbow Connection": "Have you been half asleep/ And have you heard voices?/ I've heard them calling my name" it begins. We related it to our own auditory hallucinations and had quite a nice discussion about going mad. That was before Paul Williams showed up. So anyway! On the Thacker Mountain radio program that night (tonight!), he performed "The Rainbow Connection"! Slade, who plays stand-up bass with the house band, confided to me that it has a really tricky key change to G-flat. But they pulled it off with aplomb! BUT! Paul Williams neglected to sing the verse about hearing disembodied voices. So here's the thing! He knows Hogan is a musician, and when she was getting her book signed by him, he asked, "Did you notice?" Meaning did she notice he had skipped a verse. And she said yes. And he said, "I owe you a verse." SO! Who could follow Paul Williams singing "Rainbow Connection"? Our local punk rocker (I guess you'd call him) Tyler Keith came out with nothing but his guitar and fearlessly sang an awesome song that was a scene-by-scene recap of THE OUTSIDERS (pictured). And thus did he successfully follow Paul Williams! At the end of the show, the house band surprised Paul Williams by playing another of his compositions: the finale from BUGSY MALONE. I was proud to see two former students of mine, Dent May and Will McIntosh, leading on guest vocals. A chorus of adorable local children joined them! And then Paul Williams, good sport that he is, got up and joined in, too. That was really something. I mean, it was nuts. As the final chorus was repeated over and over, with more and more joyous cacophony, reminding us that "you're going to be remembered for the things you say and do" - Tyler Keith came back out and hopped into the mix - I don't think I'm lying when I say some kind of spiritual trance was enacted upon the crowd! I feel pretty good. Hey, as I was typing these words, McNeil arrived for a visit.