The Short Version

You know, several days ago, McNeil and I had a pretty good thread going about James Franciscus, and in my heart I was like, "Oh, there's a rich vein of 'bloggable' material here." Then I was like, "Well, I better find a photo of James Franciscus, because no one knows who he is." Then I was like, "Gee, how am I going to explain what McNeil and I are talking about?" Then I realized that once I began explaining James Franciscus, I would have to explain a lot more things, and pretty soon I'd be explaining the universe. And then I got depressed. The short version is that McNeil got some information about a James Franciscus movie from one of his old books, but when he consulted the "internet" about it, he discovered that THERE IS NOT EVEN A SINGLE ALLUSION TO THIS MOVIE ANYWHERE ON THE "INTERNET." And then McNeil blamed Elon Musk for creating this new reality we live in, in which the James Franciscus movie McNeil wants to see has been erased from what we laughingly call "existence." We laughingly call it that! Laughingly! Anyway, the main thing is you know three things about me: I have a "daytime" book I read during the day. I have a "nighttime" book I read at night. And I have proven that every book has an owl in it. Therefore, it should come as no shock that yesterday during the day I found an owl in my daytime book and during the night I found an owl in my nighttime book. But let's dig deeper! Just like a burrowing owl! My daytime book is a Million Dollar Book Club selection by J. Hoberman, all about the avant-garde art scene in New York in the 1960s. In a footnote, I noticed a place called "The Night Owl Cafe." And I was like, "You can't hide from me in a footnote, owl!" So, at night, I'm reading... well, remember when I was reading that James Ellroy book while I took my blood pressure? And I chose it because it had a reliable-looking and charming spine? But I didn't really care for the words on the pages of the book itself? Anyway, I was in Square Books the other day and I bought the sequel (see also). So the narrator calls Richard Nixon a "foul owl on the prowl." A few pages later, someone calls our narrator a "night owl." And that reminded me of how James Ellroy seems to love the phrase "night owl." And who can blame him? I will conclude with the astonishing fact that in yesterday's reading, both my nighttime book and my daytime book namechecked the film THE CRY OF JAZZ (see also). All of which reminds me, Dr. Theresa says I'm supposed to take my blood pressure today.

Incurious

Well, there's this series of books I don't really like that much. I guess the first one was okay, but as I think back, it was just sort of a novelty, maybe. And the second one I didn't enjoy at all. This hit me recently when I saw a new hardcover in Square Books the other day, a third book in the series, hot off the presses... and friends, I bought it! Why? It may have something to do with a problem in my brain. Oh boy, I've thought of a few more points to touch upon before we get to the gist, if there is one, which there almost certainly is not. Yes there is. But no one will like it. I recommended the first book in the series to Dr. Theresa recently when she was looking for something to read in bed. It was only some days later, when I saw the third in the series at Square Books, that I truly considered whether or not I had actually "enjoyed" the first... which I had, up to a point. But enough to recommend it to Dr. Theresa - a person to whom I have made sacred vows - to read in bed? Well, it was too late! It was already happening! Something else you may not be wondering... Jack, you may not be wondering, isn't it very seldom that you "post" something negative... admitting that you don't like a book, for example? Aren't you afraid of hurting the author's feelings? Well, I'll tell you. No. Because I know you! And you don't exist! And even if you do exist, which you don't, you never "click" on my "hyperlinks," so you will never, ever know what books I am talking about. I know what you're thinking! You're thinking, okay, this third book - which you bought for full price in hardcover - in a series you don't care for: does it have an owl in it? You bet your ass it does! It's a stuffed owl with "incurious glass eyes." I am sure you will recall the "cheap glass eye" an owl has in a John D. MacDonald novel. Or if you want to get fancy, you can think of a stuffed owl whose glass eyes are "knowing topazes" in a fancy Italian novel... or James Joyce, whose stuffed owl has a "clear melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze." One day we'll have to write a monograph on approaches to owl eyes in literature. Apparently, there are two. Oh, and the owl in my current book is just one of a series of unfortunate stuffed creatures with "incurious glass eyes"... to quote: "Crows, foxes, rabbits, owls, just about every form of wildlife." Oh, really? Was there a walrus? A walrus with incurious glass eyes? Come on!

Talking Fancy

I am so tired of telling you about owls. But as I reached the final owl in HENRY VI, PART 3... an owl that Henry claims shrieked when Richard (the future Richard III!) was born... I realized that HENRY VI, PART 3 had four distinct uses of owls in it, owls of a great variety, placing Shakespeare alongside Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather for the big "Most Owls in a Single Work" award. Yes, HENRY VI, PART 3, gives us lazy owls, owls stumbling around like jerks in the daylight, and, one might argue, two examples of the same kind of owl... an owl screeching or shrieking with ill omen. But I say that while the first such owl is definitely a metaphor, the one that Henry is talking about appears to be real, unless he's just talking fancy... but I think it's a bit of both... what Rob Schneider once called "kidding on the square," ha ha, oh boy!

Wrong Again, Shakespeare!

You know how I feel about owls: I either have some interest in them or pretend to have some interest in them, who the hell knows? So in HENRY VI, PART 3, Shakespeare has Warwick give a long speech about some soldiers he saw doing a half-assed job, if I may be frank, and he compares their actions to "the night owl's lazy flight." WHAT! Owls fly deftly by night, and to great purpose, I say.

Suffolk's Head

Just because I keep a big long list... look... I've told you this a million times! But just because I keep a big long list of books with owls in them doesn't mean I have to tell you EVERY time an owl appears in a single book. I am obliged to mention only one owl incident per volume. But! I could not help but notice in HENRY VI, PART 2, or 2 HENRY VI, as Oral Sumner Coad calls it, that screech owls make a second appearance. Not regular non-screeching owls, but screech owls... twice! As if one set of screech owls wasn't enough. Allow me to paraphrase or summarize Shakespeare. I'll make it hip for the kids of today! So Queen Margaret is like, okay, Suffolk, if you're so dang mad why don't you start cursing everybody? And Suffolk is like oh yeah? Wait until you see how great I am at cursing people! Then he wishes that the sweetest thing anybody ever gets to eat is bitter gall and, I don't know, that lizards will bite their asses? The book is downstairs by the bed. Hence the paraphrasing. And he hopes the only music they hear will come from snakes and screech owls. That kind of stuff. Finally, Queen Margaret is like, okay, we get it, put a sock in it! But she loves him. I hope you don't mind some spoilers. Anyway, it doesn't go well for him because one of the subsequent stage directions is (and I think this may be a quotation, not a paraphrase, or darn close to it) "Enter Queen Margaret, carrying Suffolk's head." Speaking of books with owls in them, McNeil wrote with the unhelpful suggestion that I begin a second list... one of books I've read WITHOUT owls in them. See, he was reading THE BRASS CUPCAKE by John D. MacDonald, and he checked the list, curious to know whether he might expect an owl, but found himself at a loss. Was it not on there because it didn't have an owl in it? Or did it have an owl in it but I just haven't read it? Or... did it not have an... you get it. My mind is wandering. Most importantly, McNeil reports that THE BRASS CUPCAKE confirms our observation that John D. MacDonald is afraid of women, especially their mouths. Wait! I mean his PROTAGONISTS are afraid of women and their mouths. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that all his protagonists are deathly afraid of women's mouths, just a crazy coincidence, having nothing to do with the unspeakable fears of John D. MacDonald himself. Anyway, and this is gross, so brace yourself, according to McNeil, the protagonist of THE BRASS CUPCAKE kisses a woman and her mouth is "like a soft open wound." Okay!

Oral Sumner Coad

You couldn't sleep last night! You were up tossing and turning, wondering about the connection between HENRY VI, PART 2 and MACBETH. It's my fault entirely! I don't apologize. Anyhow, I checked my copy of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: A TEXTUAL COMPANION, an unwieldy volume crammed full of words in a tiny little font arranged in multiple columns across many hundreds of pages, which was of no use at all, as it informed me only of the unbridgeable gulf of time separating the composition of the two works, which seemed to confirm my decision to never care again about looking things up or anything else. But then I went to the “internet” and “clicked” lazily on the first relevant thing I saw: a 1923 letter from a person named Oral Sumner Coad to the academic journal (?) MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES. Writes Coad, “It is a commonplace of Shakespearean criticism that certain of the early plays contain characters or situations that were reemployed in expanded form in some of the later dramas... A resemblance which I have never seen mentioned may be detected between 2 Henry VI and Macbeth.” I’ve got your back, Oral Sumner Coad! And 102 years from now, someone else will bring it up again. Oral Sumner Coad cites three compelling chunks of parallel text from each play, which is more than I’ll ever do. I’m sorry that you’re certainly dead, Oral Sumner Coad!

You Bet!

I know what you're thinking: "HENRY VI, PART 1 has an owl in it and so does HENRY VI, PART 3, but aren't we skipping over something? Does HENRY VI, PART 2 have an owl in it?" You bet your ass it does! Pardon my language, Shakespeare! Of course, in Shakespeare's time, an ass was nothing but a donkey. I assume. Ha ha "assume," get it? Neither do I! Anyway, from an owl perspective, the three parts of HENRY VI are like the old shell game... if there was a pea under every shell! What, you don't know what the old shell game is? I can't help what you know or what you don't know. I'm not your mother! I remember when I was working on Julia Pott's television show SUMMER CAMP ISLAND and for some reason I brought up three-card monte - I'm sure it was very important to the story we were working on; either that or I was just babbling away as usual - and the person who was taking notes wrote down "Three-Card Mafia." She had led a blameless life! She never heard of three-card monte, and why should she? What is she, a carny? Nothing against carnies! What was my point? I can't remember. That maybe I mumble? Anyhow, "The time when screech owls cry and bandogs howl, and spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves..." Which reminds me that I want to look up possible relationships between HENRY VI, PART 2 and MACBETH. Which came first? And so on. There's some kind of overlap happening. One great advantage of being ignorant is you can get old like me and have a lot of things to find out, if you can work up the energy, which is doubtful. Like, the other day Dr. Theresa and I were taking a walk and I said, "What is sweat, anyway?"

A General Comment

Well, now, I'm sure y'all sit around your campfires or your cozy hearths and talk all night about the owl in HENRY VI, Part 3. But did you know that there is also an owl in HENRY VI, Part 1? No? Then sit back and get ready to be amazed. This here French general calls our man Talbot "Thou ominous and fearful owl of death." Ouch! As I look at these two plays, all smushed up so close together in dramatic chronology, I think to myself, Jack, I think, is there an argument to be made that Shakespeare's plays were not intended as "books," exactly, and that they do not, in that case, have a legitimate place on your big long list of books you have read since 2011 with owls in them? And then I remember that I don't even care that a chimpanzee is not technically a monkey.

Orange Vinyl Spider-Man Sequel

I finished reading THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES but no I didn’t. Because you get to the end of the first book and then you have to – by law! – read the next volume, which is called INTO THE MILLENNIUM, or, I suppose, THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES: INTO THE MILLENNIUM. Either way, it sounds like a Spider-Man sequel. I need to get over to Square Books and order it up! Meanwhile, the Million Dollar Book Club is working on THE RIGHT STUFF. And here’s what I noticed! Wally Schirra, one of the Mercury astronauts, is a real prankster. Like, he has a little box and tells people he caught a mongoose in it. Then when they try to reach in and pet it, well, it jumps at them like one of those snakes out of a peanut can. You know those snakes. Wally Schirra’s mongoose is some kind of furry sock on a spring. And that made me remember my short story collection MOVIE STARS, when a character goes to an auction and tries to buy a novelty mongoose in a box, operating on the same principle. I got out the catalog from the auction of Bob Hope's personal effects, which I actually attended, and confirmed that Bob’s mongoose box, as pictured in the aforementioned catalog, appears to professionally assembled, whereas Tom Wolfe sure made it sound as if the mongoose box was something Wally Schirra thought up and slapped together himself. I think that’s an accurate memory of my reading experience. But the book is downstairs by the bed and I don’t care enough to go get it. Then I started imagining whimsical fancies, such as, maybe Wally Schirra gave Bob his very own homemade mongoose box! Wouldn’t that be something? It doesn’t seem overwhelmingly plausible, really. Although I’m sure Bob Hope hung out with the Mercury astronauts at some point. Nor does it seem plausible, though, that Wally Schirra was manufacturing his own trick mongoose boxes when there were plenty of trick mongoose boxes, apparently, in the nation’s many novelty emporiums from coast to coast. Maybe Tom Wolfe got this one thing wrong! Unless! What if Wally Schirra saw a novelty mongoose box in a store and thought, "I could make this myself for half the price!"? I guess we'll never know. Speaking of stuff we'll never know, I noticed again that the Bob Hope auction catalog wasn’t too heavy on provenance, which reminded me that I wanted to check it, and not for the first time, to see if I could find a clue (I couldn’t) about what cartoonist made these clever Bob Hope caricatures I bought at the auction. When Quinn came to town, I was like, “Look, this guy made pictures of Bob Hope as if rendered by Goya… and, uh… [trying to think of some names of other artists]” And Quinn was like, “Are these supposed to look like Bob Hope?” And I was like… “!” Because of course! Why would Bob Hope have these hanging in his office if… and my voice, as well as my thoughts, trailed off as Quinn stood there with a doubtful look on her face. So let’s get back to THE RIGHT STUFF! As I texted Megan with photographic proof, I still have an orange vinyl 45 RPM record with recordings from the actual Mercury space flights. It came with my G.I. Joe space capsule, the interior of which glowed in the dark. I got scared and thought it was a ghost! Give me a break, I was three years old. (Speaking of Megan Abbott and Square Books [see above], I’ll be “in conversation” with Megan about her new book EL DORADO DRIVE on August 13. I wouldn’t mention it so early, but I just started reading it and on page 4 [of the galley, anyway] there’s a “bird crying in the night.” As a review of the owl-spotting portion of the “blog” will remind you, we have given much thought to the matter, and just because a bird cries in the night, that does not make the bird an owl. Maybe it’s just an upset bird. I’m not worried! There are plenty more pages to come that might have a definite owl in them.) But I really came here to report about THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES, didn’t I? I think it’s going to end up being JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS length. And contrary to my advice (usually about Thomas Mann), which is, essentially, read the first 200-400 pages and then you’ll be hooked, I was really bopping along with TMWQ for, oh, let’s say 200 pages… then I hit a real dry spell until page 630 (though, miner-like, I uncovered, here and there, random chunks of boldly glittering sarcasm that made it worth the trouble). So you have to get over a very big hump in the middle. Can you handle a 400-page hump? (Remember, this is just the first volume I’m talking about.) But when I got to page 630 I think I said out loud, “Things are starting to happen!” On page 630. Then the book was over not many pages later. Well, it was and it wasn’t.

I Felt Bad

I felt bad for calling HENRY VI the "HENRY nobody wants" the other day. And I felt bad for thinking "In fact, I bet it is still on the shelf at Square Books because no one will ever, ever want it, and if it is, then I am going to buy it to prove everyone wrong, including myself." And it was, and I did. (See also.) To be specific, it is HENRY VI Part 1. It's like THE GODFATHER saga! I guess there are two more parts, the final one featuring Joe Mantegna. According to the introduction, HENRY VI Part 1 got a rave review from Thomas Nashe! Thomas Nashe was like, "How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to think that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectactors..." Yes, that does sound pretty sweet, a bunch of people crying on your skeleton, I love it! After I bought the book out of shame, I went and told Ted at Off Square Books (one of the sister stores) my tale, and he said, "I don't think you hurt his feelings," meaning Shakespeare, presumably, but you can never be too careful, and besides, it was too late!

Yes, I Have Noticed

As you know, every book I read has an owl in it, and one such book was MAGPIE MURDERS by Anthony Horowitz. And now another such book is the sequel, MOONFLOWER MURDERS, in which he gets to the owl right away, "a rather fine owl with its wings outstretched." I had no chance to even put down the book before the owls kept coming and finally a character said, as if taunting me personally, "Actually, you may have noticed, we've put owls everywhere." He means at the hotel he owns, the mascot of which is an owl, OR DOES HE? Authors, I am certain you will agree, have become so blatant with their owls these days, taking the fun out of it for all of us (me) who have trained themselves to find the owl in every book, thereby barely clinging to a scrap of hope for order and purpose in an otherwise bleak universe.

Rough Treatment

I see that the Willy Wonka prequel is coming out next week, which reminds me that Pendleton Ward and I were asked to provide a rough treatment for what we might do with that very story. We wrote the treatment, but we never got paid... in fact, as I recall, we were more or less ghosted... talk about rough treatment! But when I saw an ad for the movie, I started laughing, thinking about some of our funny ideas. Our prequel starts out as a sequel. Willy Wonka has handed over the factory to Charlie Bucket and blasted off to live his new life on the surface of the sun. I can't remember why! Anyway, Charlie has a philosophy that is the opposite of Wonka's: he throws open the doors to the factory and kids just swarm everywhere, eating everything in sight. Until! They discover a wall made of everlasting gobstobbers, behind which is entombed Wonka's most shocking and deadly secret. Charlie really wants to find out what's behind the wall. Hundreds of kids lick at it for hours, to no avail. Finally... and this is the part that I wanted to tell you... FINALLY! Charlie enlists a character named "Young Jaws." This is what I'm so happy about. Jaws is the villain from a couple of James Bond movies... you remember his big silver chompers! Maybe I'll attach a photo, which I hardly ever do anymore. Anyway, "Young Jaws" is him as a child, ha ha, that's right, our Willy Wonka prequel is also a prequel to MOONRAKER! As I was saying, Young Jaws is enlisted to bite through the wall of everlasting gobstobbers. Then some other stuff happens that leads to the prequel.

Our Young Nation

The other night I was flipping around and saw that I had missed the first five minutes of ANOTHER STAKEOUT, which came out in 1993, just like STRIKING DISTANCE and THE NIGHT WE NEVER MET. And I thought, "So what! I missed the first five minutes! I could still 'live-blog' this! It's the Richard Dreyfuss/Rosie O'Donnell team-up our young nation was yearning for!" (See also.) So anyway, Albert from TWIN PEAKS seemed to be a sly hitman in a sewage truck. That's as far as I got.

Mmph

Here's a pic I "grabbed" off the computer screen during today's ADVENTURE TIME meeting. As you can see, Kent Osborne is wielding a light saber. He was counting the minutes until the end of the meeting so he could get on his bicycle and pedal all the way to Hollywood from Burbank to see the new STAR WARS movie. I know Ace Atkins has already seen it. I think he went to Memphis for the occasion. And that reminded me of a fun interview I did with Ace ("click" here to read it) all the way back in June of 2014, when Ace said, "I'm super excited about the new STAR WARS movie" and I replied, "Mmph. Wha... I don’t even..." and, somewhat more coherently, "I was excited when I saw the FIRST Star Wars movie. I was in the theater and the first shot of that giant ship going over just blew my poor young mind." And Ace said, "I think J.J. Abrams is going to do an excellent job. He did everything right. First of all, he hired Lawrence Kasdan to write the screenplay." And I repeated, "Mmph." In short, I was 14 when the first STAR WARS came out, and it thrilled me immeasurably, but by the time of the second one I felt I was "too old" for it. But I still have nothing against it! I fondly recall the franchise. I don't want to be like the dozens of people on my twitter feed who seem really proud of themselves for not caring about STAR WARS. Why do I follow so many people on twitter who are so very excited to measure exactly how much they are not caring about STAR WARS? And who cares what you don't care about? And if you don't care about it, why are you tweeting about it so much? That seems like caring. (Also pictured, Ashly Burch and Adam Muto.)

Writers Need to Watch More TV

I went to Square Books and tried to buy FINDERS KEEPERS by Stephen King and Kaitlyn told me, "Don't do it! It's a sequel! You won't understand it!" Bill C., who also works there, wisely suggested that I ask Tom Franklin, who knows everything about Stephen King, whether I could read that one without reading the first one. Tom gave me the go-ahead! So I went back the next day and bought it, and soon thereafter I had lunch with Tom, and he said, "You know, I've been thinking, why NOT read the first one? It's good!" But it was too late. Hey! I just want to say that early on in FINDERS KEEPERS, Stephen King demonstrates only the loosest grasp of SpongeBob SquarePants. He doesn't know what network it's on, and he seems to think it takes place in a moralistic world where bad kids don't get their allowances...? This, tonally, does not seem like SpongeBob SquarePants to me. Which reminds me! When did UNDERWORLD by Don DeLillo come out? Ah, yes, 1997, when I was working for TBS. And I found it aggravating at the time that DeLillo seemed to think TBS and CNN were the exact same thing. All I'm saying is I have a really cramped view of the world.

Bilbo Baggins

Hello! Here is a picture of Norman Mailer in a top hat, leather vest, and denim shorts, snapped by Bill Boyle off of Megan Abbott's TV screen. We were watching Mailer's film MAIDSTONE. Ace was there too, and he thought it was pretty good revenge for the time he made Dr. Theresa and me watch THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK (which I would like to state for the record here is, I think, about twice as long as MAIDSTONE). "He looks like a hobbit," Ace said of Norman Mailer, and other disparaging remarks. To be fair, when I was in a video conference once, I held up the cover of the Norman Mailer bio to the camera, so that Mailer's face filled the screen instead of mine, and Pen cried out "It's Bilbo Baggins!" - not trying to be funny, more in simple recognition. Megan and I argued that Mailer was a good-looking man. Ace remained unconvinced. Megan Abbott owned up that she saw him once and "he was just a little taller than me." (She's tiny!) I found a number of things to enjoy in MAIDSTONE, but we all agreed that by far the best part of the movie is the famous bloody scene at the very end when the actor Rip Torn goes a little bit crazy and hits Norman Mailer in the head with a hammer FOR REAL and then Norman Mailer tries very hard to bite and rip off Rip Torn's ear. "Click" here to see a demonically grinning Rip Torn on Bill Boyle's twitter feed, in the electrically tense aftermath, gracing Mailer with a startling scatological encomium, unsuitable for printing on the "blog." You will note that Megan Abbott had at that point in the film turned on the subtitles for extra musing and study. Below, another example, from the climactic fight, sent to me by Ace this morning. Ace did admit that MAIDSTONE shares a certain sensibility ("group therapy" he called it) with the original BILLY JACK (which we watched and enjoyed very much, as distinct from its sequel, though, as Ace reminded me last night, THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK had some good parts, such as when there is an all-red Billy Jack and an all-blue Billy Jack and they battle for his soul in a cave, encountering a spiritually significant cobra in a scene that made me wonder if Scorsese hadn't lifted from it for THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. I guess I would say that the main problem with THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK is that they gave Billy Jack too much money and he loved helicopter shots so much.) Another common thread between the Billy Jack movies and MAIDSTONE is the dominating personality of the filmmaker, and the film's existence as a stubborn extension of that personality. Ace said that MAIDSTONE was like BILLY JACK "without the karate." And you know, when he said that, I had to admit that Billy Jack knew what he was doing, putting the karate in there and driving the original film with a good, old-fashioned revenge plot.

Get Some Stan's

Last night I was watching that TOP CHEF show because my favorite show NASHVILLE (pictured) wasn't on and Good Idea Club is shuttered for the season - what is Good Idea Club, you ask? None of your damn beeswax, that's what it is, chump, now go to hell! - and I got hungry even though I had had dinner, not that anything on the TOP CHEF show looked especially good, everything looked fairly crummy in fact, they were slopping food to college students, what a horror, so I can't explain it, leave me alone, okay, it was my famous suggestibility that I never shut up about, I guess, I'm weak, okay? Is that what you want to hear? It's what you've been thinking all along but you don't have the guts to say it. I got out a little chunk of cheese and a long, flat cracker and a slice of bresaola - okay, two slices of bresaola, why am I lying to you of all people? - and I ate those things and washed them down with a glass of red wine because that's how I do, what a swell. Yes, "swell" is a noun, too, fool. Read a dictionary! I felt pretty good. Yes sir, I was sitting there feeling pretty civilized with a cracker crammed in my mouth, watching TV. Bresaola! It's a delicious cured beef. You probably knew that already. I guess you know everything, you're such a big shot. I got it from Stan's, do I need to remind you about Stan's? This is not a paid advertisement, I am just telling you like it is. Get over to Stan's. It's a must! Support small business! Small, awesome business. Or if you don't feel like driving clear to Batesville, do what we do and get your Stan's stuff at the little grocery story up on North Lamar, "Farmer's Market," it's called. You can call Stan's and they'll send anything over there and you can pick it up the next morning or so. Like, Dr. Theresa has been known to order a pork shoulder chopped up just so when it gets cold and time to make her famous pork stew. I think it is too late to order a whole duck for your holiday meal - a whole damn duck! - but just calm down. Cripes! You're such a baby sometimes. I think the deadline was the 18th. So why did I wait just this long - EXACTLY A DAY LATE - to tell you? Was it Freudian? Just what kind of hideous monster have I become? Maybe I'm lashing out because I'm frightened you'll sneak over there and get all the bresaola. Who are you? ARE YOU MY SHADOW SELF? Hey and look I'll include a photo of some "Billy Jack Stew" I made the other night when Ace Atkins came over to watch THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK because now my goal is to be one of those people who puts pictures of food everywhere. Mission accomplished.

Now I can face the dwindling twilight of my years with something like peace. (Hey but remember when Dr. Theresa and I stayed in a Ramada Inn that had a graveyard attached? Dr. Theresa saw Connie Britton of TV's NASHVILLE strolling blithely down the street in a nearby town! She's also fairly certain Tea Leoni once asked her for directions in the parking lot of a Blockbuster in Atlanta.)

Hackman's Eggs

But the main thing I want to say about FRENCH CONNECTION II is that Gene Hackman was eating hardboiled eggs at the bar (or were they pickled? they didn't look pickled) and I was thinking hardboiled eggs should make a comeback as bar food or maybe they never went away I have no idea but when I was watching Gene Hackman all I was thinking was boy I wish I were at a bar eating hardboiled eggs like Gene Hackman.

Back in Shape

Okay now I am going to tell you some more things Dr. Theresa said while watching Gene Hackman in FRENCH CONNECTION II. When he was chasing on foot after a streetcar, she said, "He's back in shape!" Because earlier in the movie the bad guys - spoiler alert, but you can't possibly care, can you? - kidnapped him and hooked him on the dope (see Dr. Theresa's previous comment, "Oh, they're shooting him full of junk") and he had to get over his love of the dope and get back in shape and get his groove back. Then at the end of the movie she said, "That's the 1970s for ya!"

The Goods

And now I would like to tell you some of the things Dr. Theresa said while we were watching FRENCH CONNECTION II just now. She said, "I hope nothing happens to the well-meaning bartender" and "Oh, they're shooting him full of junk." And when an old lady stole a strung-out Gene Hackman's watch, she said, "Granny's got the goods" and when a French cop tore up a doctor's report she said, "This never happened, see?" And later she said, "You're toast, granny." I said one thing. There was a bad guy who looked like the Mentalist from the TV show THE MENTALIST, and when he crashed through the windshield of a truck I said, "So much for the Mentalist." What else? Well, Dr. Theresa broke a casserole dish and cut her fingers and there was blood everywhere like a horror movie.