Celebrating 20 Years of Crap

Well, yesterday I finished the fourth and final volume of OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH. It didn’t end the way I thought it would! Checked in with Jimmy, but he has only recently cracked open volume three, so I have no one to talk to. But that’s not why we’re here, is it? As sorry as I am to admit it, today marks the 20th anniversary of the "blog." What a waste of time! What a monument, indeed, to the wasting of time. Just in case you don’t want to go back and read all 6,455 previous "posts," I am going to attach "hyperlinks" to the single greatest "post" from each year. Ballots were sent to Nobel prizewinners, movie stars, and rulers of nations. Results were tabulated by an army of robots. 2006: I mash my middle finger while attempting to get the suitcase out of the trunk. 2007: I think I see a spider on the hand soap dispenser. 2008: I drop a French fry on the floor. 2009: Emily shows me her wisdom teeth. 2010: G. Gordon Liddy’s commercial for gold. 2011: Is it 2011 already? Many (ha ha!) would assume my big long list of books with owls in them to be the obvious choice here. But there’s a problem with that! Though initiated in October 2011, which date it retains, the owl list has been regularly updated ever since and so cannot be said to belong exclusively to that year. The list of books with owls in them is for all time! And all people! And all owls! No, the greatest "post" of 2011 was when I eavesdropped on a conversation about someone who displayed dinosaur bones at her wedding reception. That being said, remember when I cleverly observed that James Ellroy simply can’t resist the term "night owl"? Well, I was too busy to tell you, but last week I was reading a different James Ellroy book than the one which provoked the comment, and I have to admit this one is comparatively light on night owls. He’s exercising uncharacteristic restraint! In the 300 or so pages I’ve read so far, he does use it twice with a hyphen ("night-owl"), as an adjective. So that’s exciting. 2012: A guy pulls my teeth while telling me a story about B.B. King. 2013: A cool name for a dog. 2014: I out-crazy an authentic New York City crazy. 2015: Lawrence Welk’s sexy daughter-in-law. 2016: Scarlet fever isn’t all that. 2017: Critiquing a quip that Arnold Schwarzenegger makes to a dead alligator. 2018: A bone falls out of the sky (photographic evidence included). 2019: An omelet named after my novel has been taken off the menu. 2020: Counting wienies. 2021: We sit around the house talking about Jonathan "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" Edwards. 2022: What they put on pancakes in Sweden. 2023: The New York Times throws its considerable weight behind Skippy brand peanut butter. 2024: Prayed over by a fudge manufacturer in an airport. 2025: The fork I’ve been eating with for close to sixty years is lost forever. 2026: Ending on another bummer, as seems appropriate, I leave my hat behind at my parents’ house. So many things lost. Forks, hats, omelets, time. All right! There it is, the "blog" in one neat package. See you on September 27, 2056, for the 50th anniversary. In hell! (Pictured, the hat, in 2019, at the Los Alamitos racetrack with Pendleton Ward.)

Sensitive Compartmental Information Facility

Oh, so you say you CAN handle the kind of stuff McNeil and I talk about? All right. I'll give you the straight skinny, and then you'll be sorry. So McNeil sends an email: "Reading The Apocryphon of John and it's blowing my mind. BOOOOOM. In a way it makes the vicissitudes (!!look at my big word there!!) of the OT God a little easier to understand. I said a little. And I'm talking bout the Monad, y'all...which is what people really should be worshipping, I guess." All right! So it looks like McNeil is starting a cult and trying to get me to worship "The Monad." So I'm like, hey, I think I have that book around here somewhere. But I look all around and I can't find it. BUT THEN! I remember an anthology called THE GNOSTIC BIBLE, which is on a shelf behind glass, and I have to move my blood pressure machine to get to it, and I can barely be bothered to make the effort. Finally, I drag my old carcass over there and take it down and I'm like, hey! And I email McNeil: "one of the sections is called The Secret Book of John, which seems to correspond to the book you're talking about. For example, it mentions 'The One,' which a footnote explains is 'The Monad.' And so on. So let's get busy, Apocryphon style!" And there was some other stuff McNeil brought up about A.I., but let's not get into that right now. We have enough problems! Oh yeah, and McNeil had given me an assignment, which was to study "the passage about halfway through, maybe, where man is created. There is a long long list of people who worked on the project - and how they felt about it afterward." I still haven't done that. Sorry! So McNeil follows up with "There should be a place we meet and discuss the Apocryphon - a place like Omaha or Des Moines - and in a pergola near a nature preserve or something so it seems spiritual and also inexpensive. We could wear hats like they do in Masters of Atlantis." And I shoot back my own suggestion: Yankton, South Dakota! McNeil goes "At that pizza place you're obsessed with - but only if they can provide us with a SCIF." And I don't know what the hell a SCIF is and McNeil has to explain it to me. But about this pizza place... see, for my 60th birthday, I thought McNeil and I could meet at a pizza place I knew about through one tweet, back when twitter existed. The way I remember it now, this place had a pizza with crab, beef, and cheddar cheese on it, which was named (the pizza was) after Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Because you know how much they loved crab, beef, and cheddar cheese on a pizza! I even looked up local forms of entertainment and I think I found several casinos in the area. Alas, that plan came to nothing. A lot of things came to nothing that year. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Hey! Speaking of religion, I see that the announcement is up at Square Books: I'll be "in conversation" with Tom Franklin about his new novel DEVILWOOD in February! So I can finally tell you... remember when I said I was reading a manuscript with owl balls in it but it doesn't mean what you think it means? Well, that book with the owl balls in it is DEVILWOOD, as can finally be revealed. Owl balls!

Of Donkeys and Robots

So I'm reading ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC and Gideon Bohak, the author, is telling of an "erotic spell" in which a charm is written on a piece of tin, to which he adds the parenthetical statement "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Let me explain. This is nothing like the Gideon Bohak I know. Well, there is a footnote in which he makes a fond, gently humorous allusion to his hometown. But the violent whimsy of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" is present nowhere else in this academic... some might say dry as burnt toast... work. Well! Gideon Bohak does favor a jaunty exclamation point in his parenthetical statements (as seen in the example already given), which might count as whimsy if you are a scholar of ancient esoterica. Before I continue exploring this thought, I want to say that I wonder what Gideon Bohak's editor thought of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Did Gideon Bohak have to fight for it? I am developing an enhanced sense of respect for Gideon Bohak. Anyway, so, yes! In the very next paragraph we have an example of Bohak's penchant for parenthetical exclamation points. He has moved on to a spell which requires the magician (or is it the client?) to "take meat of a donkey in your mouth." I'm sorry I told you that. But I had to! Because Gideon Bohak presently adds the parenthetical statement that putting donkey meat in your mouth is "not very kosher!" Exclamation point his, I reemphasize. He goes on to examine cultural depictions of donkeys as "stupid, stubborn, and lazy," which reminded me, by way of contrast, of the other book I am reading right now, THE ILIAD, in which mules have been put forth more than once as some of the greatest animals you'd ever want to meet. They're always plowing fields faster than an ox, or pulling a big tree trunk down the side of a mountain. Those are the two things I can remember mules (in both cases, metaphorical mules) doing in THE ILIAD. Which brings me to another subject! Last night in bed, as I read THE ILIAD and Dr. Theresa worked a crossword puzzle, I suddenly shouted, "Hey! There are robots in this book!" Let's let that hang in the air for a while. Because I also want to say that I ran into Kelly Kornegay in Jackson, Mississippi, a couple of weeks ago, at the 50th anniversary party for Lemuria Books, which I didn't even tell you about, because why should you know every single thing that goes on in my life? Anyway, Kelly and I were talking about THE ILIAD, and she mentioned living in a new place where she can look out the window and see a donkey, and I got to tell her about the heroic mules of THE ILIAD. Pretty soon it got dark and Ace Atkins and I were standing in front of a stage watching 92-year-old bluesman Bobby Rush, of whom I took a photo with my very own phone and perhaps I will "post" it below. Also, there was a guy dressed as a cowboy who did some of the greatest dancing I've ever seen. He was up there all by himself dancing in his cowboy suit while opening acts played, and finally I thought, I should go dance with this guy! Let's get this party started! And Ace took a video of it, which I texted to Dr. Theresa (who had stayed home) so she could see my moves, and she immediately texted back "Have you been drinking?" And that's an interesting question but I bet you want to get back to the robots I read about in THE ILIAD last night. "They were made all of gold, but looked like living women." So you know I immediately thought of the DC comics characters the Metal Men, just as Homer intended. Furthermore, I checked Emily Wilson's endnote, and she calls them "robot women," so I'm not just coming to crazy conclusions. In fact, I think somebody installed A.I., because "They had a consciousness inside their hearts." And as I was lying there marveling about the golden robot women with consciousness in their hearts, I remembered thinking that I had noticed robots in the RAMAYANA as well. And I didn't just lie there and think about it for a change. I hauled my sorry carcass out of bed and went upstairs and found the RAMAYANA and refreshed my memory about these hydraulically powered automatons: "mechanical men, silently driven by falling water in some hidden way." And much like them, I am now running out of steam.

The Pendarvis Art of Living

Yesterday I got a promotional email from Square Books, saying that Gin Phillips would be on the Thacker Mountain radio show. And I was like, "Gin Phillips, Gin Phillips. Don't I know her? Did I maybe do some readings with her in Atlanta?" Digging deep into the "blog" archives, which must now substitute for my memory, I realized I was thinking of Hollis Gillespie. Now, Gin Phillips and Hollis Gillespie... are those names really so much alike? No. But I understand why my brain would think so, even if it had not been famously zapped in an unfortunate incident from the recent past. Anyway! Before I thought to check the "blog," I decided to do an "internet" search of my name alongside the name of Gin Phillips, hoping to confirm what turned out to be a false recollection. AND! The good old A.I. robot that pops up unbeckoned whenever I search for something helpfully informed me that I was the author of the books THE PENDARVIS ART OF LIVING, YOUR BODY IS CALLING YOU (see also), and, of course, my renowned novel CIGARETTE BOY. You are perhaps unfamiliar with what I laughingly call my work, so let me explain that none of those books exist. YET!

The 11-Day Blunder

Just when I thought I would have nothing to "blog" about today, McNeil reports having a dream about Bob AND Dolores Hope! Now, am I going to tell you the dream? No. It having been previously established that you don't know who Bob Hope is, how much less, given the scummy world in which we live, would you have cared to learn of Dolores Hope? And shame on you for that. You're what's wrong with America! Why, if you tried to even think of the concept of Dolores Hope, you would be instantly confronted by and sucked into the greedy abyss of your own soul. And maybe that's what you want. How am I supposed to know? Good for you! So... why am I telling you this, then? I'm glad you asked, imaginary voice in my head! Well, today will be the eleventh day in a row I have "blogged." I haven't double checked, because I just don't care that much, especially since A.I. informed me that I wrote Bill Boyle's novel GRAVESEND and I witnessed what the future holds as far as meticulous accuracy goes, but I'm very certain that today, whatever day it is, marks the most days I have "blogged" in a row since I got demoralized on April 27, 2016, when our TV blew up. I had a little fit and claimed to have stopped "blogging." I was all sad inside like a weepily smiling clown because I had "blogged" for "almost 10 years"... ha ha! What a chump. It's been nearly 20 now! And yes, I'm throwing up as I type these words. It's not as easy as it sounds, throwing up while you type. What was I just talking about?

Two or Three Huge Controversies

The Million Dollar Book Club got into one of its famous debates! I was saying that Witold Gombrowicz reminded me of a Bob Hope character because he was distracted by a sexy ballerina and didn't realize that, in the background, so to speak, there was a fiery political debate raging in which he should have chosen a side. So he gets called on the carpet by the Polish Legation in Argentina and they don't care for his excuses about the sexy ballerina. Can't you just see Bob Hope getting into a fix like that? I know, I know, you've never heard of Bob Hope, well, why don't you just go to hell. Anyway, Megan contends that Witold Gombrowicz is "in his head a lot more than Bob Hope." That sums up the lively discussion in question. Wow! It was really something. Anyway, the next day, I was thinking, huh, Witold Gombrowicz could have gone to see a lot of Bob Hope movies! But I bet he didn't. He never writes about the movies in his diary. That's something Megan and I discussed. He does mention television: "We cultivate television and use electric blankets, but we die wild." Ha ha! Pure Gombrowicz. But it is a generic allusion as far as popular entertainment is concerned. I'm up to 1959 in the diary... even characters in THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN go to the movies, and when does that take place? Well, it spans the course of several years, but I think they're going to the movies in 1913 or so. That's an estimate! Don't base your MAGIC MOUNTAIN book reports on my "blog." Don't use A.I. either! Yesterday, A.I. told me that I wrote a novel called YOUR BODY IS CALLING ME... ha ha! I wish! It also said I wrote GRAVESEND, which is a novel by Bill Boyle. Again: I wish! All right. How many controversies does that make? Zero? Well! Puttering around on the "blog" not too long ago... here, I'll tell you what I found by quoting an email I sent to McNeil: "According to a 'blog' 'post' from April 18, 2008, based on your own sworn testimony, you never wear a belt, not even when you tuck in your shirt. How does that square with your claim on May 7, 2024, of having [a] belt you have worn every day for almost 20 years? We're asking for your comments before we run with the story." Here is McNeil's reply: "I was probably referring to wearing a belt only at work, because my pants were too big. Outside of work, everything was 'snug'. But now it's the opposite. I have to wear [a belt] with all my pants - except I just don't anymore at work because they make me take it off anyway to go through security - which is a drag, man." Do you know where McNeil was when he sent his response? The Grand Canyon! I subsequently accused him of visiting the Grand Canyon every other week. He replied that he's been just three times, most recently in 2016. Well, now that I'm old, 2016 seems like yesterday to me. You'll find out. (I have a lingering idea that someone in Gombrowicz's novel THE POSSESSED may go to the movies. I'm probably wrong.) Wait! While innocently searching for the proper "hyperlinks," I just blew the lid off of something else! According to the "blog," McNeil was at the Grand Canyon in 2015, NOT in 2016 as he claims above. WHAT IS MCNEIL COVERING UP?

The Bolger Assertion

Hey, the other day, the ninth episode of ACE GOES HOLLYWOOD "dropped," as you kids like to say. You say it all the time! I can just hear you now, saying it. How I hate you! Where was I? You remember ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD. It's where, on the "web" site FLAMING HYDRA, I converse with Ace Atkins about his time working on the Pauly Shore film JURY DUTY. But today I was thinking not about the latest episode, but episode 6, in which Ace mentions Sammy Davis Jr. and I demand that he explain to the reader, if any, who Sammy Davis Jr. is. Ace doesn't think it's necessary. That's when I say, quote, "I told you, I work with kids that never heard of CHEERS! Which is fine. Why should they? You know what? It’s time for me to die anyway." To which Ace wisely replies, "Well, we gotta finish this first." You'll see the connection soon enough. Connection to what? Leave me alone! So, I've been reading a book about ancient Greece, but I'm not going to name it, because I'm enjoying it, but it's going to seem like I'm being peevish and critical when I say things like it seems to be written for people who have never read a book before. Like the author will interject - and this will be a paraphrase, but I wouldn't call it an exaggeration - "The ancient Greeks didn't have online banking like you and me!" Okay. Maybe she's being welcoming and chummy, and what's wrong with that? I'm the real monster here. We all know that. But late in the book she starts a sentence this way, and this is an exact quotation: "As Ray Bolger sang..." WHAT! It has the feeling, again, of being an attempt to draw in the reader cozily, conversationally, but WHAT! Not even I would start a sentence "As Ray Bolger sang..." and I've seen a lot of Ray Bolger movies. More than you have! I've seen more Ray Bolger movies than Ray Bolger ever did! And look. She's not even talking about THE WIZARD OF OZ. She's talking about something called "The Churkendoose." The Churkendoose! And here's where you smugly inform me that you know everything about the Churkendoose, and everybody knows about it, and you've thought about the Churkendoose every day of your life for as long as you can remember, and I'm the last person on earth who doesn't know about the Churkendoose. It's like the time I was so excited to see wild turkeys (of which the Churkendoose is a close relation!) and everybody got together to pee on my happiness. I'm just saying the hip kids of today aren't Ray Bolger experts. Or maybe they are! But I think maybe you're pushing them away! Hey! Remember the time I read a long, serious book about Hinduism and the author almost immediately quoted Garrison Keillor? Anyway, the Churkendoose came out as a book in 1946, and Ray Bolger croaked his way through the musical adaptation in 1947. Or, as A.I. so helpfully informed me (without me asking!), it was "first published in 2003."

McNeil's Heart

Another email from McNeil. This time he wanted me to know that Trump has "gone full Peter Beter!!!" (punctuation McNeil's), a phrase ("full Peter Beter") that will mean nothing to those of you who have not studied the "blog" for at least a decade, unless you have the stamina or intellectual energy to "click" on one or two "links," which statistics show is unlikely. Anyway, I found it hard to swallow McNeil's claim that the aforementioned elected official believes President Biden to have been replaced during some part of his administration by a robot or clone, so McNeil forwarded a news report showing that indeed Trump had retweeted (or whatever they call it in our strange new times; bleep blorp?) something to that effect. To quote McNeil more extensively: "my heart leaps up! He has gone full Peter Beter!!!" McNeil's heart, it should be noted, is leaping up ironically, if I may interpret, assuming I understand irony correctly, which I don't. So I replied to McNeil's email something clever like "We're living the dream." Maybe the word I'm looking for is sarcasm. I believe McNeil is alluding to Wordsworth, by the way, whose heart famously leapt all over the damn place when he beheld a rainbow in the sky. Good for Wordsworth! It must be nice.

He's Back!

Going to cut-and-paste an email I sent to McNeil and say it's a "blog" "post." Sometimes that's the way I do it. Other times I take an email FROM McNeil and cut-and-paste it and call it a "blog" "post." That's just the kind of variety you've come to expect from the "blog." Now for that email: "Was reading in the New York Times about how Trump wants to go to Fort Knox and make sure the gold is still there, ha ha! And the article traces the conspiracy back to this guy you used to email me about, Peter Beter, the man with the hilarious name. I think he’s the one who claimed Jimmy Carter had been replaced by a robot. Good to see his work hasn’t been forgotten." End of email. In conclusion, if you "click" on the Peter Beter "link" above, you will see that McNeil was talking about him ten years ago! McNeil was ahead of the times, just like when he discovered that gin and raisins cure arthritis. Please consult your physician before going on a diet of gin and raisins.

Robot Children of the Future

Hey, remember when I quit social media and a mighty cheer went up throughout the land because I had become the definition of a true hero such as the world had never known? Well, Meta, which used to be Facebook, which was a kind of social medium I quit before quitting any of the others, has been using some of my worst books (without my permission or knowledge!) to teach their magical robot brain, who I imagine has a cute name like Burt, how to "write," in the hope, I assume, that fifth graders of the distant future will no longer have to think up their own patriotic essays for civics class, or whatever the hell AI is for. My greatest wish is that my work will cause the robot's head to explode, like on that one STAR TREK when Captain Kirk asked the robot tricky questions until its head exploded. In happier news, I saw that Andy Beckerman used my new author photo (see above) on his "web" site to promote his podcast. Now, when Quinn took this photo during her visit, I said I was going to use it as my new author photo, but maybe she didn't believe me. But maybe she did. And maybe she was the one who suggested it should be my new author photo. I can't remember; I was busy getting sick at the time. Speaking of which, now Dr. Theresa has Covid! And a tree fell on the house, which is presumably unrelated. Unless there is a witch at work.

Enviable Birds

Hey! Remember yesterday when I was reading a book with an owl in it? Well! What if I told you that last night I was reading another book and it had an owl in it too? Don't get overexcited! So, after I finished BUDDENBROOKS (which did not have an owl in it) - buckle up! This is going to be quite a tale! - I thought at first I might like to read Colm Tóibín's novel about Thomas Mann. I picked it up (off the floor! For real! It's chaos here!) and read a little bit and the tone was uncannily like BUDDENBROOKS, which I am sure Colm Tóibín intended, but, to me, it seemed a little bit like I would be reading BUDDENBROOKS all over again, immediately, and as much as I enjoyed BUDDENBROOKS, I thought maybe something else would be in order as I toddled off to slumberland every night with heavenly angels standing guard over the bed. This story gets better and better! Stay with me! So I dug out what looked to be the opposite of BUDDENBROOKS, one of those slender, elegant volumes I hate so much, ha ha! I kid the slender, elegant volumes. And yet it is true that I would often prefer plunging into a thousand-page saga to opening some jewel-like masterpiece by an exquisite miniaturist sure to make my head hurt with all its simple elegance. But I found a promising volume of that ilk, SO LONG, SEE YOU TOMORROW by William Maxwell, which was sent to me as a medicinal aid by my good friend Allyson during my recent convalescence. And it's good! And not quite halfway through it takes an audacious narrative turn that one does not expect in a volume of such elegant slimness! But that's not why we're here, is it? We are here to observe that "hoot owls" appear in the text, among a list of enviable birds that our narrator imagines populating the countryside, while, where he lives, in town, there are only some nice but sedate birds that, to continue paraphrasing, don't make such interesting noises as the hoot owls, mourning doves, whippoorwills, bob whites, and so on. Or maybe I've named them all! This slender volume of pristine elegance made an impression on me after all. And one more! Because I actually winced at a typo in it! Winced! Don't get me wrong, people. I don't mind a typo. I like them, even. I no doubt commit them frequently and don't even know it. Just the other day, I happened to find an old "post" in which I spelled Katharine Hepburn's name as, of all arbitrary choices, Kathryn! Did I fix it? Hell no. You know, I read some article that quoted Elon Musk - and I hate to mention his name, sorry! - a while back, and he said something like (I paraphrase quite roughly) "Robots will be writing good novels within three years." And I was like, "What's a good novel to this guy? One with no spelling errors?" Which made me throw up just thinking about the question. And so I was surprised at myself for physically, not just figuratively, wincing as I did at William Maxwell's typo. But look. If your book is a slender elegant volume of refined prose meant to be read through a jeweler's loupe, your typo stands out. In this case, we find a fairly large dog lying down in the grass and "resting her chin on her four paws." Now! Certainly our author meant to write "her forepaws." I am not the most imaginative person in the world, but I find it impossible to picture a dog resting her chin on four paws at once... whereas I have seen for myself with my own eyes a dog resting her chin on her forepaws. Would the dog not have to be a contortionist circus dog to do the former? And could such a position even be called "resting"? So either it's a typo or I am showing my ignorance about dogs, as I have shown it over the years about so much else. PS! Just as I expected, I was wrong. I should have known better than to accuse William Maxwell of incorrectly describing a dog at rest. That's a specialty of such writers! Anyway, McNeil, while unable to find an image of his own dog sleeping on her four paws, assured me that dogs do it all the time, and sent me the above photographic proof from the "internet." I guess I just couldn't picture a dog curling up. The commonplace things I cannot picture are without number.

Domes

Last night, Dr. Theresa and I watched FORBIDDEN PLANET - her idea, not that it matters. And now she wants to watch PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES! I ventured that that one would pair well with ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, which I kept suggesting during the Halloween season, but she never quite came around on it. Looks like the winds of change are shifting, though! Just like Bob Dylan said. Sort of. But that's not why I'm here! I just wanted to say that, having been thoroughly conditioned by McNeil's obsession with decorative obelisks in movies, I could not help but note that Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) has a groovy space obelisk in his funky alien living room. You can see it in the image above, which I captured from our TV screen. The obelisk in question sits roughly at his left elbow (his left, your right!). As I cleverly remarked to Dr. Theresa, the exterior of his home resembles Devo's headquarters on Sunset Blvd. As proof, I took out my phone and showed her a photo of the latter building, because that's what we do now as a people, we see things that look like other things and then we take out our phones and find pictures to show people who maybe care and maybe don't. AND! Although you can't tell it from the image above, Dr. Morbius seems to share an interior decorator with Jerry Lewis. Oh! The appearance of Robby the Robot here reminds me of a chapter of SOUR BLUEBERRIES, the novel I deleted from the "internet" when I guess I was "going through some things." A "fictional character" (me?) brings up FORBIDDEN PLANET and another character says "It's boring. I hate it." Then he says that Robby the Robot is no B-9 from LOST IN SPACE. I, I mean, "Chet" naively asks if they aren't exactly the same, at which point, to quote the novel, "'No. Their domes are completely different,' said Jay. He started drawing their domes so Chet could compare B-9’s acceptable dome to Robby the Robot’s dome worthy only of hate." You know what, "Jay"? Last night I really enjoyed watching Robby's robot brains kind of whirling around in his head like he was the Glass Cat from the Oz series of novels. Oh, wait, that reminds me, I also wanted to tell Oz fan Laura Lippman (no monkey fan) that FORBIDDEN PLANET has a monkey in it!

McNeil's Li'l Sausage Bits

Welcome once more to "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," where McNeil reads a 700-page Humphrey Bogart bio and I pass the savings on to you! As you may recall, we were on the fence about whether the casting of Dooley Wilson in CASABLANCA was a legitimate bogie bit. As McNeil put it, Wilson "was not their first or even second choice, but....that's how sausage is made. I'm not sure that's how sausage is made." Which reminds me of a whimsical quotation from a whimsical narrator in my beloved bestseller (it's neither beloved nor a bestseller) MOVIE STARS: "There is a reason no one wants to know 'how the sausage is made.' How the sausage is made is terrible." And here you may note the most significant difference between my "blog" writing and my "real" writing: on the "blog," that second sentence would have ended in an exclamation point. And, honestly, in most of my "real" writing too. I wonder why I didn't do it! But we are getting far away from McNeil's li'l bits. McNeil says that Lena Horne was considered for the role of Sam! He also contends, rather boldly, that CASABLANCA would have been "twice as good" if Lena Horne had played the role. And I do say that such an observation indeed qualifies as a bogie bit. Another bogie bit is of a sad nature, as it depicts Mayo Methot, in a drunken rage, getting herself wedged tightly behind a sofa somehow. But let's get back to sausage. By a weird coincidence, I was listening to an opera when I received the first bogie bit alluded to above. That's not the coincidence. So, in a while, I was like, "What the hell is this opera about? I don't speak whatever language this is!" And I looked up the plot on the "internet," and this guy in the opera gets in trouble for eating a sausage on the moon! I guess you think I am making that up. But I will tell you the name of the opera - THE EXCURSIONS OF MR. BROUCEK - so you can look it up for your damn self. So I was like, "Sausage!" And, believe it or not, it was, by another coincidence, the second opera I had listened to THAT WEEK about somebody going to the moon. (The other one was Il mondo della luna by Baldassare Galuppi... and I can almost swear that Haydn wrote an opera with a similar title and subject matter, but now I am just showing off my knowledge of moon operas.) This is getting long, but I have more to tell. I just hope the lousy AT&T "internet" doesn't stop working before I'm done. We're getting something better installed on Monday! Leslie came over to watch INLAND EMPIRE the other night and we couldn't finish because the AT&T "internet" crapped out. So we turned off the lights and put on these plastic toy rings that have colored lights shooting out of them and Dr. Theresa requested Kraftwerk, so we danced around to that for a while, and then switched to a playlist by Kate Tsang. But the main point is that... you know all those books I am reading all the time in various circumstances? Now I've had to add a book that I put next to my laptop in my home office for whenever the "internet" goes kerplunk and I'm just sitting there with a stupid look on my face and nothing to distract me from the terrible abyss. There are books littered all over the place around here, it's a sad mess. Oh! So... one of the most recent books I had downstairs, on the side table near my favorite chair, was DAISY MILLER by Henry James, which somehow I had never read before. And in it, a character quotes from MANFRED, the poetic drama by Lord Byron, and I liked the quotation, so I dug out the old SELECTED POEMS of Byron and started reading MANFRED. And I hadn't made it too far, just to lines 196 and 197 of the first scene of the first act, and what did I see but "When the falling stars are shooting,/And the answer'd owls are hooting"? And you know what that means. Well, as long as I'm here, I'll mention a message I received yesterday from DJ Gnosis, who said he had gotten a news alert about his own old "blog," and when he checked it out, he saw that a "web" site called - I think - casino.org had discovered a 2008 "post" of mine, and a contemporaneous "post" by DJ Gnosis commenting on it, about the time I "posted" the first-ever photographic evidence on the "internet" of the existence of the Foster Brooks robot that used to live in Las Vegas until it was dismantled and sold for scrap metal, as we all must be eventually. Quoted in the article? Foster Brooks's own daughter! I would "link" to the article, but, being in the midst of a nightmarish effort to scrub old zombie "links" from the "blog," I am no longer much inclined to "link" to outside sources. Nothing against casino.org! Anyway, this on the heels of my 45-year-old letter inspiring McNeil to watch HARRY AND WALTER GO TO NEW YORK. Given enough time and patience, such meaningless things can happen.

Sex-Crazed AI

I guess you want to know how my project is going, the one where - ever since McNeil found a former outside "blog" "link" to a literary treasure that had been salaciously commandeered by sex-crazed AI robots (FOOTNOTE! I originally titled this "post" "What's Up With Zombies," going so far as to research whether or not "With" should be capitalized in a title, before changing it to "Sex-Crazed AI," which I felt would "generate" more "clicks") - I am slowly "clicking" on every previous "blog" "link" to make sure that insidious zombie "links" are replaced by a wholesome alternative. So far I've looked at between 250-300 "posts," I estimate, out of 6910, as of this one. So it's going to take a while. I have to say that I can't believe I've "posted" just 6910 times so far. It feels like 691,000. What a wasted life. But that's not your problem! Oh, as I go through these old "posts," I am also deleting any image, or dead spot where an image used to be, that was originally acquired by what I later learned (around 2008?) was the ignorant and problematic method of "stealing bandwidth." Very often, as a result, if you "click" on an old "post" (I know you won't! Partly because you don't exist), you will see former me excitedly advising you to check out a real groovy accompanying image that isn't there. You know what? Who cares?

Socks Are the New Beans

Thank God for McNeil! How many times have we all said that, or at least felt it in our bones? In this instance, I am saying it regarding his relatively lonely position as an expert on the "blog." If McNeil didn't "click" on our forgotten "links" in a cold, scientific quest for knowledge, he never would have noticed - as he did just last night! - that an old one, shrouded in the impenetrable haze of the "blog's" very beginnings, had become outdated, and what once had been but an innocent "link" to a fan site for a beloved literary figure I hesitate to name, so as not to drag him into all this, had been taken over, at some point, by a saucy "internet" purveyor of sexy shenanigans I hesitate to describe. So much makes me hesitate these days! Suffice to say, the "website" in question, according to McNeil, though he did not use the following comparison, sought to do for socks what an Andy Warhol novel I read did for baked beans. Back when I made the ancient and troublesome "post," back when the "link" I provided was quite free of such carnal associations, I myself was but a blushing dewy apple-cheeked lad of a mere 43 years of age, and I could not imagine that the "internet" was such an impermanent thing, subject, as we all must be, to the ravages of time, or that devious forces - robots, most likely! - might comb the "web" for dead "links" to replace with their own sinful robot dreams of how sex probably works. Speaking of the ravages of time, three years ago, I thought of a solution to this problem, at least as it pertains to this "blog," but implementing it thoroughly would require effort, and effort is not a thing to which I am currently inclined. So what I am saying is this: just watch out, that's all. No, no, I'll get around to it. I'll fix everything! You just sit there and I'll fix it all. Don't you worry about old Jack.

Unattributed Owl

I was convalescing this weekend in a MAGIC MOUNTAIN style medical facility when Tom Franklin dropped by with an armload of old comic books to help me pass the miserable hours. Now, one of these comics was a Gold Key publication about a superhero called THE OWL, and he seemed vaguely familiar. Soon enough, I remembered that I had run across a panel or two of the Owl subduing his foes with the use of his gun that shoots out rainbows. I had no context, and I passed it along to you without context, you're welcome. Somehow it never occurred to me - until now! - that a comic book called THE OWL should go on my long list of books with owls in them. After all, I have included other comic books on the list... off the top of my head, THE DEMON by Jack Kirby, DAREDEVIL, and Grant Morrison's THE INVISIBLES. Not trying very hard, I couldn't find details of authorship in my copy of THE OWL, save for a splash page signed by "Siegel & Gill." And you know what? That's all the effort I'm going to put into it. Old me would have scoured the "internet" for more information. But in case you can't tell, I've been sick. Get off my back! I will tell you that the Owl has a robot owl named Owlo. That seems important. In fact, he has an endless supply of robot owls named Owlo, in case something happens to one of them. During Tom's visit, we discussed many things, such as whether Deadman, a ghost superhero who shoves his soul into the bodies of other people, could inhabit Superman, who is, after all, not human, but some kind of freaky alien. Then Tom brought up the obscure cowboy superhero Vigilante... yes, I believe "superhero" is an accurate term. Vigilante (pictured above) doesn't have otherworldly powers, but neither does Batman. Case closed. Anyhow, imagine my delight when, after Tom had left, I found this on the cover of a WORLD'S FINEST comic: "VIGILANTE ROUTS THE 'REFORMED OWL-HOOT CLUB.'" Please note, that's owl-hoot, not hoot-owl, as I originally misread it. The story itself begins with this narration: "DYED-IN-THE-WOOL WESTERNERS WILL TELL YOU 'ONCE AN OWLHOOT, ALWAYS AN OWLHOOT!'" That's right, the cover used a hyphen but the actual comic did not. All this, perhaps, sheds some light on a phrase from TRUE GRIT that I seemingly found mysterious ("click" here for details. You usually ignore such exhortations, but I've been sick!). In conclusion, it seems that I have never mentioned on the "blog" - though it hardly seems possible (that I haven't mentioned it, I mean) - that I had a letter to the editor published in WORLD'S FINEST COMICS when I was a kid. It was a pretty sarcastic letter.

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up

Hello! It has been seven years since our previous installment of All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up, for the simple reason that nothing has happened in the world of sizzling all-star entertainment... until now! A dimly remembered figure from the "blog's" distant past has emerged. We can only be speaking of none other than PHIL OPPENHEIM, with a dazzling report from the land of the stars, Hollywood, USA! Phil saw AUSTIN PENDLETON in a parking lot! But the excitement doesn't stop there! He spied with his little eye famed robot BRENT SPINER in Nate 'n Al's, the same place where YOUR FAITHFUL CORRESPONDENT once enjoyed some CHOPPED LIVER while on a break from an auction of BOB HOPE'S personal effects. (Phil recommends the CHEF'S SALAD, the COBB SALAD, and the TUNA SALAD. Rumor on the hush-hush has it that Phil has turned into a real "salad man.") We're not done! Phil also saw ARSENIO HALL in a coffee shop! And thusly, seven years of entertainment drought, as foretold in the ancient prophecy, have come to a happy end. As long as we have you here, we should report that the recent ANDY WARHOL biography by BLAKE GOPNIK refers to Andy and his pals as "NIGHT OWLS" who eat breakfast at 6 PM. That's some late breakfast, celebrity entertainment style! And of course it makes the Andy Warhol biography a BOOK WITH AN OWL IN IT. That's it for now, from the land of sizzling celebrity stars. See you in 2029!

Nightttown

Much in the manner that James Joyce wanted scholars to pore over his works for entire lifetimes, I am going to spend the weeks and months to come trying to figure out this joke book that Ace Atkins gave me. It is reputedly by Milton Berle, though I suspect he had some help, if you want to call it help. I'm not sure some of these things are jokes! I know it is a joke book because right at the top there it says "Milton Berle's Joke Book." But - and this is a matter for further study, I'll have to get back to you - it seems to aspire to a narrative structure, which seems uncalled for. One section is just Milton Berle imagining what other people famous at the time might say in apparently nonexistent movies that he seems to be creating in his febrile head. (Parenthetically, I will digress: more accurately, upon further scrutiny, the section purports to be made up of movie scripts that a talking elephant named Klinemine Klinemine is reading at the library. You can see why I'm going to need to spend some time with the text.) I will quote one example in full. "BETTY HUTTON (after a quarrel): Leave this house. I never want to see you again. Go this instant. BING CROSBY: I have one last request to make before I go. BETTY (sweetly, oh, very sweetly): Well, what is it? BING (brutally): Before I leave forever, would you mind getting off my lap?" Now if that isn't straight out of the Circe section of ULYSSES, what is? Maybe it's the "sweetly, oh, very sweetly" that sounds Joycean. And the "Klinemine Klinemine" of course: pure multilingual punning and mystical doubling in the tradition of FINNEGANS WAKE. Well! But is it a joke? The Bing Crosby thing, I mean? I don't see how. Why Betty Hutton's sudden change of mood, for example? Are we to take it that her instigating rage was disingenuous? Why? And wouldn't the "joke," such as it is, work better on the radio, assuming it could work at all? In what way could it be convincingly filmed? I feel strongly that Milton Berle isn't providing enough context. In the pure terms of the joke as a platonic object, what's the setup? Are we supposed to believe that Milton Berle is that experimental, or that the elephant with whom he has made friends for the purposes of the plot is that experimental, or, to be as accurate as possible, that the elephant who is friends with Milton Berle goes to the library and seeks out movie scripts that seem to have been cut up and pasted back together by William S. Burroughs, so devoid of traditional structure as to verge on the abstract? On the next page there's a joke about zoo sex, I guess it's all right. I know I'm not "blogging" anymore but I need somewhere to thoroughly analyze this book, which I would truly believe was produced in a lab by a crude form of artificial intelligence if it weren't so old. (PS I didn't realize it was Bloomsday until after I first "posted" this! Dear me, how precocious I am. It's a real freaking shame I don't "blog" anymore.)

I Feel Bad

[Before you read this and get all worked up, it's fine now. We're preserving it because historians of the future will need to know. - ed.] Hey! It looks like some weirdos have hacked my blog and added a bunch of links to shady-looking websites. So please don't click on any of links you see here, even though most of my links are great! But none of them can be trusted right now. I have not put any links in this post, for example, so if any appear, they were placed here by some criminal who is probably just trying to feed his or her family by selling - as far as I can tell - cheap clothes, cigarette lighters and knockoff Pop Tarts. I love you all and will try to fix my blog when I get home from Los Angeles. If I can't fix it I'm just going to delete the whole thing, yes, the whole darn blog, even though I worked on it for ten years and it is the only way I can remember anything that ever happened to me during that time period. So enjoy it while you can, if "enjoy" is the right word. I'm in the very lobby where I once saw Garry Marshall and now he is dead. I was going to link to that very remembrance [like so - ed.] but the post is riddled with suspicious commerce and mysterious links to shady enterprises. I will mention that this very day Kent and I sat in his office and watched Garry Marshall's scene in LOST IN AMERICA for inspiration. Normally I would put a hyperlink on Kent's name and it would be fun for everyone to click on Kent's name and see all the wonderful waggery [like this. - ed.] he has gotten up to over the years. But criminals - and the lax security robots of the Google corporation, I suppose, who make it impossible to speak to a sympathetic human person - have conspired to ruin everything we hold dear. Well, anyway, Donald Trump is running for president and just look what happens.

Jealous Robot Ray

Maybe I am on my "Kennedy kick" after all. I picked up LIBRA and started reading it. Almost right away we come to the CIA plotting to blow up Castro with "a sea shell that would explode when he went swimming." Now, this is part of that Norman Mailer novel I just read, too. And a tiny bit of "internet" research indicates it was a real plan right here in real life where we all live. But Mailer's narrator wants to train a manta ray to jealously guard the beauteous shell so it will seem more attractive and desirable to Castro. Mailer has him down as a big shell collector. And the "internet" tells me that the CIA did intend to "make the shell brightly colored and unusual looking so it would be sure to attract Castro’s attention." So Mailer's narrator schemes to train the jealous manta ray but finally decides a robot manta ray would work better. I assume the trained or robotic fish idea is all Mailer's... eh... I don't want to know.