Abalone Biscuit Stick

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

Say No to Chiromancy in 2026

Well, Kate Tsang sent me an amazing present - a tiny replica she fashioned of my novel SWEET BANANAS. I placed a penny beside it so you can see just how tiny a replica it is. In the foreground, that's Bob Hope's ashtray, but that's another story. I was going to photograph the tiny replica in the palm of my hand to emphasize its tininess, but then I decided I didn't want the palm readers of the "internet" to know everything about me and my future. Hey! You know what that makes me think of? The time Dr. Theresa and I went to a dinner party and the host had a few drinks (or maybe that was us) and told us that he had belonged to a secret society in Greece with 13 members, and each member specialized in a different occult art! And his was palmistry. I'm sure he read our palms that night but I don't remember what he said. All I remember is that his wife, who was from Italy, made a big pot of spaghetti with tomato sauce, which everyone ate except for the chiromancer, who sat at the head of the table nibbling on a lettuce leaf.

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.

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.

Heard You Were Saucy

You know I don't "blog" anymore unless I read a book with an owl in it and compulsively put it on my list, which I do all the time, because every book has an owl in it, including TWELFTH NIGHT, which I am reading right now, and in which Sir Toby threatens to "rouse the night owl" with his singing, although my favorite line so far is "I heard you were saucy at my gates."

"Blog"trospective 18: The Anatomy of Melancholy

As promised, though I have "stopped 'blogging,'" I have returned to you just long enough to boast about finishing all 977 pages of THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. That includes the first appendix, "The Conclusion of the Author to the Reader" (reworked by Burton for his introduction and left out of most subsequent editions), but not the second appendix, in which Burton's birthdate is deduced through astrological data. It only took me something like a year. I won't rehash my many excuses, no, I won't say how big and bulky the 1927 edition is and how I couldn't carry it on airplanes. I won't point out the good, long run I had of reading it before I was interrupted. But - before we get to the main body of this, the final "blog"trospective, I will tell you what I learned from THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY since the last time I saw you. 1. Compared to Blind Alfred Reed, Robert Burton is kind of progressive. He (Burton) gives us (as is his wont) several pages of quotations from ancient scholars enumerating what is supposedly wrong with women. But then he has to admit, "And that which I have said (to speak truth) no more concerns them than men, though women be more frequently named in this Tract; (to apologize once for all) I am neither partial against them, or therefore bitter... If any man take exception at my words, let him alter the name, read him for her, and 'tis all one in effect." 2. "Eating the egg of a night-owl causeth abstemiousness, according to Iarcha the Indian gymnosophist." Burton is speaking of sexual or romantic abstemiousness, though the idea that an owl's egg can cure alcoholism somehow made it to the United States, as reported previously on the "blog." Another of the "absurd remedies" for love mentioned by Burton is the wearing of "Characteristical Images," such as "the seal of a woman with disheveled hair." 3. "Gentle youths" are advised to "Let not the Doves outpass your murmurings... or oyster kissings," which would seem to imply that oysters are good kissers, as good at kissing as doves are at murmuring. I did very little research into the matter. We all know that oysters are supposed to be an aphrodisiac, so why shouldn't they be good kissers? I also recall that prostitutes were called "oysters" and "monkeys" in Burton's time, and though I doubt that's what is meant here, it does make me realize I took at least one of Burton's allusions to monkeys too literally. 4. After one victory, Caesar's soldiers sang a song that went, "Citizens, look to your wives, we bring you a bald adulterer." Gee, what a nice song. I learned of it in Burton's section on the sexual prowess of bald men (pictured). 5. Speaking of which, I learned the word "cornute," which, had I thought about it for a second, I would have known meant to put the horns on, or cuckold, but I didn't think at all, no, I just looked it up in my old dictionary. 6. Lots more owls in these final pages. At least half a dozen. In the passage urging young women not to marry old men, Burton tells how Sophocles, "a very old man, as cold as January, a bed-fellow of bones... doted yet upon Archippe a young Courtesan" and quotes an old poem: "Night-crows on tombs, owl sits on carcass dead,/ So lies a wench with Sophocles in bed." Ha ha, take that, Sophocles! 7. "As a dam of water stopped in one place breaks out into another, so doth superstition." This seems to anticipate Freud! Does it? I don't know. I think of Dr. Theresa's favorite phrase, "the return of the repressed." 8. He calls the goddess Venus "as common as a barber's chair." Was that a familiar insult at the time? Anyway, it's kind of snappy, if rude. 9. Burton says that people can be obsessive on one subject but otherwise fully functional: "they are like comets, round in all places but only where they blaze." A nice phrase! 10. Well, Burton has thought a lot about religious tolerance and I can't say he's for it. He does think burning people at the stake might be a little extreme, sometimes: "We have frequently such Prophets and dreamers amongst us, whom we persecute with fire... I think the most compendious cure for some of them at least, had been in Bedlam. But enough of this." 12. Yet at the same time he doesn't care for hellfire preachers, "nothing but gall and horror, and a mad noise, they make all their auditors desperate, many are wounded by this means, and they commonly that are most devout and precise." 13. "A Tuscan Sooth-sayer, as Paterculus tells the story, perceiving himself and Fulvius Flaccus his dear friend, now both carried to prison by Opimius, and in despair of pardon, seeing the young man weep, said, do as I do; and with that knockt out his brains against the door-cheek, as he was entering into Prison, and so desperately died." Well, that's a terrible story, sorry! But I can't help liking the phrase "knockt out his brains against the door-cheek." It's vivid! 14. Here's Burton's version of that Bible verse I like: "I am like a Pelican in the wilderness, an Owl because of thine indignation." Ha ha! No, I don't know why that's funny. 15. "... the more they search and read Scriptures, or divine Treatises, the more they puzzle themselves, as a bird in a net, the more they are intangled and precipitated into this preposterous gulf." I know how they feel! 16. I learned the word "Mormoluches," which seems to mean "hobgoblins." And now take my arm as we stroll through THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY as summarized previously on this "blog": against vainglory---aliens (two green children who fell from Heaven)---alkermes---Aquinas beats a talking brass man to pieces with a hammer (1927 footnote)---architectural talent of bees, the---Artemidorus the Grammarian loses his wits by the unexpected sight of a crocodile---bats and owls hover in melancholy darkness over a shady bower---Burton critical of, yet defiant about, his own work---company of young men and maids cursed to sing for a year without stopping---compares the profession of a physician unfavorably to that of a hangman---contains numerous owls---cucubuth---cultivating a taste for exquisite sauces is an impediment to happiness---Cupid and Death exchange arrows---delusion of live frogs in belly---dizzards---emperor who was bad at kissing, the---February a peak time for werewolves---fairies walk about in little coats---fairybabes of tombs and graves---fiery urine---glucupicron---invention of the ball---led (by a 1927 footnote to Burton) to Godwin's LIVES OF THE NECROMANCERS---man gets gas from a concoction meant to increase his libido, a---man with a fear of peeing cured by being told the town is on fire, a---mice sleeping under the snow, as fat as butter---parable of a mule and an ass---people cured of various ailments by falling on their heads---pickitivant---Pied Piper story presented as fact, the---possible roots of "willy-nilly"---trees fall in love. In closing I ask you to recall the previous seventeen "blog"trospectives: 1. Tom Franklin. 2. Phil Oppenheim. 3. Movies. 4. The Moon. 5. Sandwiches. 6. The United States. 7. The Beach Boys. 8. Arnold Stang. 9. Books With Owls In Them. 10. Gelatin. 11. Monkeys Riding Dogs. 12. Kent Osborne Eating Chicken. 13. What Happened When Megan Abbott Lived In Oxford, Mississippi. 14. Graveyards. 15. Feeding a Possum. 16. The Twentieth Century. 17. Stuff I Left Out of the Book I Wrote About Cigarette Lighters. If you "click" on them all, and then "click" on every "link" within them, and every "link" within every "link," you will have discovered my own anatomy of my own melancholy. "The world shall end like a Comedy, and we shall meet at last in Heaven, and live in bliss together; or else in conclusion, fade away into nothing." Okay, so long, see you on McNeil's birthday.

Literary Matters

It's time once again for "Literary Matters"! No one enjoys those. They're not enjoyable. 1. I covered this one on twitter yesterday, but it's sticking in my mind. I read in the New York Times about Jimmy Buffett "grinning and splashing Tabasco on a modified Cobb salad." The editorial machinery of the New York Times saw fit - for the sake of accuracy, one supposes - to make sure the reader did not receive the false impression that Jimmy Buffett was eating a completely traditional Cobb salad. BUT! They did not care to let that same reader know in what way the Cobb salad had been modified. That's really all I have to say about that, except that I can't stop thinking about it. 2. EVERYBODY has been telling me to read BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL. Why, Randy Yates stopped me on the corner outside his own restaurant just to ask whether I had read it. And he was only one of many to make that query. And I needed something to read after MEASURE FOR MEASURE. (Ha ha, don't worry, I haven't given up on THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY; I just read this in it: "Cupid and Death met both in an Inn, and being merrily disposed, they did exchange some arrows from either quiver; ever since young men die, and oftentimes old men dote"... but I need a new "carry-around" book.) BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL is done up at least partway in that poetic style that Chandler made permissible for crime stories (instead of bubbles in the bathwater there are "little zeroes of suds"), and I'm more than fine with that! Okay! But then I had to stop on page 12 when he referred to the "trashy tune and words" of a Hank Williams song. The idea of someone sitting around proclaiming something "trashy" has never set well with me. And I know I should not confuse the author with the narrator! But here's a guy working in a genre that has been (unfairly) called "trashy" and he is going to have his narrator refer to the towering melodic and lyric achievements of Hank Williams as "trashy"? He should be on Hank's side! The irony (?) is compounded by the fact that this is a slick nyrb paperback, which has "rehabilitated," I guess, his "pulpy" novel. 3. Have you ever noticed in those books how your tough-guy narrator always wants to tell you when he takes a hot shower and eats some steak and eggs? It's a tendency I noticed in Spillane a lot. Maybe it's realism! I always thought it would be interesting to write a detective novel where there's no crime to solve and the detective just tells you about all the eggs he eats and hot showers he takes. The narrator of BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL "had no more idea of falling in love with her than I had of making a meal of the big yellow cake of soap in the Victorian bathroom," curiously combining both tendencies. 4. So I put down BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL. I'm gonna come back to it! I just have to shake off that unnecessary sideswipe at Hank Williams, though it's really got its claws in me. But in the meantime I thought I'd see what some of these here Shakespeare experts had to say about MEASURE FOR MEASURE. Out of three scholarly tomes I opened, two fell open EXACTLY and AT ONCE to the part about MEASURE FOR MEASURE, as if guided by the ghostly hand of Shakespeare himself! 5. Okay, I told you I'd read some more of this novel. Just three pages later the narrator is complaining that descriptions of women's legs in books are "trash." I don't know whether he's obsessed with trash or I am. But he's used the term twice in three pages. And now he's washing down seconds of potato salad with ice cold beer. Don't get mad at me, kind recommenders! I'm going to give this guy more of a chance than he gave Hank Williams. 6. I WAS WRONG! It's more like Cain than Chandler, but that's not what I mean. See, he's using the Hank Williams song ("If You've Got the Money, Honey") in a much more complex way than I expected... as a kind of shifting leitmotif. "Before it had sounded frank and functional. Before it had sounded gay and uncomplicated. Now the tune had a nasty taste to it." So, see, he was going somewhere with that, and I'm the sap. 7. I'm "not 'blogging' anymore, but I thought a late addendum to an old "post" would be okay. I'll probably come back to brag when I finish THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY too. But in the meantime, from BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL, "She split some canned wieners and fried them with the eggs." See? I told you this kind of narrator always tells you when he eats eggs. 8. "... his hand busy as a tarantula in a fly cage." Gross! And I don't even know what a fly cage is. I assume it is a cage full of flies. And then you put a tarantula in it. But with its obvious debt to Chandler's "tarantula on a slice of angel food," the pendulum of influence swings back. I said I'm not "blogging" anymore but I keep sneakily adding to this list. Pitiful.

Tabasco

Julia's tale of being an extra in a Burt Reynolds movie reminded Kent of the time he was an extra in BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES (there he is, lower left). The desk assigned to his character had a bottle of Tabasco on it, for reasons that Kent does not know to this very day. So after Tom Hanks completed one take, he walked by and said to Kent, "There's Tabasco on your desk." In Kent's modest retelling, he said something back like, "Yes sir, Mr. Hanks!" So Tom Hanks completed another take and walked by again and said to Kent, "Tabasco!"

Old Spinning Wheel Dude

Everyone loves the saucy obituaries of Margalit Fox! And I am no exception. How oft have I championed her work. Twice, that's how oft. But my old brain got to thinking today after I hyperbolically emailed Megan Abbott that the New York Times is "SO BORING!" and she semi-ironically countered with a Margalit Fox obit of an old spinning wheel dude. I suddenly recalled tweeting this back in January:

margalit fox is spiraling out of control

— Jack Pendarvis (@JackPendarvis) January 31, 2015

but I couldn't remember why. As you can see, it deserved and received no faves or retweets. What set me off? Why did I think, apparently, that Margalit Fox was going mad with power, ha ha, mad with obituary writing power, I suppose? Or did something remind me of when Larry King's tweets became too self-aware and I had to block him? An investigation was called for! The NYT published two Fox obits on the date in question, and I suspect it's this opening paragraph that put me over the edge:

In her spinning wheel obit, Fox refers to the deceased as "a Burl Ives of a man." Can someone be a Burl Ives of a man? I mean, other than Burl Ives? Shouldn't the object of comparison be something other than an actual man? Isn't that like calling a Chrysler "the Cadillac of cars" or something? Now I'm just complaining for the sake of complaining. Maybe I'm in a bad mood. I'm sorry, Margalit Fox! Don't write anything bad about me when I'm dead. PS This photo of Mitzi Gaynor in today's paper is what started the whole discussion.

These Potato Chips Aren't Hot

Late last night when I couldn't sleep I had to leave the room for a moment so I paused the TV. Paused the TV! Such a thing was unthinkable not so very long ago, as I have often remarked to an empty room. I paused the TV because I wanted to find out who killed Jay Mohr on a rerun of LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT. It struck me that there was something immoral about my action! Amoral? Problematic. Decadent. And not because I vaguely recalled (accurately) who killed Jay Mohr from the first time I saw it. No, because I couldn't figure out whether my ability to pause the TV was giving me a "choice" or removing one. So during the after-hours LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT reruns there were commercials for things called Xeljanz and Rummikub. The former is a drug and the latter is a boardgame. I realized that "Rummikub" sounded funny only because I hadn't heard it before. That's on me, not on the blameless pastime of Rummikub! But Xeljanz sounded terrible because a focus group probably came up with it. Like, "Raise your hand if you think a medicine that starts with x and ends with z sounds 'real' enough to purchase." I thought about which letter in Xeljanz was the worst, and I decided on 'n.' Ha ha, I like to pretend someone is reading this. The n is close enough to an m that one thinks of Xeljamz, which sounds like a compilation CD of ungodly music, maybe. [It would be corporate slang for "excellent jams"! - ed.] There was also a commercial for a boardgame called Googly Eyes, which nicely ties together Rummikub and Xeljanz, because Googly Eyes requires its players to don vision-distorting eyewear. Now I ask you! Does that sound healthy or safe? Oh, I'm sure it's fine. I recalled that Dr. Theresa had opened a bag of sriracha-flavored "Kettle Brand Potato Chips." I had inquired, earlier in the evening, how they were and Dr. Theresa said, "The bag says 'HOT!' but they're not hot." And she was right. I tasted one and it reminded me of ketchup-flavored potato chips from days gone by. "Ha ha, what dunces we were in the 1970s, eating ketchup-flavored potato chips," I reckoned. And that reminded me of something called "Andy Capp's Hot Fries," which were not hot, and not fries - were, in fact, tough little girders composed of, perhaps, densely compacted corn dust or corn waste - and which had as their mascot the unpleasant Sunday comics character Andy Capp, now long forgotten. So I thought I'd scoot to the "internet" to discover the inevitable nostalgic "chat rooms" dedicated to such grisly and obsolete products. And that is how I found out that both of these things - Lay's Ketchup Flavored Potato Chips and Andy Capp's Hot Fries - are still in production to this very day. (See also.) Thank you for attending to this blistering jeremiad on the subject of contemporary society. I trust your eyebrows were in no way singed by the force of the dynamic fury I unleashed. (Full disclosure: I suddenly recall that as a lad, upon discovering the ketchup-flavored potato chips, I marveled openly at the brilliance of the inventor. And we do love ketchup on our french-fried potatoes, do we not?)

Writers In Chains

Mary Miller and I had lunch at Applebee's today, which reminded me that Tom Franklin and I first met at an Olive Garden, which reminded me of the Christmas Eve in Mobile, Alabama, not too many years ago when nothing was open but a TGI Friday's so Tom and I (both in town to visit our parents) had some rainbow-colored cocktails. And as Tom reminded me yesterday, we used to meet when I got off work (from a coffee shop in Bel Air Mall) at the Ruby Tuesday next door, in which we went over each other's short stories, back before either of us was published. And I also recall that an ex-girlfriend of mine waited tables there and I liked to go sit in her section and whine to her about not having a future. And one day she finally asked me why I didn't stop whining and do something. She was sick of hearing it! For example, she was leaving forever (like the next day, as I recall, though that can't be an accurate memory) to have an adventurous life in Alaska. And she did! She was gone. And I was like, "She's right!" And I quit my job and moved to Atlanta. But anyway, Mary and I split an Applebee's dessert, or such was the plan. They brought it out on a sizzling hot skillet. A blondie on a sizzling hot skillet! Why? And somehow a black plastic cup of sauce had been placed on the sizzling hot skillet, and the bottom of the plastic cup had melted, sending a frightening, violently bubbling, sizzling, burning evil pool of thin white sauce and poisonous black plastic all over the sizzling hot skillet.

Mayonnaise Bildungsroman

You know who likes condiments? Dr. Theresa! So I got her about 25 condiments from around the world for her birthday. I gave them to her a month early or so, because I was tired of hiding condiments all around the house and also I was like, we should use these before they expire! Maybe under a bed is not the best spot for mayonnaise! Here, pictured, are just a few of the condiments. Maybe you don't think olives are condiments. Maybe I agree! But even if you subtract the olives, there were still about 25 condiments in the birthday package. Just yesterday we realized how many of the condiments we haven't even tried yet... lots! (And that's why I put some yuzu mayonnaise on a ham sandwich yesterday... not the best combo, though going in having no idea what a "yuzu" was - I just took a chance and squirted it on there - I was pleasantly surprised by the bright orange flavor. But not on a ham sandwich. But I ate it. Maybe it would be good in chicken salad...? Don't listen to me! I'm an idiot!) Of the condiments we have tried, I feel comfortable telling you the top four. I'm not sure I have the order right. Nor am I sure Dr. Theresa would agree. 4. Farmer's Daughter Salty Dog Marmalade. That is a fine marmalade! Let me tell you something about April McGreger, maker of the Farmer's Daughter Salty Dog Marmalade. I met her at a Southern Foodways Symposium several years ago, when they were handing out biscuits with her fig preserves on them. Ladies and gentlemen, not since my childhood had I tasted fig preserves SO EXACTLY LIKE my grandmother's fig preserves! I ordered jars for everyone in my family for Christmas, that's how good they were, and how close to home. I'm not sure Ms. McGreger has ever made exactly those fig preserves again. The last batch I saw for sale had bourbon in them, I think. My grandmother wouldn't have done that! The point is, April McGreger and her staff make different stuff every season, based on whatever is fresh and available in abundance. I NEVER (never?) advertise places to buy things on this "blog" but I am going to "link" to Farmer's Daughter. Get one of everything! The Salty Dog Marmalade has grapefruit and juniper and sea salt in it, and I rank it only at "4" because I guess - like ordinary marmalade - there are just a few truly proper things to smear it on. But I could be wrong! Maybe my imagination is insufficient. Anyway, it's amazing marmalade. We also use the Farmer's Daughter Sweet Potato/Habanero hot sauce a lot. 3. "Cereal Terra" (that's the brand) "ketchup piccante." I am afraid it has ruined us for other ketchups. Like, yesterday we broke out an "artisanal ketchup" (I guess) from the birthday batch to try on our hash browns and Dr. Theresa remarked "This is like tomato paste" when compared with the spicy flavor of Cereal Terra Ketchup Piccante (and yes, there are two c's in piccante, because it's Italian, I guess). So Dr. Theresa had to drown the inferior ketchup with a layer of ketchup piccante. I told you she likes condiments! She might rank the Cereal Terra Ketchup Piccante higher on this list. 2. Edmond Fallot Walnut Dijon Mustard. It's from, you know, France! And it has walnuts in it. And it goes on and in everything, which contributes to its high ranking. And it tastes so good you can eat a spoonful of it out of the jar. 1. Duke's Mayonnaise. For much of my life I "hated" mayonnaise. Let's analyze me! Was it because my mom would never put mayonnaise in our school lunches? She was afraid it would spoil before lunchtime! Nor, if we were going to the beach or on a picnic or anything like that (did we ever go on a picnic?), would anything with mayonnaise be included, for similar reasons. So perhaps from a young age I associated mayonnaise with danger. Ha ha ha! Or is it that I thought it was a food for "country people" (of which I was one)? My grandparents liked a spoonful of mayonnaise on a slice of fresh tomato or (as Tom Franklin and I, with our nearly identical backgrounds, have reminisced) a soft canned pear-half, with some cheese grated over it. Maybe I aspired to be too sophisticated for such rustic fare! Or maybe I didn't like mayonnaise. Maybe I wanted to be a big shot! But all through life I had to admit that mayonnaise was the only thing for a classic BLT, and maybe that is where I allowed my secret (even to me) craving for mayonnaise to express itself! Maybe I started to crack some time in the 90s. Is that when every restaurant started serving supposed "aioli"? And I was like, "Hey, this is mayonnaise!" I have heard many "food people" talk about Duke's mayonnaise. I have heard John Currence wax rhapsodically about the "old Duke's mayonnaise factory." And when I ate dinner at the James Beard House in New York City, they gave out packets of Duke's mayonnaise in the gift baskets we received upon departure. Still I resisted mayonnaise. Not anymore! We have already used a whole big jar of Duke's mayonnaise and started another. That's right, I bought it in bulk. In bulk!

Disillusioned Artiste

I watched CAREER and McNeil was right, of course. I loved it! Thick, chewy melodrama. Just my speed. Here we see Anthony Franciosa caring more about his cucumber facial than Shirley MacLaine's serious problems. The day I learned to do "screen grabs" was a blot on the universe. So the night before last I flipped to TCM and they were showing a marathon of Les Blank's documentaries. I watched one about garlic. It made me really hungry! Although the part where they cook some blue-eyed baby pigs depressed me, which is good because I'm sort of on a diet because I need to fit into John T. Edge's plaid tuxedo jacket soon. Why? None of your beeswax, that's why. But I was like: "Bill Boyle is coming over tomorrow. I'll make something with lots of garlic!" And I did. I made puttanesca sauce and I was really nervous because Bill is Italian and what if he scoffed? But Bill didn't scoff. Bill's not a scoffer. I use lemon, which I'm not sure is a traditional ingredient, so I went crazy and kept adding other stuff to drown out the lemon so maybe Bill wouldn't notice the lemon, which maybe defeated the purpose, I don't know, it turned out fine, get off my case, man. The point is Bill came over to watch TOO LATE BLUES, one of the few Cassavetes movies he hadn't seen, and which I recorded off of TCM a while back. It made me think of CAREER. Well, they both had a certain post-beat feel, a "disillusioned artiste" vibe.

There were bits of CAREER that made me think of INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS and BARTON FINK but there's no way the Coen Brothers ever watched CAREER, is there? We know Scorsese watched TOO LATE BLUES. Bill and I could tell! And everybody wore black suits with skinny black ties and argued about paying the diner owner, so maybe Quentin Tarantino watched it too. Who cares? Seriously. You're not alone: I bore myself. I honestly have nothing interesting to say but I took so many screen grabs of CAREER, so here we are. There's Shirley MacLaine saying, "Sam? What a lovely name. I like that name. The first man I ever completely destroyed was named Sam." She drinks a lot in this movie! Just look how she sits at the bar:

Such and Such Exquisite Sauces

"... a third is solicitous about his diet, he must have such and such exquisite sauces, meat so dressed, so far fetched, birds from strange countries, so cooked, &c. something to provoke thirst, something anon to quench his thirst. Thus he redeems his appetite with extraordinary charge to his purse, is seldom pleased with any meal, whilst a trivial stomack useth all with delight, and is never offended." It's like Robert Burton knows me! I'm the one with the trivial stomack. Though in my case it's movies, not food. But also food. THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY!

Feel Bad

Gee I feel really bad about all the labels I didn't have room to attach to that last "post."

Zeno Klinker

Before I "post" anything I make it a rule to ask myself: "Will this interest the fewest possible living people?" So today I started watching an Edgar Bergen movie on TCM. Edgar Bergen! A performer so unrelentingly bland he makes you pine for the pyrotechnics of Richard Dix. When Edgar Bergen speaks he sounds like a therapeutic hypnotist. So this movie was called LOOK WHO'S LAUGHING and the answer was "nobody." Ha ha ha, I just did that thing I hate. But when the title popped up the two o's in LOOK became a pair of wacky, rolling eyes, and beneath them the O in WHO'S turned into a hellishly gibbering mouth as muted trumpets in the score went wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah in a disturbing approximation of the laughter that never came. Hey did I mention that Fibber McGee and Molly are in this movie? So you're probably pretty fired up about that. The writing credits were weird. They mentioned who wrote Fibber McGee and Molly's jokes and who wrote Edgar Bergen's jokes. One guy who wrote Edgar Bergen's jokes was named Zeno Klinker, which I thought was either a terrible or perfect name for someone who writes jokes. I should mention that LOOK WHO'S LAUGHING is directed by Allan Dwan, darling of the auteurist set, and good for him. So the movie starts out with Edgar Bergen performing with his famous ventriloquist's dummy Charlie McCarthy. Lucille Ball does a "sexy nurse" bit and the dummy leers at her and makes gross jokes. So it's very clear that within the reality of this movie Charlie McCarthy is a wooden dummy. But suddenly it is announced that Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy are going on vacation together! And that's okay. Maybe he brings his dummy on vacation to practice. But to get to his vacation destination Edgar Bergen pilots a small plane, okay, and he's got one hand up Charlie McCarthy the whole time, and they have conversations! He's up there by himself flying his small plane with his hand up his dummy. I don't like it. Fibber McGee's jokes are terrible. His enemy says something about an "unimpeachable source" and Fibber McGee says "unimpeachable APPLE-source!" It's a pun on applesauce. I don't want to get into it. Then I was like, "I'm going to bed." And I did. I wasn't even tired! It was the middle of the day. Oh yeah and the production design or something was by someone named Van Nest Polglase or something. (Whoa, the same year as LOOK WHO'S LAUGHING he was the art director for CITIZEN KANE.)

Fatal Fusion

Hey Dr. Theresa and I were driving past a church just now and you know how churches have those little billboards outside with inspirational messages on them? This one said "FATAL FUSION" and that's all it said! On both sides! What is that? Something I'm supposed to know about? I am pretty sure it is not an inspirational message. Sounds like the title of an action movie. I was intrigued! Though not intrigued enough to attend church. I'm probably dumb and everybody knows what fatal fusion is. Speaking of which, I saw Bill and Jimmy at Good Idea Club last night, where we drank wine that tasted like barbecue sauce. And I told them about a description I like in ABSALOM, ABSALOM!: "his eyes looked like pieces of a broken plate" but I didn't tell them the rest of the description ("his beard was strong as a curry-comb") because I didn't want them to know I was too dumb to know what a curry-comb is. The man who is telling that part of the story in ABSALOM,ABSALOM! even appeared to think "curry-comb" was a weird thing to say, because he recalled of his father, who had originally made the description, as if musing on the strangeness of his father's utterance, "That was how he put it: strong as a curry-comb." So a curry-comb seemed like something I should look up in my WEBSTER'S NEW TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, UNABRIDGED, SECOND EDITION from 1974. And it's "a comb with metal teeth, for grooming and cleaning a horse's coat." So now I do feel dumb because everybody with a horse certainly knows what a curry-comb is but guess what. I don't have a horse. Bill and Jimmy told me last night that during the taping of my Lent Magazine interview I had pontificated at some length about iceberg lettuce wedges so naturally I urged them to send me the transcript of that portion. They've sent just a little of it, which I cut-and-paste here, though I must warn you I repeat some stuff that I've already told you on the "blog." The good news is that nobody reads the "blog." Maybe most of what I talk to anyone about comes from the "blog," because the "blog" now functions as a substitute for my memory, which no longer exists where it used to, in my brain. So I guess the "blog" is "canon," as ADVENTURE TIME fans like to say. But here's the wedge stuff: "JIMMY: How’s your wedge? JACK: This wedge is fantastic. The true wedge connoisseur of the family is Theresa. She loves a good, classic wedge. She introduced me to the pleasures of the wedge. One of many things Theresa has taught me over the years. Pendleton Ward took me to Musso and Frank’s, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. He told me all about how he used to sit there when he was first getting Adventure Time together and work on it. We both ordered a Romaine Salad, which was how it was listed on the menu. But when it came it was like they just sliced a head of romaine lettuce in half and gave me half and Pen half. And that was it! That was your salad! I was like, they are old school here! Grind a little pepper on top, dressing on the side, you kind of spoon some dressing over it and it tastes good! Now, because of that, this wedge seems whorish to me! Tarted up! That sounds like a Harry Potter story. Harry Potter and the Whorish Wedge." Jimmy assures me that plenty more wedge transcript is on the way. Thank God! In conclusion, some dude finally decided to get with the program and send me an "oatmeal selfie." His name is Randal Cooper and here he is. And thank God too for brave souls like him.

A Very Man Bait Christmas

We watched two Hammer movies Dr. Theresa gave me for Christmas: MAN BAIT on Christmas Eve, ha ha! And BAD BLONDE on Christmas Day. MAN BAIT is not as saucy as it sounds. It is virtually sauce-free. In fact, the first five minutes are just bookstore workers puttering around in a bookstore. Puttering around! Finally Diana Dors (pictured) showed up and I yelled "MAN BAIT!" And then I giggled. I couldn't say the title without giggling. Sometimes I giggled until I cried, Dr. Theresa standing by to dial 9-1-1. Dr. Theresa was amused by the low stakes in MAN BAIT. The big villain's plan is to get a hundred pounds from a bookstore manager. A hundred pounds! From a bookstore manager! (In the accompanying illustration here, he is TRYING UNSUCCESSFULLY TO STEAL A BOOK!) Things escalate. Sort of. There are some murders - I guess. Kind of accidental murders. The bookstore manager's "invalid" wife dies from reading a letter, for example. MAN BAIT! Well, BAD BLONDE had more of the old pepper to it. It was a brazen rip-off of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. It even had opera in it, Cain-style. Someone should (and I'm sure someone has) write an article about how, for Cain, opera is always tied up with betrayal and murder. I seem to recall that Cain wanted to be an opera singer but his mother - who WAS an opera singer - scoffed and jeered at him and told him he didn't have the voice for it. Freudian! I can't remember where I read that, but I used to proclaim it forcefully to my hardboiled class all the time, so it is probably true. The BAD BLONDE in BAD BLONDE was Barbara Payton. She had a lot of lines like, "It's too hot to sleep," in which she invested special meaning. And she literally licked her chops at the sight of her "prey," a young boxer. That's another thing! MAN BAIT started with a host of sad sacks glumly and quietly preparing a bookstore for daily operations and BAD BLONDE started with a boxing match at a seedy carnival. One of those is a better way to start a movie. Hey, remember when I went to an auction of Bob Hope's personal effects but I couldn't really tell you about it because I was going to write about it "professionally"? I've done a little bit of that, in an article on the Atlantic's "web" site, which you may read by "clicking" here. I mention it because Barbara Payton makes an appearance. Looks like, knock wood, I will be able to squeeze a good bit more juice out of that Bob Hope auction in the coming year. I'll let you know. Allow me to make a closing observation about MAN BAIT, ha ha! It will contain spoilers. So there is the inevitable "good girl" character in MAN BAIT. Her chief rivals for the affection of the bookstore manager (!) are the MAN BAIT (Diana Dors) and the bookstore manager's "invalid" wife. Thanks to the psychotic, if not very ambitious, criminal, her rivals are eliminated. I have half an idea here, something about how the "psychotic" characters in movies often reward the "good" characters by acting out the "good" characters' dark and unspoken impulses, and wow, as I'm typing it boy does it sound obvious and boring. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN deals with the idea explicitly, though maybe I am thinking about movies in which the filmmaker seems unconscious of the implications... hmm... My one consolation is that no one has read this far.

Night Sauce

Hey remember when my dad said that a person who "eats chicken and crabs will eat anything"? Anthony Bourdain agrees with him, at least about chickens. "Chickens are dirty." That's just about the nicest thing Anthony Bourdain says about chickens in KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL. And don't forget Werner Herzog, who accused chickens of "bottomless stupidity... fiendish stupidity" and a number of worse and grosser things, horrific things. I like KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL because Bourdain introduces us to people like "the doomed-looking night saucier." I'm not sure we'll get any more of him than that description, but as Mercutio said, "'Tis enough, 'twill serve." Is that what he said? I can't leave you without mentioning Kent Osborne... because Kent LOVES chicken! Ha ha what a country. Just the other day Kent was passing by what used to be the Diamond Club, where he tended bar in his youth. Ward McCarthy and I went there once and we were like, "What is up with these crazy kids." We said it with a period, not a question mark. That was 20 years ago, I guess, but our hearts had already withered. Well, Kent discovered that somebody has turned the once-hip Diamond Club into a "Buffalo Wild Wings" establishment, and I can't say Kent seemed sad about it.

Cultural Studies

Welcome, young friends, to "Cultural Studies," your place on the "internet" for "cultural studies." Reminded by this Norman Mailer bio that THE NAKED AND THE DEAD has an owl in it. A gruff army cook refers to the stew he is serving as "owl poop," only this saucy fellow uses much saltier language! Yesterday, on a very different note, Dr. Theresa and I enjoyed a most delicious breakfast at the Honey Bee Bakery. The Jackson 5 seemed to be on the old CD shuffler there, and nothing wrong with that! I love the Jackson 5. But then little Michael started singing "Rockin' Robin" and I went into a most unpleasant trance, suddenly eye to eye with the soulless abyss of cynicism (not Michael, who was a pawn in this scheme!) that had manufactured the object called "Rockin' Robin," and I involuntarily did a ten-minute monologue from the point of view of its composer. Luckily, Dr. Theresa found it amusing and entertaining! That kind of thing can go either way. Today I was justly chastened when I read an interview with the music producer Dev Hynes in the New York Times. He said something I want to put on my list of great things that people have said: "So we make a bad song. That’s like the worst thing that can happen. Which, in the scheme of bad things in the world, is not that bad." He goes on to say that a bad song has never killed anybody, or words to that effect, and this is the kind of thing I used to like to say in my fiction writing classes all the time, which may be one reason I am no longer teaching fiction writing classes. But it's true! I can't help it. Go ahead and be awful was often my sincere advice. So, you know, on second thought, maybe I wasn't chastened, because if you want to hear something that has been "carefully crafted" in a "workshop" environment in which a bunch of knowledgeable "colleagues" sat around a table and "improved" the "final product" with "heated critiques" that were only in "your best interest," you should listen to a "well-produced" and "thoughtfully arranged" recording of "Rockin' Robin," because so much "attention" was paid to "detail," but be warned that you will fall into an endless coma that can only be broken by true love's kiss. (Though see also.) A final cultural item! Yesterday, Dr. Theresa went to the used-book section at the back of the antique mall next to Big Bad Breakfast, which is wonderfully curated (the used-book section is) by a woman named Carolyn Ellis Seaton. Chris Offutt and I have whiled away some fun hours there. Dr. Theresa came home with a "Red Badge" mystery published by Dodd, Mead & Co. in 1946. Apparently, this "Red Badge" imprint hosted a yearly $1000 mystery-writing contest that smells like kind of a racket, but maybe it was legit. Anyway, some of the previous contest winners were listed in the front of the book, including TOO MANY BONES, THE MAN WITH THE LUMPY NOSE, and THE AFFAIR OF THE SCARLET CRAB and I was like ha ha ha that sure sounds like one sexy crab and thus conclude our cultural studies.