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Yesterday? Yesterday McNeil and I spent most of our time recasting IT STARTED IN NAPLES, a movie no one has thought about in 70 years. This morning? This morning Dr. Theresa was making a healthful smoothie and the blender got clogged, rendering the healthful ingredients immobile within. I said, "Don't stick a spoon down in there." Anyway, Dr. Theresa stuck a spoon down in there, and there was a smoothie explosion all over the kitchen. There was smoothie on the ceiling! And that is only one of the many, many places where there was smoothie. Smoothie where no smoothie should be, to paraphrase Billy Bragg. I said, "It's like some terrible Bob Hope movie!" (Specifically, it was like BACHELOR IN PARADISE, which isn't terrible at all.) Dr. Theresa said, "Are you going to write about this in your diary?" I replied, "You bet I am!" She said, "You should put it on your 'blog.'" I said, "I didn't think you'd want me to broadcast it." She said, "I give you permission. You can do a public shaming like they did in Salem." I'm sure you recall the subject of her doctoral dissertation.

The 11-Day Blunder

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

I Gave Up

I thought I should tell you I stopped reading that giant hardcover "omnibus" of comics I mentioned yesterday. Why? Why did I give it up, I mean, not why did I think I should tell you. I don't have an answer for that one. Maybe because I'm unemployed and don't have anything else to do? As to the former question, however, it's not because I had shamed myself by mentioning it. It's because this "omnibus" is no damn good! The comics are too goofy. Yes, yes, I know I have often boasted perversely of loving the uncool, goofy comic book characters (not to be confused with the Disney character Goofy) the best... your Captain Marvel (the version often called "Shazam" by dimwits, for reasons I could get into here if I felt like it), your Metal Men, your Plastic Man, and so forth. But this glossy pile of junk I was reading was goofy in the wrong way. The goofiness it poured forth seemed born of bitterness and irony. The bitterness and irony of persons who have placed themselves high above goofiness. That's 1989 for you! There's a reason I originally stopped reading comic books when the price went up to 30 cents. Well, the reason was it became too expensive. Thirty cents is a lot of money! But the point is that the goofiness I like, the goofiness of your Plastic Man, your Metal Men, your Captain Marvel, is sincere and joyful... an embracing mechanism, not a distancing one. Anyway, I'd put this volume in the big overflowing garbage box of books they have for urchins to pick through in the park, but it's too damn big.

Advances in Boiling

Well, I'm reading another book with an owl in it but let's talk about something else first. I'm unemployed, so I can make this "post" as long as I want. So, McNeil emailed me a photograph of a physical newspaper-like object he was reading, and he said the byline belonged to Anya Groner. He wondered whether this could be the same Anya Groner I used to teach. I strained my eyes but could not discern individual letters of the font displayed in such a miniscule fashion by McNeil's photograph. Still, I could tell the article was about bears. And in my heart, I knew that Anya would love writing about bears. So I said "Yes!" before I even asked her. So then I asked her. And... "Yes!" Yes, Anya wrote the article about a bear attack (content warning: bear attack!) and sent me this "link" ("click" here) that even my old eyes could read. Check it out! Another thing McNeil and I emailed about was how I dreamed about him betting on horses and wearing a tuxedo and doing a duet with Paul Simon, in which they played saxophones as well as playing guitars and singing. McNeil contended that I was really dreaming about myself, because I used to play the saxophone and I have bet on horses... once! But I was ashamed for McNeil to think that I only used his face in order to dream about myself... though I've heard it said (haven't I?) that everyone in your dreams is really you. So! I did not mention this to McNeil at the time, but in the dream I was sitting around near a guitar and Paul Simon walked up and asked whether I played, and I was like, "No, this is my friend McNeil's guitar. He'll be back in a minute." In the dream, then, I did make a distinction between myself and McNeil, who really does play the guitar. All right! I'm reading and very much enjoying THE ELEMENTALS by Michael McDowell, whom I am happy to claim as a fellow native of Alabama. And allow me to quote: "Big Barbara complained it was hotter than a boiled owl." Now, in our previous literary encounters with owls of the boiled variety, we have observed them to be drunk (as in "stewed") most often, but also tough or sore. I do believe this is the first time we have heard of a boiled owl being "hot," but I guess a boiled owl would be hot indeed, especially right out of the pot. I should mention that the illustration for Anya's bear article is by Blair Hobbs, who also made the iconic cheese ball that illustrates my recent "blog"trospective about my work on ADVENTURE TIME.

Fun with Kafka

Yesterday, as I texted Megan Abbott, I kept singing a phrase from Kafka's diaries in a Bob Dylan voice. It really works! Try it at home. "I keep remembering her ugly huge solemn Renaissance ostrich feather hats from the past"... I know it seems complicated! But just dive right in. Here are some helpful hints as you endeavor to sing the preceding phrase from Kafka's diaries over and over in a Bob Dylan voice: 1. Try to cram "I keep remembering her" into the upbeat. After that, it's a strictly normal rock-and-roll chugging rhythm all the way, as long as you 2. sing "Renaissance" in a triplet configuration. 3. Don't try to sing the phrase to the tune of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," though that would be the expected impulse, nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn't quite fit, though. Just make up your own Bob Dylan melody. It's easy! Bob Dylan does it all the time! Okay, now you are ready to have the time of your life singing "I keep remembering her ugly huge solemn Renaissance ostrich feather hats from the past" from Kafka's diary entry of February 13, 1914, in your best Bob Dylan voice. The most important thing is to have fun!

Knowing Topazes

You know I have to tell you every time I read a book with an owl in it. But did you know I DON'T have to tell you if a book I read has more than one owl in it? Look it up! But sometimes I tell you anyway, because I have really, really great reasons. Like, for example, yes, THAT AWFUL MESS ON THE VIA MERULANA has a "handsome priest" who looks like an owl, but - and I found this out the other night; I'm ashamed of not mentioning it sooner - it also has a real owl in it, well, a real stuffed owl. The reader will of course be reminded of the embalmed owl in ULYSSES. This owl here we're talking about now, though, the moths have really gotten to this here owl, I'm afraid, but its eyes are intact. In fact, they're "knowing topazes, motionless in the night, in time, surviving the ruins of time." You know how it is! I don't know about you, but the knowing topazes in my stuffed owl's head are always going around surviving the ruins of time every time I turn around. You can't make this stuff up! And surely you recall the "cheap glass eye" of a hypothetical stuffed owl, the color of which (eye color, that is) bestows the title upon a Travis McGee novel. At this point I would like to assure you that neither Elon Musk nor his impish teen pal "Big Balls" can put a stop to the important work of the "blog."

Cat Money Update

I've already mentioned this to McNeil, Megan, Ace, Jimmy, and Bill, which is approximately four more people than read this "blog," so there is no need for this "post," except for my scrupulous honesty and shameless braggadocio. But anyway, the cat who picks lottery numbers successfully guessed three of them on last night's Match 5, bringing our total cat winnings so far to $34 + four free lottery tickets.

I Take It Back

Well, old Joaquim Maria de Assis really taught me a lesson. He has become one of my favorite writers, through the lens of his translators Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson. So, you remember how I was passive-aggressively griping like a little sniveling coward about William Maxwell writing a jewel-like novella that is 20% (at least!) from a dog's point of view? So what do you think? Last night I'm reading de Assis's QUINCAS BORBA, and I hit page 43, and I say, wait! Is some of this from a dog's point of view? But! In the next paragraph, de Assis addresses his readers' concerns and says he knows what we're thinking, that, to paraphrase, nobody wants to read something from a dog's point of view. Then he makes his beautiful justification! "Yet the truth is that this eye" (the dog's eye, that is), "which from time to time opens and stares so expressively into space, seems to speak of something that shines deep within, hidden behind something else I cannot put a name to, something that, while it is intrinsically canine, is neither tail nor ears. Oh, the poverty of human language!" I love it. It almost made me ashamed. But 20% is a lot! I'll be surprised if de Assis spends over 1% of his efforts on the dog's point of view. Anyway, it reminded me that I was on a podcast a few weeks ago (it hasn't been released yet) and said a lot of indefinsible things that just kept spewing out of my mouth, including (and I think I'm quoting myself correctly) that "writing is one of the least dangerous professions." Now, what I meant, though I didn't express it clearly, is that you're most likely not going to hurt anybody with your writing, bearing in mind what I used to tell students, when I had them, which was, roughly, "Use all the adverbs you want! It's not going to kill anybody!" In other words, be bold, do wrong things on the page, who cares? Nobody! As for professional writers, I habitually listed crossing guards and short order cooks in a diner as people whose excellence at their jobs was of more immediate and pressing concern to the public. I considered this freeing and inspiring... though, as I now recall, when I was giving a guest lecture in a small classroom on that very point at SCAD, I noted that one student live-tweeted he had never been so filled with murderous rage in his life. Of course, I should have seen that my own advice would extend to a jewel-like novella 20% from a dog's point of view. In case you can't tell, jewel-like novellas make me throw up. Anyhow! The host of the podcast, I believe, understood me to be saying that the writer is never in danger, when I meant, conversely, that the victims of the writer (that is, the readers) were in no danger from the pitiful literary gestures of the writer, however dramatic. But to the host's point, we know that writers of various kinds have been endangered by their words throughout history and in current times, too! Most of us, however, stick to harmlessly exquisite novellas about dogs or... I don't know what other people write about. A thirty-year-old in New York City? Or some other godawful thing. And it's all fine! It's all fine!

The Mark Leyner Owl Problem

I'll tell you the truth. Despite all my big talk, I got tired of THE SOT-WEED FACTOR and switched over to E TU, BABE by Mark Leyner, which I immediately found more agreeable to my way of thinking. There was something I wanted to tell you about it, but I became discouraged because I couldn't think of a passage to quote to describe the narrator (Mark Leyner), at least not a passage I could quote without having to lie down from just thinking of how much typing it would entail. Somehow, this led me to wonder whether I had ever "blogged" about Mark Leyner before, so I did a search and found him in only one spot: my big list of books with owls in them. That's where the mystery began! Strap yourself in! You see, according to the "blog's" "design," it should be a mighty ouroboros, leading nowhere but back to itself. So, if you follow me, how could Mark Leyner's delightful GONE WITH THE MIND be on my list of books with owls in them AND YET not in some other "post" in which the owl was first catalogued properly? So I "clicked" and found that the Leyner allusion led only to a zombie "link" to my long-dead twitter account, a clear violation of "blog" policy (the reader will certainly recall when I departed social media like some kind of haughty titan, giving nary a thought to the destruction I left in my wake). Maybe I was reading GONE WITH THE MIND during the period when I claimed to have stopped "blogging." I have a lot of regrets. I'm ashamed to say Leyner's particular owl, which I have forgotten, is lost forever - at least for our purposes - if I don't suddenly get some unexpected energy and, for starters, walk across my home office, where my copy of GONE WITH THE MIND can be plainly seen from here, which isn't going to happen. Anyway! None of this is the point, because E TU, BABE doesn't have an owl in it... yet. Or maybe at all. BUT! I wanted to tell you, regarding E TU, BABE, that the narrator's favorite TV show is QUINCY, which is also Dr. Theresa's favorite TV show, which is why I wanted to tell you. Last night, I mentioned as much to her. Without context, the comment didn't really go anywhere. For you see, not only was I too lazy to type anything giving you a real idea of Leyner's narrator, Mark Leyner, I was too lazy to even describe the narrator to Dr. Theresa with the words of my mouth. Today, while I was considering all this, I flipped to the rear cover of the book and saw a "blurb" by Jay McInerney, who describes Leyner's protagonist as "a flashbulb-tanned, narcotic-nourished, steroid-swollen, priapic monster." Thanks, Jay McInerney! You did my work for me. Except for the typing. But you cut it way down! So anyway, the narrator's favorite TV show is QUINCY, and, as a result, to quote the book now, "whenever I run across a corpse, I try to take advantage of the opportunity to do a quick autopsy."

Effort

I don't mean to brag, but I was walking on the beach on Christmas Eve, listening to an audiobook of FINNEGANS WAKE. I was listening to Chapter 10... wait! I must already interrupt this wonderful story that has you on the edge of your seat. It wasn't really Chapter 10. More to come on that in a moment. Anyway, I was listening to what I thought was Chapter 10, and, hey, do you remember the comical "French" accent I imposed on a character in my second book? Well, it sure sounded to me like James Joyce perpetrated the same offense, and in a remarkably similar style. So, suddenly, I was proud of myself instead of being so terribly ashamed. I decided that upon my return home, I would double check my physical copy of the book, which was given to me by a defrocked preacher when I worked in a bookstore in downtown Mobile, to see whether Joyce and I had indeed independently hit upon the same inaccurate and even potentially embarrassing method of presenting to the reader a comical "French" accent. And that is what I did, or tried to do. The first thing I noticed upon digging out the book was that there are no chapter headings. I have run into this problem before, notably when I was trying to teach BELOVED during my brief flirtation with doing that kind of thing. Authors! Please number your chapters. Don't be like James Joyce and Toni Morrison. Ha ha ha! What terrible advice. See also the travails of the Dune Book Club. As I leafed through FINNEGANS WAKE - and allow me to state, just to help you understand what I've been through, that the online index to FINNEGANS WAKE I found years ago is now nothing but a zombie "link"! - it seemed to me (as already hinted) that Joyce's chapters were longer than the "chapters" of the audiobook, which, though unabridged, had been broken into bite-sized chunks... bite-sized if you're a hippopotamus! But relatively bite-sized, making my search more of an effort, especially given the fact that I no longer care about anything. I did track it down, though: "you wish to ave some homelette... Your hegg he must break himself." Believe it or not, that's James Joyce, not me. From context, the speaker seems French, though there is some German sprinkled around the passage, too, just to drive me batty. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! On Christmas Day I was walking along the beach again and the audiobook said to me, "it being Yuletide"... and it was! Dr. Theresa could not walk on the beach with me because she had twisted her ankle. I would not be listening to an audiobook of FINNEGANS WAKE were I pleasantly strolling hand-in-hand along a beach with Dr. Theresa. I am sure you will recall that the last time Dr. Theresa and I visited my parents, we saw a mink run across the road and a pig run across the road. This time, we saw nothing run across the road. While I was taking a bag of trash to a garbage chute, however, I saw a little bright pink lizard of a kind I have never seen before. I want to say it was a salamander, because I have always imagined salamanders - no doubt incorrectly - to be pink. I also saw this guy (above) on the day after Christmas. Oh! I forgot! So I also heard Joyce use "owl-wise," I thought, seeming to mean both "always" and "wise as an owl." And I checked! Like a hero! Just to satisfy myself. And neither my hearing nor my huffing and puffing brain had deceived me, though my brain had added a superfluous hyphen. I found "the eternals were owlwise on their side every time"... and let me state for the record that I do not believe James Joyce was referring to the Marvel superheroes The Eternals, created by Jack Kirby, though, of course, there are certain similarities (see also). I also thought (and still sort of think after consideration) that owlwise could have meant "as regards owls," as, for example, when somebody (is it Jack Lemmon?) in THE APARTMENT says, "That's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise."

Butter Knife

Attention! My friend Sarah will appear in this "post." I happened to notice yesterday - Sarah would never mention it herself; she's too nice! - that I've been dropping the h from her name for how long? Months? Longer? I have decided to investigate no further. But I did want to record my shame here for all to see. Now we may move to happier matters. It's back! The precious little jotting book has been removed from its mothball-filled cedar chest. Now that I have stopped pretending to stop "blogging," I am allowed to take said jotting book with me to Los Angeles, California, and, upon my return, to transcribe my jotted experiences into the form of little numbered jottings. 1. Ace Atkins printed out my boarding passes for me! He said he had left them in his mailbox, and I was concerned, having noticed on our many walks around the neighborhood as we exchange wise thoughts, that the door had fallen off of Ace's mailbox. What if my boarding passes were to blow away in a gentle breeze? I discovered, however, upon my arrival, that Ace has a BRAND NEW MAILBOX! This is the biggest thing to happen in the neighborhood for years. And it reminded me that Dr. Theresa and I had driven past Tom Franklin's house not that long before, and I had admired their sleek, modernistic mailbox. I couldn't decide whether it was new or if I had simply never noticed it before. One day, I vowed, I'll get to the bottom of this! But such thoughts would have to wait, for I was on my way! To wherever I was going. 2. My chosen reading material for the airplane: NIGHTWOOD by Djuna Barnes. My friend Eugene recommended it. He's been dead for 26 years, but I finally got around to it! 3. The new jotting book has an interesting flap on it that it is not within my writerly powers to describe correctly. It also has a built-in ribbon bookmark, burnt orange in color. 4. So, we stayed at the Peabody in Memphis the night before my trip, because the plane left so damn early. Pardon my language! Anyway, I knew I would be rising before the Peabody started serving breakfast, so I ordered a pot of coffee the night before, thinking to down it cold in the morning. Guess what? When I poured a cup, 10 hours after having received it, the coffee was STILL WARM! Here's to the magic coffee pots of the Peabody Hotel. 5. I admit to eating half a Biscoff, my favorite airplane cookie, to help with my fear of flying... the first cookie or sweet of any kind in which I've indulged since the fun little medical incident I enjoyed in March. The king of cookies! The mighty Biscoff. 6. Should I boast that my old iPod is still working hard and well to provide my inflight entertainment? I seem to be listening to a version of "I Love How You Love Me" featuring bagpipes. I jotted as much during the flight. Only when the plane landed did a guy sitting behind me and across the aisle lean forward to ask if he had seen with his own eyes an actual iPod. I was proud to extol its existence, longevity, usefulness, and capacity. He was happy to hear it. 6. I found a Burbank hotel in which my accommodations included a full kitchen - you see, ever since my little medical hiccup, in which part of my human mind was zapped (despite my decision not to investigate further, I did investigate further, and, as I feared, I started dropping the h in Sarah around that point), it is much better if I cook for myself. But the full kitchen did not include any knives of a sufficent sharpness for the necessities of ordinary meal prep. Friends, that is how I ended up cutting up shallots with a butter knife! Let me tell you, it is no easy thing, attacking a shallot with a butter knife, even though a shallot presents itself as a small and tender thing. But don't we all? (See also.) 7. Stopped by the front desk in the morning to see where to get coffee. The "night auditor," as he called himself, was still on duty, a jovial man named Randy. When he asked if I had received my 10% off coupon to the restaurant, and I replied that I had not, he exclaimed, "What the devil!" which I found charming. The way he said "I'm Randy!" was reminiscent, without any of the unsettling atmospherics, of the way Steve Buscemi says "I'm Chet!" in BARTON FINK. 8. When I went to get coffee and asked about a kitchen knife, the server explained that they don't allow sharp things in the rooms. Hmm! She, like Randy, was very nice, and said they would cook anything I wanted, off the menu, to my specifications, so I wouldn't have to stand there brutally murdering a shallot with a butter knife like a chump. Her name was Lourdes, which I found to be a cool name, especially as I was sitting there reading a discussion of miracles in NIGHTWOOD. 9. Not until I returned to the room did I notice for the first time that it was decorated with a large photograph of Jayne Mansfield carrying Bob Hope down some steps (see above)! My powers of observation! They have never been great. 10. Saw a crow in a palm tree but failed to get a decent pic. 11. Elizabeth Ito brought me an illicit steak knife! Which I smuggled into the room, wrapped in a dishcloth (the steak knife was, not I). Elizabeth and I wound up in a photo booth. 12. In NIGHTWOOD: "He'll look as distressed as an owl tied up in a muffler." There! Unlike smiling or drunken owls, this is the type of owl comparison I can understand! Although I cannot approve of the owl treatment described.

13. I met Quinn's cat. He looked like a tiny human person! 14. Met Ashly Burch in Beverly Hills, where I was given a fork with a dramatically bent prong with which to eat my egg whites. No, it wasn't some sort of fancy Beverly Hills utensil for eating rarefied egg whites, it was just a peculiarly, even obscenely destroyed fork (see evidence below) and the egg place just didn't give a damn, presumably. I defiantly swallowed my eggs with the aid of the monstrous fork! You know, and this is true, the last time I ate with Ashly Burch, in January of 2022, as I sat on a wooden bench waiting for my "ride share" to arrive to take me to a fine sushi dinner, I glanced over and saw a fork lying there on the arm of the bench! I took a photo of it at the time, and no doubt shared it on "social media," but I see that it is no longer in my phone, so you'll just have to take my word for it, as I have quit "social media" to the acclaim of millions. What I am saying is that every time I eat with Ashly Burch, there is something weird about a fork. About the bent fork, I made a Uri Geller joke, prefacing it, or softening the blow, by saying, "Now, if I were Dennis Miller, I might say..." and also adding the caveat that Ashly Burch would have no idea what I was talking about when I presently mentioned Uri Geller, which turned out to be true, but she laughed anyway, because she is so nice. Later, I described the incident to Joe Wong, who said I had not really imitated Dennis Miller, because there were not enough allusions to obscure celebrities in my remark. So I gamely tried again, saying, "Looks like Uri Geller and the Amazing Kreskin had a brunch date, cha cha," which Joe kindly deemed passable, though I had added but one allusion. Or maybe "brunch" is an allusion of some kind to something or another. 15. That night, Kate was giving me a ride and I said, "I remember these seat covers!" She has these sheepskin (?) seat covers in her car. Kate laughed and said, "They're old!" She told me I was sitting on the same seat cover where Stan Lee had once parked his bony ass, though she didn't use such crude language, and neither would I, so I don't know what happened just now. Anyhow, it reminded me of the time ("click" here) that Kelly Hogan once touched William Faulkner's buttocks through the very fabric of time itself. I felt the power of Stan Lee's butt! 16. They have spectacular grocery-store brand frozen mango in California. Look, frozen fruits are part of my medically induced breakfast ritual now, okay? So Sarah with an h took me to the grocery store and I was walking around pouting and crying and knocking over huge pyramids of canned goods, as I believe happens in THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY and maybe BACHELOR IN PARADISE???? I am exaggerating my reaction to Sarah's favorite grocery store, but I really was going around saying, yeah, so what? We have these same eggs in Mississippi! And so on. But now I publicly admit that grocery-store brand frozen mango in California is plucked at the peak of flavor and texture. The stuff I'm getting here at home just doesn't measure up! 17. Going home, my inflight screen prominently announced BATMAN RETURNS as an entertainment choice and I felt it was a sign, because I had just been praising that film to Ashly AND Kate AND Adam on my exciting trip. Man, I was ready to watch it. It really struck me as the perfect airplane movie. But the screen was broken! The flight attendant, a very nice person named Davi, showed me that the kids' entertainment selection was working, anyway. "Wallace and Gromit are funny," she assured me, which might be true, I guess, but who cares? Wallace and Gromit can go to hell! I'll tell you what she did, though. I couldn't get my phone to connect to the wifi, so she entered her own password to give me special flight-attendant access to whatever the hell I was doing. I ended up watching Chaplin's A WOMAN OF PARIS, because my headphones didn't fit my phone, and a silent feature seemed to be a good option. 18. I had purposely arranged a 4-hour layover in Atlanta for reasons best left unexplored. 19. As the plane descended, the guy next to me asked if we were landing in Atlanta, which I thought was a funny question from a person on an airplane, but I said yes. 20. As I was leaving Cat Cora's airport restaurant, where the service was excellent - thank you, Ana and Winsome! (That's right, Winsome, another cool name... to Sarah, yes, Ana had but the one n in her name, I checked) - a guy stopped me and said he was a missionary. He said he could sense with his missionary powers (though he didn't put it that way) that I had had some health issues recently and he wanted to pray for me. He might have said "over" me. I said, "You can pray for me later, but I have a plane to catch now." He said it would take 10 seconds. I said all right. Wait! I should mention he was wearing a shirt that said "Fudgie Wudgie" on it. I asked him what "Fudgie Wudgie" meant. He said he was a chocolatier as well as a missionary. I said okay. He prayed over me as advertised. Then he said, "I can see the Holy Spirit all over you." I said thanks.

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!

Speaking of Fox Mulder

I wanted to “post” this earlier, but the AT&T “internet” stopped working over and over. Anyway, here’s what you’ve been waiting for. I got one of those junk headlines that you get on your phone, something like “The Queen’s Favorite Sandwich That She Ate Every Day Since She Was Five – And It’s So Basic!” So I took a screen grab of it and sent it to Ace. That’s all we do all day every day, grab stupid things that appear on our phones and text them to each other. Then I texted the same screen grab, with its accompanying photo of Queen Elizabeth II, to Sara, along with my own humorous commentary: “The answer? A foot-long chili dog.” Sara’s reply was something like (a close paraphrase here): “OMG, really???” So I sadly had to reply that no, Queen Elizabeth II did not, as far as I know, eat a foot-long chili dog every day for 90 years. As Sara expressed it in a subsequent text, her tragedy – ha ha! she didn’t say tragedy – is that she “wants to believe.” Just like Fox Mulder from the X-Files! I added that part. Speaking of Fox Mulder, I was reading another old comic book about The Atom, and he was fighting these tiny guys who lived in a cave and rode around on the backs of bats. The editor interrupted the story to announce that tiny people of a proper size for riding small flying rodents into battle most likely really existed at some point! He insisted, in the capital letters typical of old comic books: “THE ELVES, THE BROWNIES, THE LEPRECHAUNS, THE FAIRIES, ALL MAY BE FANCIFUL RECOLLECTIONS OF A RACE OF TINY HUMANS! CHARLES FORT WRITES OF THEM.” Naturally, I was interested to run across this use of Charles Fort's captivating ramblings as evidence. I always thought Charles Fort would be a big deal on the “blog,” though he has never ended up in even 10 “posts” so far, after all the “blog’s” horrible countless years of thankless and unwanted existence. You remember Charles Fort, of whom it was once recorded on a book flap that he "collected and published reliable accounts of colored rains, living things falling to earth, unknown objects in space and in the oceans, people who have mysteriously appeared and disappeared." Charles Fort, to whom Tom Wolfe casually alluded: "Cassady began fibrillating the vocal cords, going faster and faster until by dawn if he had gone any faster, he would have vibrated off, as old Charles Fort said, and gone instantly into the positive absolute. It was a nice weird party." Charles Fort, whose glowing owls inspired the owls in my own second book. Charles Fort! That’s what I wanted to say. I wanted to say Charles Fort. Oh! In conclusion – and you will have to pardon me in advance for blue language on a level such as never, in my memory, has been attempted on the “blog” before – I watched THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY again, and as I was looking it up afterward in Fujiwara’s excellent monograph, I ran across Jerry Lewis’s defense of the puppet sequence from THE ERRAND BOY, which, having grown wise over the years, I now welcome with arms open wide. In fact, I’m ashamed of some of my earlier “posts” in which I seemingly apologize for Jerry. Back in those days, I just wanted everybody to like me! Now I don’t care anymore. So, Fujiwara interviews Jerry, who says of the part of the movie in which he, Jerry, cavorts tenderly with (if I recall correctly) a flirtatious, languorous ostrich puppet and enjoys maudlin interactions with a little finger-puppet clown… Jerry, who says of himself, actually, “We call that a director with steel balls.” And I was like, you know what? He’s right!

Kitty... I Love You!

It happened. The other night I finally came across, indisputably, the greatest old comic book among all the old comic books that Tom Franklin has recently given me. As you have already guessed (you haven't), it is about Fly Man. That's right, he has all the powers of a housefly. In addition, he has powers of a couple of other insects thrown in there as a bonus, as well as powers that, while unrelated to insects in any direct way, I chiefly associate with Ant-Man. Now, this Fly Man comic book I've got here came out in 1966, and I really don't know who came first, Ant-Man or Fly Man, but I'm too damn tired all the time to find out. Pardon my strong language. Oh, yeah, he shamelessly rips off Green Lantern, too. But not the way you think! So, Dr. Theresa was trying to sleep, and I was lying there next to her, unable to control maniacal bursts of laughter as I lay there next to her, reading Fly Man dialogue, the sincerity of which I could not measure one way or another. It was beyond definition and reason! With your kind permission, I will quote a few examples here: "IF THERE'S ANYTHING I LOATHE, IT'S A DEDICATION CEREMONIES POOPER!"... "HA, HA, HAA-AAA! HAVE A TON OF BRICKS, ONLOOKERS!"... For context, Fly Man's head appears on a Mt. Rushmore style monument with some other superheroes you've never heard of. The bad guy blows it up, which leads Fly Man to exclaim, "UH-OH! THE BROKEN CHUNKS OF MY OWN STONE FACE... WHIZZING DESTRUCTIVELY TOWARD ME!"... "IN THIS TEENSY SIZE, I CAN SPEEDILY WHIZ IN AND OUT AMONGST THE HURTLING FRAGMENTS"... If you haven't caught on yet, the writers of Fly Man are masters of the adverb, as seen in Fly Man's next word balloon: "BLOCKBUSTER STREAKED OFF, WHILE I WAS BUSILY PROTECTING MYSELF!" Here's Blockbuster, the bad guy, spraying some junk into Fly Man's face, followed by Fly Man's response: "HAVE SOME ESSENCE OF TEMPORARY PARALYSIS!"... "THAT FIENDISH FRAGRANCE HAS PURLOINED MY MOBILITY!" Just a couple more. "WAIT! THAT PUSSYCAT! ORDINARILY, I'M ANNOYED WHENEVER IT KEEPS CONTINUALLY BRUSHING AGAINST ME!" And on the next page, Fly Man says my favorite thing of all, "KITTY... I LOVE YOU!" The backup story in the issue, sadly, does not feature Fly Man. But it does reward us with this bit of dialogue: "OWWWWW! HOW DARE YOU USE CRAB-MAN'S HEAD FOR A TRAMPOLINE?!" The last thing I'll mention is that the publishers run a contest for the readers of Fly Man, including this caveat: "BUY THIS MAGAZINE FOR THE NEXT THOUSAND YEARS TO SEE IF WE PRINT YOUR MASTERPIECE!"

Neither Nor

Believe it or not, this Polly Adler bio mentions GREEN ACRES. Why wouldn't you believe it? You've never heard of Polly Adler and you've never heard of GREEN ACRES. And yet, for that very reason, it is true that you are capable of neither believing the above revelation nor disbelieving it, any more than you could believe or disbelieve a phrase like "Ikdflakdhfadkfjahdkfjh? Hlkjdkfh 'oifjskfj' sjhdfkjh!" The allusion to which I refer does perfectly illustrate what I have come to call (just now) "the GREEN ACRES problem," for the biographer can think of no better way to describe the show than as a "lowbrow classic," making sure, as part of an ongoing, if possibly unconscious, conspiracy among our nation's higher institutions to never, never let GREEN ACRES receive praise without some sort of distancing qualification, even though I have proven (for example, with my famous "GREEN ACRES or Ionesco?" quiz, which, though rejected for publication by McSweeney's, remains a legitimate brain puzzler, a fact that should be highly instructive) that there is no shame, no "guilty pleasure" aspect to GREEN ACRES that need give the conscientious egghead reason to hide appreciation of it under a bushel of equivocation, to paraphrase Matthew 5:15. If viewing this on your laptop, Laura Lippman, please "click" on the label "GREEN ACRES" below for more reflections along the same line. The mobile version of the "blog" is sadly lacking in such illuminating extras.

How I Read Now

I take my membership in the 2-person book club very seriously, as will be confirmed when I tell you that I moved JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS into a secondary position so that I could more faithfully engage with the biography of Polly Adler. Look her up! I don't have time for your lazy ways. Having finished that Marilynne Robinson book, I now read JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS for 10 minutes a day, 5 minutes at a time, while I wait to take my blood pressure. I make it through an average of four pages a day, a pace to which the book makes itself strangely amenable. I first noticed while reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN that Thomas Mann is very interested in time - its reality and its narrative uses and representation. That's a great oversimplication. To keep going in the same simplistic direction, the only direction I know, Mann is interested in how an hour can pass like molasses, while a decade can disappear in a blink. It is for that reason, I assume, that my readings of his mammoth text, though brief and greatly separated, feel as if they are taking place in a single unending and languorous haze. It may further interest you to know that I believe I was pronouncing "Thomas Mann" correctly for most of my life, and then, recently, I started thinking I was doing it wrong, so I started pronouncing it a new way, but now, whenever I say it out loud, someone says, "Who?" and I say "Thomas Mann" and they say "Oh..." Then they look at me like that one emoji with a straight line for a mouth. (See also, the time a smart-alecky undergrad corrected my pronunciation of "whilst" in front of the whole class, even though I was saying it right and he turned out to be nothing but an ill-informed little and, as I recall it, wealthy jerk with enviable golden locks. On the other hand, what is this bitterness? I am sure he turned out to be a very nice young man and he did demonstrate considerable ability in the classroom. His single flaw, now that I really contemplate it, was his unwarranted confidence about how to pronounce "whilst." There are worse crimes! God bless you, the handsome and polished pebble in my shoe! See also, then, the time I mispronounced the name of Ashton Kutcher, and was justifiably laughed out of the classroom and made to hang my head in dirty shame.) Oh! But what I came here to say is that though (as I have reiterated countlessly) I am under no obligation to tell you about more than one owl in a book, and I have already told you about two owls in JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, old Potiphar was just sitting in his special room where he sits as the sun goes down, and behind his head as he sits in a silent, noble fashion, there is artwork representing owls, falcons, and ducks, I believe in that order, but the book is all the way downstairs, under my blood pressure machine, so I guess we'll never know.

Be of Good Cheer

JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS features a domestic scene of Potiphar's aged parents, adorably named Huya and Tuya. Tuya addresses Huya with a number of peculiar endearments. "Right you are, my swamp beaver," she says. (This is the excellent translation by John E. Woods.) A couple of paragraphs after that: "How true, my good spoonbill." Soon afterward: "Then be of good cheer, my little owl." I only had to read to page 703 to find the owl! The book isn't even half over yet. I read 702 pages thinking, I bet there aren't even owls in the region. My mother-in-law is Egyptian, and yet, shamefully, I wasn't sure whether there were owls in Egypt (see also). I'm still not sure. I guess I'm just taking Thomas Mann's (implied) word for it. I've read three Thomas Mann novels now (well, 2.5, but I'm getting there!) and they've all had owls in them. Could Thomas Mann be the German Charles Portis? By which, of course, I mean to remind you ("click" here) that every Charles Portis book has an owl in it. Wait! I just remembered there are owls in the Bible. So I must have known there were owls around there somewhere. I haven't had my coffee yet! And I'm down to a cup a day for health reasons! Which is why I must conclude with my accidental discovery just now that the "blog" addressed the question of owls in Egypt a full decade ago ("click" here), with similarly lazy results.

Of Mice and Dogs

Yesterday, when I was telling you the shameful story of how McNeil's grandfather stole a copy of PAL JOEY, I was looking for something to "link" via "hyperlink" to the words "PAL JOEY." You know how I love to "link" to things! Indeed, if you examine the "blog" with the eye of a scholar, you will soon realize that it is designed in a secret way to be nothing more than a never-ending loop of "hyperlinks" that an immortal person could enjoy forever. (And, as I have emphasized repeatedly, it works much better on your laptop than on your phone, due to the extra bells and whistles. But I'm not the boss of you! Also, you may not exist.) Anyhow, I could have sworn that I had mentioned PAL JOEY on the "blog" before. But as far as I could tell, I had not. So I went ahead and "posted" the damn thing. Pardon my salty language! Later on, I thought, wait a minute, I could swear I "posted" at least a photo of the time when Laraine Newman and I went to William Faulkner's house and one of us (I couldn't remember which) held up, whilst being photographed, Faulkner's own personal copy of PAL JOEY... presumably purchased legally. Turned out I had not "posted" that either... until now! (See above.) Meanwhile, McNeil has been emailing me his thoughts as he begins to read his grandfather's stolen copy of PAL JOEY: "On page 35 of Pal Joey and so far only a dog has shown up. Joey mentions 'mouse' a lot, but that's just when referring to a female human." To be clear, McNeil brings up the dog because he was hoping for an owl. He also learned, from the eponymous Joey, the term "one-arm joint," which he passed along, and I looked it up in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG, which cites, in clarifying the definition, PAL JOEY itself, as I was thrilled beyond measure to report back to McNeil. Just another endless loop.

I Didn't Know

Yesterday, Dr. Theresa and I were watching the movie I, FRANKENSTEIN for reasons your frail human mind could never understand, and neither could ours. The following may contain at least one spoiler for the movie I, FRANKENSTEIN, which came out 10 years ago, though it feels like it came out 200 years ago, in a different universe. Anyway! At one point, a skeptical modern-day scientist gets hold of Dr. Frankenstein's notebook, and opens it, and says with delight, "Oh! He used electric eels!" Because before that, she didn't believe Dr. Frankenstein would have access to electricity. Now that she has read about the electric eels, she believes in Dr. Frankenstein, like he's Santa Claus! Well, that caused me to ask Dr. Theresa aloud, "What's the deal with electric eels anyway?" Before she could answer, I screamed in excitement, "Oh, yeah! I have a whole book about electric eels!" (See also.) I was referring, of course, to ELECTRIC EEL CALLING, lavishly illustrated by its author. Off I scampered to the bookshelf, which happened to be in the very room where we were watching I, FRANKENSTEIN, to retrieve my copy of ELECTRIC EEL CALLING. It was published in 1941, and I acquired it circa 2009, and I finally had a reason to open it. One thing I read was the author's contention that the people of South America were "the first humans in all the world to find [electricity] in a palpable form, and although the Egyptians are credited with the earliest observation of electric fish (the electric catfish of the Nile)"... wait! Let's just stop the sentence right there. I interrupted I, FRANKENSTEIN to yell towards Dr. Theresa all manner of questions about the electric catfish, such as, did she know about it? She lived in Egypt for a number of years. I, myself, had reached the age of 60 (I started this "blog" as a wee, apple-cheeked lad of only 43... my God! What a nightmare), and had just discovered, for the first time, in this old book, the existence of the electric catfish of the Nile, which I assume everyone else reading this (there is no one reading this) knew about already. I'm always late to the party. However, due to my strict policy of "blogging" about things that remind me of other things I have "blogged" about before, I thought I should publicly acknowledge these electric catfish, as the catfish of ancient Egypt have previously appeared in this space, though I was shamefully ignorant at the time of their electrical talents. In conclusion, if you do not "click" on the "links," you are really missing the point of the "blog," which is nothing less than a vast, oddly constructed historical novel meant to be read Julio Cortazar style! That's what I'm telling myself these days.

It's Over

It is only fair to mention that my sister beat my head in, 16-5, in our annual Oscar guessing contest. We both claim to know nothing about the Oscars, and I think it is clear that at least one of us is telling the truth. That must be my lowest count of correct guesses ever! But we'll never know for sure, because at some point I stopped recording the scores out of shame. I was curious to know exactly when I began losing interest in the Oscars, which I watched every year since 1973, until last year when I just... stopped. And of course I missed the big brouhaha! But I didn't learn my lesson, and I skipped it again this year, but I don't think any big brouhahas occurred. Anyway ("click" here for confirmation), imagine my surprise upon discovering that my interest in the Oscars has been very, very slowly fading for ten miserable years now.