McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

It's Dr. Theresa's birthday! And you know what that means, of course: it's time for "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," the regular "blog" feature where McNeil reads a 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart and gives us the scoop straight from his brain into our eager eye holes. Those who enjoyed the story of how Bogart gave a bellhop a nickel tip will be excited to learn that he tips a masseur in this one. But I've already said too much! Here, I'm just going to cut and paste the email I got from McNeil and my job is done. "THE BIG SLEEP was completed in January 1945. In late January 1945, Bacall was scheduled to be in NY for a publicity tour for the opening of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. Because the divorce between Bogie and Mayo had not quite been finalized, the studio didn’t want Bogie anywhere near Bacall. That didn’t happen. Bogie took the Super Chief to NY before her and waited on Bacall to get there (as soon as I typed Super Chief a train flew by the window of the doctor’s office I happen to be sitting in). He checked into the Gotham Hotel. The studio found out and sent a man named Stevens from their NY office to be with him 24/7 – to watch him and 'give him whatever he wants.' One night Bogie was particularly stressed and he and Stevens went to '21', where Bogie had a sandwich and a couple of drinks. Back at the hotel Bogie had a few more drinks. He still felt tense and told Stevens he wanted a massage. Warners had a masseur on the payroll so Stevens rang him up. Twenty minutes later Bogart was getting his massage – along with a couple more drinks he had ordered from room service. When the massage was over, Bogie took, as Stevens recounts, 'The fastest shower I have ever seen a man take. Less than forty-five seconds. No soap, nothing.' Bogie grabbed a towel and finished another drink and wondered where the hell that guy was with his massage. When Stevens told him he had just had the massage, Bogie became irate and demanded he come back and give him a real massage. The masseur lived in Brooklyn, but got on the subway with his table and came back and gave Bogie an hour-long massage. In the meantime, he and Stevens had ordered a steak dinner, which Bogie did not touch, choosing instead to drink more. After the massage Bogie demanded Stevens make a reservation at El Morocco, then Bogie demanded he change the reservation to the Stork Club, then he changed his mind and had Stevens make a reservation at Toots Shor’s. Five minutes later, Bogie took a nap. Sometime around ten pm (it’s only 10!!!) Bogie wakes up and needs another massage…Stevens called the masseur again, in Brooklyn, and told him to take a cab this time and Warners would pay for it. The guy came from Brooklyn for a third time and gave Bogie a brutal massage, which Bogie cursed and drank through. When it was done, Bogie was finally happy, and gave the masseur a $60 tip." You know what? That's the end of McNeil's email, but I decided to come back after all. I wanted to say that I thought I would certainly have a "blog" "hyperlink" to provide about the Super Chief, as I recalled with 88% guaranteed mental accuracy that Vic, the hero of the Doomed Book Club classic THE HUCKSTERS, had a romantic encounter or two on the very same Super Chief. But after combing the "blog" to the fullest extent of my superhuman abilities, I uncovered no evidence that I am not just living in a beautiful dream.

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up

Welcome once again to "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up," your only place on the "internet" for all the biggest scoops on the entertainment show business stars of tomorrow. THIS JUST IN! Your eyes do not deceive you. That's MY BROTHER with STEVE LAWRENCE. If you don't know who STEVE LAWRENCE is, you're even worse than we thought. And frankly we never thought much of you. As WILL FRIEDWALD says in his BIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE TO THE GREAT JAZZ AND POP SINGERS, aw, there's six pages of double columns here, and the print is so tiny, never mind. Speaking of the fine crooners of this proud nation, BILL BOYLE set twitter ablaze yesterday when he stumbled across an LP by MATT DENNIS at THE END OF ALL MUSIC. Soon everyone on twitter was joining in the hot new "MATT DENNIS" kick. No less than MEGAN ABBOTT weighed in with her fave MATT DENNIS album cover:

Not only can THIS DENNIS KID swing, he's written quite a few hit numbers! We predict he'll go far.

BILL BOYLE dug up a clip that supports our astonishing claim. You'd be a fool not to "click" it. Here's the LP that got BILL so worked up, and we couldn't help but note that it is the cheery antithesis of a devastating PORTER WAGONER album cover. Talk about "flip sides"! The world is a strange place, as your friends at "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up" have noticed. Sometimes you're MATT DENNIS and sometimes you're PORTER WAGONER and there's nothing you can do about it.

Say! Your intrepid glittery-eyed troupers here at "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up" must have crooners on the brain!

Because we just remembered that we forgot to ever remember to tell you that the bar at the Lamar Lounge once graced EDDIE FISHER'S house! It's even crowned with a big, proprietary "EF"! But nothing last forever, folks. That's just the way it is. Take DINOSAURS! Who but noted author MARY MILLER came back from a recent excursion to IDAHO with a bag of genuine dinosaur poop from a souvenir shop?

And who was the recipient of this notable benefaction? None other than your humble purveyor of "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up." Our favorite part of the inscription? Her insistence that we "enjoy." That's all the "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up" we have time for today. Until next time, keep "reaching" for the "stars"! And in the words of MARY MILLER, "ENJOY!"

Little Coats

Read some more of THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY for the Fourth of July. Burton has the scoop on angels and devils! Did you know that the demonologist Psellus believed that demons poop? I'm sorry, "that they are nourished and have excrements." Yeah, Burton isn't buying it. He quotes another scholar's theory that angels are "absolutely round" like basketballs. He doesn't say "basketballs." Oh! Our old friend Paracelsus comes up quite a bit. Remember how he supposedly concealed his most powerful medicines in the hilt of his sword? A guy named Erastus claimed that Paracelsus had a devil "confined to his sword pummel." Meanwhile, "Paracelsus reckons up many places in Germany, where [fairies] do usually walk in little coats some two foot long." Aw!

We Disagree on One Point

Hey there's a new interview with George Singleton over at the Lent Magazine. To enjoy it, "click" here. George always gives the best interviews and a new one is big news. He is hilarious and insightful. He always makes me laugh. He says stuff in here like, "Hell, I spend half my time just trying to think up names. I’m just going, 'God, I’ve used that name – Frank! Frank has shown up in a hundred short stories.'" See, that is the real scoop about writing. He says, "Well I’m not a big fan of anything I’ve written in the past because it’s kind of dead meat... I bet if I got hit in the head and forgot who I was and read those stories I’d go, 'All right, maybe they deserve to be published in a magazine.' But I’m not sure I would... There are these people out there who talk about these meals they’ve eaten years in the past, and they go, 'That was the best meal I’ve ever eaten twenty years ago in Paris.' Okay, good for you. I just say it was food, and what's the next meal?" Heed this gnomic master, young geniuses! He does come out as strongly pro-Vienna sausage, and down that one dark path to madness I cannot follow.

More Terrible Things

Sorry I can't stop thinking about the mysterious death of Meriwether Lewis. His friend Alexander Wilson visited the site to get the scoop straight from Mrs. Grinder, the eyewitness. Wilson wrote: "He lies buried close by the common path, with a few loose rails thrown over his grave." Oh, that's terrible! The "blog" is usually so upbeat. Look, I said I'm sorry. Wilson goes on: "I gave Grinder money to put a post fence around it, to shelter it from the hogs, and from the wolves; [also terrible! So terrible! - ed.] and he gave me his written promise he would do it. I left this place in a very melancholy mood, which was not much allayed by the prospect of the gloomy and savage wilderness which I was just entering alone." While I was trying to find out who Wilson was (an ornithologist) I came across an article about the whole mystery by Dee Brown, so read that, too, and you can be just like me, thinking of the sad death of Meriwether Lewis all the time - what any patriotic American would do!

No Glaze, No Sprinkles

I'll tell you something else both books (THE ADJUSTMENT and ANGELA SLOAN) have in them: donuts. In Scott Phillips's hardboiled world, the main character tells the diner waitress that he's taking the donut home to his pregnant wife... BUT THEN HE EATS IT IN THE CAR! And that is BY FAR the least awful thing he does in the book. Now here is Whorton's narrator, the eponymous Angela Sloan: "I like a plain cake donut, no glaze, no sprinkles. Other things went out of my head while I ate this donut. The outside was crisp and toasty with a tallowy aroma and hints of nutmeg. The yellow interior was soft and dense." You know, the "blog" revealed almost five years ago that Whorton enjoys a plain cake donut as much as his narrator does. That's a scoop!

Kerouac Pie Calculation

"... apple pie and ice cream in a roadside stand... I ate another apple pie and ice cream... I knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of course... I ate apple pie and ice cream - it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer... she made the sweetest cherry pie in Nebraska, and I had some with a mountainous scoop of ice cream on top." In Chapter 3 of ON THE ROAD, there is a serving of pie and ice cream every 2 1/2 pages!

Sad Clowns Are the New Hip Thing

Looks like I really lucked into something, getting in on the ground floor of the sad clown bonanza. Sad clowns are everywhere, man! If I were to give you investment advice, I'd say, "Put all your money in sad clowns!" As you know, I was way ahead on this trend. I'm almost getting tired of scooping our nation's paper of record so much. I feel bad for them! They're playing catch-up in today's New York Times, where the noted actor Geoffrey Rush says, "The thrilling thing was that we found the more intense the clowning, the more intense the comedy, the more intense the experience of pain and alienation." Yeah, that's what sad clowns always say. Mostly I want the sad clowns to shut up and do their little dance while I throw coins at their feet. Sad clowns!

24

The magic number is 24. On October 24th, Tom Franklin's new novel CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER will officially debut at #24 on the New York Times Best Seller List! This is the inside scoop and you can take it to the bank. New York Times Best Seller Tom Franklin, everybody! Sometimes things work out the way they should.

Real Good Scoopin'

I don't think the "web" site called the gawker (which, as you will recall, I discovered because of our shared interest in donuts and monkeys) is copying me, but I do believe we share some coincidental concerns. I recently "scooped" them pretty handily on two stories they reported today: the wienermobile crash and the one about how much the Pope loves Oscar Wilde. Oscar Mayer and Oscar Wilde! Two fine Oscars. So today we have had one "post" with Oscar Wilde and Oscar Mayer, and another "post" with Jerry Lewis and Jerry Springer. What can all this strange symmetry mean? Something about the end of the world is my usual guess.

Literary Matters

Welcome once again to "Literary Matters," our reviled regular feature designed to bore you to tears with literary matters. Today we have three literary matters, which is three too many. 1) As I mentioned in that interview I did recently, I feel bad for making fun of the Fredric Brown title THE CASE OF THE DANCING SANDWICHES. I researched Mr. Brown on the "internet" and he seemed so interesting that I ordered one of his books (THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT, which I describe somewhat inaccurately in the interview) from Square Books. It came in (they're speedy over there at Square Books), I'm reading it, and it's just great. Once again (see the affair of Jack Arnold) like a fool I mock what I don't understand. That's one thing a "blog" is good for - snap judgments! What a bad, lazy man I am. 2) I have a piece in the new BELIEVER magazine. As usual, you can't read the whole thing on the "internet." That's how they trick you! You have to buy the magazine. It's a good magazine and you will be glad you did. I notice there's an interview with John Ashbery in the same issue! 3) "Blog" Buddy John T. Edge has been given a monthly column in the New York Times. I believe I am "scooping" the New York Times again with this information. I do that a lot. Thank you for suffering through our literary matters.

Bissellmania Is Back!

Look who's on the book "blog" over at the New York Times today: "Blog" Buddy Tom Bissell. He says, "My relationship to the Web is probably very similar to being in a profoundly unhappy marriage with someone you really love and care about. You hate it; you love it. You want to leave; you know you can’t." I believe we broke this news here on the "blog" back in 2006! Oh, we're scooping the New York Times all over the place these days. Hey, last time I was in the periodicals room, I ran across Tom Bissell's recent article in the New Yorker. Read it by "clicking" here. It's got Bissell all over it! Bissell!

A Scoop!

You heard it here first, folks, direct from the source! Readers of Laura Lippman's continuing serial in the New York Times Sunday magazine should keep their eyes peeled in the upcoming weeks for what Lippman calls "a longish discussion of the Shirley MacLaine vehicle WHAT A WAY TO GO!" (The exclamation point is neither mine nor Lippman's - it's in the title.) It should be noted that by the wildest of coincidences, WHAT A WAY TO GO! came up during my recent luncheon with Kelly Hogan, Kathleen Judge, and Neko Case. Will it therefore appear in my Oxford American article? Wait and see! This is not a scoop about me, it is a scoop about Lippman, whose highly anticipated discussion of WAWTG offers, in her words, "a new theory of cinema, involving the inverse relationship between a film's quality and the presence of a chimpanzee in said film." I believe one of us is misunderstanding the word "inverse." If Lippman means to suggest that anything with a chimp in it is awesome, I concur wholeheartedly! (Pictured, MacLaine in WHAT A WAY TO GO!, standing in front of some art made by the Paul Newman character - with the help, if I am recalling the plot correctly, of his wily chimpanzee. The point of a lot of movies and TV shows of the 1960s seemed to be that we are suckers for enjoying "modern" art because a chimp could make it - unlike movies and TV, as I suppose went the unspoken corollary. The teenage protagonist of my B+ novella "Your Body Is Changing" considers the situation as it has been presented to him in popular culture: "Henry knew that a lot of times people just pretended to like art so they could be cool. They would stand around and drink alcohol and eat weenies on toothpicks and make a big deal about some piece of junk that was supposed to be great art, but then it would turn out to be nothing but a knocked-over garbage can or a no-smoking sign or a spot on the floor where somebody had thrown up, which was a situation that Henry had observed in many comedy movies. Like the one where the supposedly great artist had trained a monkey to ride around on a tricycle with paint on the wheels, and that was how he had made his supposedly great art!" So you can see that I am torn. I love chimps in movies, yet I am not crazy about the way they are used to belittle the role of the artist in society! It is not the chimp's fault! Speaking of Paul Newman and chimps, he also appeared with one in another exclamation pointed title, RALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS!, as has been noted on the "blog.")

A Chicken Is a Bird. Get It?

Somehow I missed this article for a few days. But it turns out, according to the New York Times, and I quote, that "crows and their relatives — among them ravens, magpies and jays... can recognize individual human faces." For the whole article, "click" here. Looking back, I see they're attributing the talent only to crows. Pardon my misleading ellipses! In any case, I thought of how nice such news must be for the Dear Bird Correspondent, because it means that all the birds she has helped over the years probably think of her from time to time. And it was only THEN, I SWEAR, as a SIDE EFFECT, that I recalled my commercial duty to "plug" my upcoming appearance alongside said DBC (real name Sheri Joseph) at the Decatur Book Festival this Sunday. Witness this rare in-person meeting for yourself! Sheri would be the first to say that our books are not much alike and neither of us can figure out why people want to put us on the same program all time. BUT! We enjoy hanging out with one another and do have a secret entertainment bonus surprise, or S.E.B.S., to unveil at our reading on Sunday. I'll be so mad if Sheri "chickens" out. Get it? Because a chicken is a bird! Yuk, yuk, yuk! Whoopee! "Click" here to see the time that the DBC "scooped" the New York Times' on their assertion (above) that jays and crows are related.

Scooping McNeil

After an invigorating and impressive two whole days in a row, McNeil's UFO column, "Way... Way Out," appears to have withered on the vine. I hate to scoop McNeil, but the "blog" has just learned that the next collaboration of Dan Brown and Kent Osborne will be a UFO feature film, to be shot on location in Roswell, NM and other UFO-friendly spots. You heard it here first, UFO fans! (Pictured, Kent Osborne and Dan Brown.)

See?

I told you. Dang! The NY Times scoops me again. The writer even mentions Bewitched, My Favorite Martian, and I Dream of Jeannie near the end, as I sort of did. (Also, my reference to camp was intended to bring DARK SHADOWS to mind; she mentions it explicitly. Finally, we both used the term ghost busters, though she made it one word.) I swear I didn't see the article before I wrote the previous "post." Could the coincidence be... supernatural??? You know how the "blog" has eerie powers that no one can understand. In any case, I still want to hear from Dr. "M.," who has surfaced recently only to complain about William Hurt's neck. Television viewers need you more than ever, Dr. "M."! And I didn't entirely buy the NY Times writer's answers, which were nearly as pat as my earlier thoughts on werewolves (no offense! The article was interesting and enjoyable). I brought up this whole supernatural TV problem to Theresa the other night, and though she is getting a Ph.D. in American studies from Emory, she was rather stumped. "It's more than just cashing in on LOST," she said. "But it's hard to say when we're this close to it." Theresa would like to wait a couple of years before jumping to any conclusions. (Her chapter on Patty Hearst, on the other hand, is becoming deeper and richer every day, the story having had time to percolate or brew or steep or something in the cultural imagination.) I feel that I should DOUBLE SWEAR as to the coincidence. I have been thinking of "blogging" something about this, McNeil's daughter's question spurred it, and only then did I see the exact same idea THIS VERY DAY in the Times. Good gravy!

Stardust

The FBIL is here. This morning he chuckled warmly as he leafed through our copy of I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS! (exclamation point not mine), which I had placed on the coffee table for purposes of just such entertainment. Later we went to our new neighborhood bookstore (see the "links" sidebar to the right) and found out that the author of I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS!, Fletcher Hanks, is the subject of an article in the new BELIEVER magazine. As faithful readers - who may or may not exist - know, I am now okay with my favorite secret things being disseminated to the public at large (anxiety over that kind of occurrence is coincidentally the subject of a letter to THE BELIEVER this month), so I have no problem with everyone enjoying the work of Fletcher Hanks, even though the depressing coda to I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS! explains that he was a terribly mean man. Let me just add that while reading Mr. Hanks' comic book stories of a superhero named Stardust, I couldn't help but notice a few details which put me in mind of my upcoming novel. For example, at one point Stardust gathers everyone on the planet (they have all unwillingly flown off into space for reasons that you need to find out for yourself) and returns them to the exact locations from which they were expelled into the ether. The narrator of my novel does not do that but - SPOILER ALERT! - he does do something else with all the people of the earth. Also, Stardust can grow his hand to an amazing size - or so it appears in the drawings - and clobber people. On his wedding day, my narrator turns his hands into the size of bulldozer scoops. I can say no more. But this is just a weird coincidence. And anyway, it is not for clobbering purposes. Plus the novel was finished long before I discovered Fletcher Hanks. Still, I feel a strange tingle of kinship (professionally but not personally, I hope, with such a nasty fellow) and my old familiar jitters about treading a worn path.

Joe

Now I'm reading JOE by Larry Brown. Just the first chapter so far (over "joe" this morning) but if first chapters are any indication, this is going to be a swell book, a harsh and poetic book. Plus we are moving to Oxford, the hometown of Mr. Brown, and two "Blog" Buddies, in entirely different contexts, volunteered recently that JOE was Mr. Brown's best book. So it seems like the right thing to read. Up until this point I have only read his BIG, BAD LOVE, which had a big impact on me when I was just starting to think seriously about being a "writer." Still I am convinced that no one should care about my opinion. That makes an interview a funny process. I immediately second-guess whatever I say. If I knew anything true, I wouldn't be writing fiction! I "did" an interview yesterday and I believe I said a lot of stupid junk. I remember claiming that the "blog" employed "the non-****** ************ of the trappings of *****." That's the kind of thing I said (not to "scoop" the interviewer, who was very kind and understanding as I ranted and danced around his excellent questions, trying to hide my abject bewilderment with the "writing" "process"). You know what? I'm going to go back and partially censor the thing I said to the interviewer. He may want to use it, and otherwise I will have taken all the juice out of it. I'll come back and fill it in after the interview comes out, and we can discuss what the blankity-blank I thought I was talking about. When interviewers ask me about the "blog" it makes me realize that people can read the "blog" on the "internet" and confuse it with actual "writing." And that ought to make me nervous! But it doesn't make me quite nervous enough, apparently.

Trendsetter!

The influence of the "blog" continues to be profound and pervasive. We see that The Elegant Variation, for example, has hopped on the bandwagon RE: National Rewrite Your Novel Month. The month is almost halfway over, but better late than never! Also, Kent Osborne has followed our lead in acquiring a dreaded nemesis - a must in this day and age of complex emotions and anxieties. Yes, we all need a nemesis to keep us on our toes! Get yours today. I cannot "link" to the specific part in question of Kent's "blog" because that "post" has limited access - I guess he doesn't want his nemesis to see it! - and, as I have mentioned before, my problems with "myspace" are insurmountable and I no longer know how to "log in" and get the "scoop." But maybe you can! You're young and smart!

As Promised

Agent "M." doesn't mess around! Just hours after her original vow, we have her report--a report that she claims with believable urgency was seven years in the making, and which we proudly present forthwith, I quote (and you know I am quoting accurately, because I retain her non-use of quotation marks around the word "blogger"): "With permission from the blogger, I have decided to expand my observational repertoire and offer thoughts on local food as well as television. My first commentary will concern the Best Chicken Salad in Atlanta. The bronze medal goes to Shield's Meat Market in Emory Village. I love this place--locally owned butcher shop and deli where you can get a sandwich, chips and pickle for about $6. They make their chicken salad from scratch each day. It's what I consider a perfect consistency--more pasty than creamy, with lots of chunks of chicken and bits of celery. The silver medal goes to Belly at the corner of No. Highland and St. Charles Ave. While their chicken salad is on the pricey side, it is worth the splurge. It too avoids the common problem facing so many chicken salads these days--too much mayo--opting instead for more chicken, less sauce. I believe they also put secret ingredients into it--perhaps sun dried tomatoes? Don't take my word for it --check it out for yourselves. Finally, the gold medal goes to...the Brickstore Pub. Their chicken salad comes as a scoop atop their delicious side salad (one of the best green salads in Atlanta with parmesan and yellow raisins and delicious tomatoes), and it is a delicious blend of chicken, mayo...and here's the secret touch...yogurt! While this may sound odd to connoisseurs of traditional chicken salad, trust me--you've never had chicken salad this good. Bon appetit, y'all!"