Grits

Hey! Remember how I fretted that McNeil was never going to present us with any more of his special Bogie bits? I should have known that he had his reasons! The 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart, from which the bits were extracted, got really sad toward the end, he tells me. Then he gives us what I assume are his last few bits, and they are grim ones indeed. Grim bits, or "grits" as I call them for short. You have been warned! Writes McNeil: "I pick it up every once in a while, but it's sad when he's old before his time, and his wife is probably running around with Frank behind his back - and there's nothing he can do, really...except die." I told you it was grim! And as I have discovered for myself, after reading probably hundreds of celebrity biographies under the auspices of the Million Dollar Book Club, they all get sad toward the end. But I never learn my lesson. Hardly any celebrities get taken up bodily into Heaven like Enoch in the Bible. We should move on to happier things! Like, Adam sent Dr. Theresa and me a package of treats when we were sick. And, a week or two later, when Dr. Theresa was breaking down some cardboard boxes for recycling, she found a package of cookies in one them. A package of cookies we had overlooked somehow when we unpacked Adam's thoughtful gift. A package of cookies! Like a miracle! Is that a happy story? Because I can imagine a peevish reader, you know, Elon Musk or his teen BFF Big Balls, saying, "So what? Where's MY cookie?" Well, let's see. Speaking of the Million Dollar Book Club, we're on Kafka's diaries. So yesterday I was reading about a dream Kafka had about "a greyhound-like donkey, which was very restrained in its movements... its narrow human feet were unappealing to me because of their length and uniformity." This here donkey Kafka dreamed about had a "silvery shining breast." You know what I thought of! The supernatural creature the Padfoot, of course, a description of which provided the epigraph to my story collection MOVIE STARS. I'll save you the trouble of "clicking" on the "hyperlink": "In the neighborhood of Leeds there is the Padfoot, a weird apparition about the size of a small donkey, 'with shaggy hair and large eyes like saucers'... to see it is a prognostication of death." So we're back to death again, you're welcome. Grits!

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!

On the Coffee Table

Our old house didn't have a coffee table but our new one (is it still new?) does. Most often, I sit in my favorite chair, which does not have direct access to the coffee table. But yesterday, I was on the couch, and I reached down and picked up a "coffee table book" - to be precise, a book of photographs by the artist who called herself "Madame Yevonde." Well, it so turns out that one of Madame Yevonde's models was all done up as Minerva, in a shiny metal hat and holding a menacing revolver, and you know what that means! Yes, an owl was sitting there with her, like, "What's up?" Make it YOUR new year's resolution to figure out why I tell you every time I read a book with an owl in it.

The Four Owls

I am under no obligation to tell you this, but THE SONG OF THE LARK had four owls in it. The first, as we have seen, was dumbfounded by sunlight, which is excusable for an owl, I think. Another owl with eyesight problems comes next: "He stood still, blinking like an owl at their two heads shining in the sun." Okay! Next comes - and this will be a paraphrase, for I can't find the page - a guy telling another guy, "A man would have to be an owl to live like this, all alone." That's pretty close. I'm sure Willa Cather said it better. Finally, one character describes another in this manner: "as stupid as an owl and as coarse as a pig." Altogether, not a flattering portrait of owls in this book.

Unrequited Owl

Tom Stoppard, as we learn from this biography of him, wrote many letters to the object of his unrequited love, in some of which he playfully referred to her and himself as "the Owl and the Cat." The author of the biography does not specify which was the owl and which the cat, nor is any mention made of the possible influence of Edward Lear on Stoppard's whimsical entreaties. The one thing we know for sure is that this biography of Tom Stoppard is a book with an owl in it. As long as you are here, I think I should tell you about some developments. Do you remember when I rewatched the film EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE and took note that Mel Tillis sang "sexy smile and Robert Redford hair" in the chorus of "Coca Cola Cowboy," rather than the song's actual lyrics, "Eastwood smile and Robert Redford hair," possibly out of deference to the film's star Clint Eastwood? Why, of course you do. Well! According to wikipedia, the lyric in the movie is "sexist smile and Robert Redford hair." I have done nothing to either refute or confirm wikipedia's claim, but it doesn't make any sense at all. Why would Robert Redford's luxurious, shining locks, which are famously attached to a head encasing a left-leaning brain, be associated lyrically with sexism? Furthermore, the eponymous "Coca Cola Cowboy," one would imagine, drinks Coca Cola, in contrast with the rotgut favored by "authentic" cowboys in disreputable saloons, whom one pictures harrassing barmaids and whooping it up in a sexist fashion. Therefore, the "Coca Cola Cowboy," I would argue, whatever he harbors in his heart, presents a smooth and shallow front, all empty calories and fizz, his immaculate, gleaming teeth as well-tended as his much-brushed coiffure, and is less likely to reveal a "sexist smile" than the fictionalized version of a cowboy to whom he is presented as a contrast. Having done no investigation whatsoever into the matter, I would like to state that I am right and wikipedia is wrong. But in the interest of justice, I couldn't keep the existence of wikipedia's questionable interpretation to myself.

Indestructible Golden Tweezers

You know how we're having this pandemic we're having? So now we order things from the drugstore and they deliver them. Like, the other day Dr. Theresa ordered, among other items, a pair of "small scissors." So they sent over some tweezers that cost $35! Some kind of everlasting tweezers, according to the packaging material... coated in titanium! And shining with a golden sheen. Dr. Theresa was pretty surprised by that $35 price tag when she saw it! It reminded me of when I accidentally bought an expensive brush that time, remember that? Only I did it in person, and this was sneakier. Did the drugstore think, "She needs some small scissors... she probably means these $35 tweezers, which are not scissors, but will last forever"? I feel confident it was an honest mistake! But that's not why I brought you here. I wanted you to know that the brand name is Tweezerman. Tweezerman!

Pen Runs Over a Bottle

1. Lee was about to pull up to give me a ride to Memphis when I discovered that the button on my jacket was precariously loose. It took the desperate combined efforts of Dr. Theresa and me to thread a needle. Suddenly that infomercial I saw in January 2011 about an innovative needle with a huge eye didn't seem so damn funny anymore. Once we got the needle threaded, precious seconds ticking away, Dr. Theresa secured that button in place like a speed demon. But that wasn't the end of the troubles! This is exciting already. So! 2. When Lee and I were about halfway to Memphis, I glanced down to discover that I was wearing the wrong shoes. For you see, I had an appointment at the Magic Castle in Hollywood later in the week, thanks to my friend Kate, who is a magician, and they (the Magic Castle, not magicians in general, nor Kate in particular) have a dress code, for which reason, and with some exaltation, I had recently purchased my very first ascot. Anyway, Dr. Theresa had to mail me my shoes. Or they would have never let me into the Magic Castle! 3. The Von's across from my hotel in Burbank no longer stocks the gigantic bottles of seltzer I like. 4. I saw Kent, who happened to be visiting from his new home (well, he's been there a long time now!) in Vermont. He wasn't going to the Magic Castle with us but asked whether I had been with him at the Magic Castle years ago when a guy made a baby appear. I said I thought I would remember something like that, but now I wonder. Was I? Did I? Would I? 5. Kent told me a dream he had had the night before, which I will abbreviate to its ruin. A yellow cobra comes out of a faucet and starts fighting a rat. Then a monkey runs into the room, grabs up the cobra, and begins choking the rat with it! I suggested that the yellow cobra coming out of the faucet meant that Kent needed to pee. 6. In TENDER IS THE NIGHT (the book I brought to read on the airplane) someone's monocle falls out due to a surfeit of emotion! Like in a cartoon! 7. Kent walked by while I was talking on the phone to Dr. Theresa. "Did you tell her about my dream?" he asked. Ha ha! Sure, we kidded him, it was the top of our agenda. Dr. Theresa used to call Kent "Big City" as part of an inside joke. Now, as she decided during the very phone call being described, she's going to call him "Big Maple." Because of Vermont. He has a beard now! Because of, I assume, Vermont. As these shenanigans were taking place I was about to leave for the Magic Castle, so Kent fussily rearranged my ascot (which I had tied myself; I'm not so hot with ties, but noting the ascot loophole in the Magic Castle's dress code, I deduced that an ascot would be easier to tie than a regular necktie... and I was right! An ascot, in its raw appearance, is like a big clown tie). 8. There are some things I can't tell you about the Magic Castle but maybe one day I will. One of them involved the invisible piano player who performs there. I wish I could tell you! Another guy kept making lemons appear out of thin air. Where were those lemons coming from? It was crazy! Magic is crazy. 9. At a Holiday Inn with Julia Pott, Pen, and Kent. "It is happening again," Julia kept saying during the karaoke at the Holiday Inn, purposely and accurately invoking TWIN PEAKS. Everyone there had chosen a sad song, as if by psychic prearrangement. Pen and Julia are especially fine dancers. Kent is a great dancer too, but what I remember is Kent and me sitting at a tall two-top with our really bad drinks, watching the fluid motions of Julia and Pen under the spell of a scrawny white-haired stranger moaning a song of absent love. (Pictured, above, a higher floor of the Holiday Inn.) 10. Back at my own hotel, alone... they were shutting down the bar when I came in... as I was sipping my nightcap a couple sat down next to me, a man and a woman. "The bar is closed," said the bartender, Harvey by name. "But we're getting married tomorrow!" objected the woman. Harvey has been known to do me a favor, so I proclaimed with a flourish, "Oh, allow me to get these two some champagne!" To which the bride-to-be responded quite severely, "No." Then, after a pause, "I want a 'chard.'" So I was like, "Never mind!" She went on: "Champagne is for tomorrow." And I said, "I understand." Why was I trying to force champagne down the throat of these innocent victims? And so to bed, as Samuel Pepys would say. 11. Now we have reached Saturday, and - speaking of Samuel Pepys - a bawdy section of our tale, so be forewarned, as bawdiness was not an area in which I normally dabbled, back in the days when I "blogged." At home on the Saturday in question, Dr. Theresa was suffering the calamity of a football game day. The streets were wild, she reported, and the home team was playing a team called "something like the Cockmasters," an assertion on her part that made both of us laugh even as she said it. "Well, it's something like that," she repeated, and vowed to find out. I begged her not to enter "Cockmasters" into the search engine of the computer. Anyway, it was the Gamecocks, which Dr. Theresa said she liked even less than Cockmasters, given the actual name's association with the practice of animal cruelty. 12. Talked by phone to Megan Abbott. We spent some incredible amount of time (I will say 20 minutes) just parsing the monocle sentence from TENDER IS THE NIGHT (see #6, above): "His monocle fell out, with no whiskers to hide in - he drew himself up." Megan solved it for me. She also said I sounded sedated, like late-stage Judy Garland. From Megan that's a compliment! 13. "I'm happy talking to an idiot." - Rae Gray. 14. Saw Rae Gray and Ashly Burch and many others at a kind of sendoff before Kent returned to Vermont. Talked about books a lot with Rae and Ashly and we laughed uproariously about a number of things, as well as becoming somber and contemplative when the occasion arose. Steve Little was there and when he saw my jotting book he produced his own jotting book in solidarity! Then I admitted I had neglected to bring a pen and he seemed disappointed in me. 14. My friend had a birthday party. Hmm! I can't remember why he's always anonymous. Maybe I made him anonymous because I didn't know him that well when he started appearing on the "blog." Anyway, now he's anonymous forever and subsequently my tales of his birthday party will be shrouded in vagueness and mystery... like why were at least half a dozen cast members of VERONICA MARS there, supplemented by the equally dazzling stars of iZOMBIE and PARTY DOWN? See? Already I've said too much... let me be clear. My friend was not the creator of VERONICA MARS, whom I did meet for the first time that night, however, and who, upon learning that I reside in Mississippi, told me he had played at a club in Jackson in 1985, but he couldn't remember the name. I was pleased to correctly assume he meant a place named W.C. Don's, and to tell him the possibly true fact which I barely recalled hearing somewhere that it had burned to the ground. I played there in 1990. We just missed each other! He swiftly produced a photo of himself with a mullet in front of W.C. Don's. 15. My friend Joey, knowing me to be a huge VERONICA MARS fan, introduced me to Kristen Bell, to whom I remarked how surreal it was for me to see the residents of Neptune (the town where the show takes place) walking around, which prompted her to explain to me the concept of acting, ha ha! I'm making it sound like she thought I didn't know the difference between fiction and reality but that wasn't the case... I hope! No, she was explaining from long experience why people feel and act the way they do when they see someone who performed in something in which they (the viewer) became emotionally invested. But just for a joke (and because it was true) I pretended to conflate another actor from the show with his character, leaning in and murmuring confidentially, "Don't be alarmed, but Logan is standing right behind you." And then an incredible thing happened. Kristen Bell became Veronica Mars! Her voice and posture changed instantly, and she said in character, "That's okay, I have eyes in the back of my head." What a good sport to indulge me so! And what a dexterous display. It was something to witness, and I felt lucky to witness it. Then I ate some creamed corn. 16. The next day Pen and I were out doing stuff and we stopped on a side street. Pen said, "I'm going to park my car better." We were already on the sidewalk. Pen hopped back in his car and pulled up a few inches and immediately ran over a bottle that disintegrated into a million sprinkles of brown glass with a terrible BANG! I jumped and started laughing. We had just been discussing Groucho Marx in the car, and that's where my mind was. "I'm going to park my car better." POW! The timing was perfect. In a movie, his tire would have gone pssssssssssst, but the tire was fine. 17. "You think you're with a decent candy maker and then he starts screamin' at you," is one thing Pen said about Willy Wonka. 18. "It was often easier to give a show than to watch one." - TENDER IS THE NIGHT. 19. Sitting in the airport thinking I have nice shoes but my socks are falling down. As long as I bought an ascot, why not sock garters? 20. Also I saw a man with shoes so shiny they made me ashamed. Maybe his shoes were TOO shiny. Blindingly gleaming they were! Dr. Theresa always says she likes a leather shoe that's been broken in so it has some character. She understands me! 21. Rising to depart from the plane which had returned me to the Memphis airport, I heard a plaintive meowing behind me that made me pine for home. Why, this passenger had been traveling with her cat the whole time and I never knew.

Julian the Apostate Emperor's Big Kissing Speech

My traveling threw up another roadblock up for my ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY reading. But now I'm dawdling over its pages again. Can't seem to make it out of the love section. Now I'm reading about what a typical guy does when he's in love, according to Burton: "to turn up his Mushatos, and curl his head, prune his pickitivant [or peaked beard]... he may be scoffed at otherwise, as Julian that Apostate Emperor was for wearing a long hirsute goatish beard, fit to make ropes with." Of course, I am only telling you this for the sake of "pickitivant." It's like when I was so taken with Burton's insistence that life is but a glucupicron (I may be paraphrasing slightly). Hmm, I can't find that anywhere on the "blog." I must have only jabbered about glucupicron on twitter. And repeatedly, I feel sure. I'm sure I overdid it. I'm sure I rubbed it in. Ah, yes, yes, I see I had the temerity to explain life being nothing but a glucupicron to Neko Case:

@NekoCase "a bitter sweet passion, honey and gall mixt together" says Robert Burton in THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY

— Jack Pendarvis (@JackPendarvis) August 17, 2015

And I think I tried to convince everyone for a while that GLUCUPICRON would be a good ADVENTURE TIME episode title. I don't think my heart was in it, I mostly liked pretending it was a good idea, but I grew perversely insistent for a short while. Now to set the scene! MR. MOM was on briefly while I read THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY last night, just the section where Michael Keaton goes to the grocery store and can't figure out how to buy ham. I don't mean to brag but I think would have been able to buy ham the first time I ever even saw a grocery store. As an infant, given a little prodding, I could have bought some ham. You know, put a couple of dollars in my sticky fat little fist and encourage me to try to say "ham," or to flap my arms in that general direction. I could have gotten some ham. It's a big, big crisis for Michael Keaton, though, buying ham. It breaks him! How to buy ham? Insurmountable! I can't remember for sure, but I think Bob Hope is overwhelmed by the bounty of the modern grocery store in BACHELOR IN PARADISE, but I bet he could have bought some ham - and with a cool, collected demeanor, too. Nonchalantly! Even stunned by capitalism at its shiniest, Bob Hope could have suavely negotiated the purchase of some ham. And of course Joe Namath had no trouble with ham in HIS movie grocery store. Joe Namath knows who's boss! And it's not the ham. I recall that McNeil and I saw MR. MOM in the theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, when it came out, and no doubt we considered it a masterpiece of realism at the time, though we had both been capable of buying ham with little trouble for many years by that point. As you will recall, we prided ourselves on tucking in our t-shirts at the time. Burton goes on to relate how "Julian that Apostate Emperor" had to make a political speech apologizing for the unfashionable style of his beard. Julian opened with a self-deprecating joke about how he hated to kiss anybody anyway! ("I do not exert myself much, said he, in the giving and taking of kisses.") Because the people - the twitter mob of their time! - were saying that the emperor's kind of beard was inconvenient for kissing and made him look like an unkissable dummy. See, politics were always crazy, ha ha, what times. Truly Julian that Apostate Emperor was the Donald Trump of his day; I can't back that up.

Reading Too Much Into It

I'm lucky enough to have an advance reading copy of Megan Abbott's next book, YOU WILL KNOW ME. I see that a LeRoy Neiman tiger poster appears in it. Megan told me about that poster, which is why it also coincidentally appears in MY next book, MOVIE STARS, in which, as I now see thanks to Megan, I consistently misspell LeRoy Neiman's name with a small "r." But the important thing is that the LeRoy Neiman tiger poster is literature's next big trend. I also came across a subtle allusion to Brian Keith's "Uncle Bill" (pictured) from the TV show FAMILY AFFAIR... a touchstone that is pure Megan, as I know from many a conversation. Last night I was trying to piece together what makes something a "Megan Abbott" novel, other than the fact that Megan Abbott wrote it. Is it that you feel you're on sure footing and then things start to slip away from under you? Characters' nightmares seem truer than their daily lives. I'm grasping here. I know that Megan likes David Lynch, and often cites him as an influence, but it's not precisely Lynchian. Lynch can show you a ceiling fan and fill you with dread. Megan achieves something of the same effect with words. Ordinary things aren't ordinary for her. Uneasiness, I decided. That's what you feel. Megan Abbott is our great author of unease. I already had that phrase in my mind - "our great author of unease" - when I came on this sentence in YOU WILL KNOW ME: "It was upsetting, like the seam of something had been torn, ever so slightly." Yes, it's the "ever so slightly" that marks this perception as Megan's, maybe, and separates her from everyone else. Also, the evocative vagueness of "the seam of something." It's not that Megan "peels back layers" the way people say David Lynch does... it's that the world itself is already hallucinatory and gothic. There's no need to peel back any layers! Megan and I discuss this, or something related to this, in an old interview I hope you will "click" on: see pp. 14-16 (MEGAN: "It’s like the thing that students sometimes say: 'You’re reading too much into it.' And of course that’s what students always say when they’re frightened about what they’re reading"). I'm not saying Megan Abbott and Emily Brontë share a worldview, necessarily, but there's a scene in WUTHERING HEIGHTS that I wrote about for the Rumpus once, "when the housekeeper goes back to visit a sweet little boy she used to take care of, and in the short intervening time something has happened to him. He throws a stone at her head and curses. She tempts him with an orange: '"Who has taught you those fine words, my barn," I inquired. "The curate?" "Damn the curate, and thee! Give me that," he replied. "Tell us where you got your lessons, and you shall have it," said I. "Who’s your master?" "Devil daddy," was his answer.'" Very uneasy, queasy, skating around the edge of normal life. Hmm, maybe it's the orange that seems like a Megan Abbott touch, an otherworldly fruit or shining spot on those bleak moors. In conclusion, there's a significant doodle in YOU WILL KNOW ME that looks "like a cartoon owl." So I can put YOU WILL KNOW ME on my stupid list of all the books I read with owls in them, trying to pin it down and categorize it with my sickening brand of whimsy. Yes, yes, that's it, Pendarvis, laugh your unease away. IF YOU CAN! The last book I read featuring a "cartoon owl" was by Ace Atkins, a close friend of Megan's and mine. Surely this is an area for further investigation, he quipped, narrowly avoiding the abyss.

Unemployment

Here's a movie no one has thought of in many years: JACKNIFE (that's how they spell it - I've checked repeatedly, in denial and disbelief). I've never seen it. I have no idea what it's about. But it rushed into my mind. And I'll tell you why. You know what came on last night? THE DEER HUNTER. And there was Robert De Niro in a baseball cap. Okay. So. In the 1980s I was "laid off" (fired) from my job at an advertising agency, and my friend Tony and I decided to drive across the country once I had accumulated enough unemployment checks. I remember a few things about it. Washing the car in a scary, desolate, crudely slapped together facility in Gallup, New Mexico. Slipping and sliding on the concrete because it was freezing cold and the water turned to ice almost as soon as it left the hose. When we got to Los Angeles we went to a live taping of the sitcom DESIGNING WOMEN. Afterward, I asked Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (a creator of the show) if I could have a job and she said no. But I didn't care. Because I was on unemployment, I had to write down a certain number of people on my card each week, people I had asked for a job. That's how you got money in the old days! You wrote things down on a piece of cardboard with a pencil. As I recall, it had to be in pencil. All of this is likely wrong. So I wrote "Linda Bloodworth-Thomason" on my card. Mission accomplished! The suckers at the unemployment office bought it! What am I saying? It was legit. And Linda Bloodworth-Thomason was nice and patient and gave me a lot of writing advice... more than I wanted, really. I remember this: Tony and I drove up a mountain. These were the days when there were only paper maps. And I screwed up. I neglected to tell Tony to turn, so we drove all the way up a mountain. On a treacherous road. Nobody was going up the mountain. It got dark. There was occasionally some daredevil speeding DOWN the mountain (barely enough room for two cars) and giving us a nice heart attack. At some point we were like, "Uh... does it look like we're going up? It's really dark now. Should we be going up? We're going UP." We were running out of gas. Tony was mad at me. Understandably. Once we found a place to turn around (a nightmarishly difficult process) we started back down the mountain, hoping not to run out of gas, but thinking - praying - maybe we could coast if it came to that. We went around a curve and saw an elk in the road. We stopped the car and stared at the majestic elk. So it was kind of worth it. The radio static turned, at last, into a feed from a local TV station. Which seemed unusual. But THE GOLDEN GIRLS was on, which took us some time to fathom, because it should not have been on the radio and also we were in a general state of shock. I guess I have never been so happy as when that shining vestige of civilization THE GOLDEN GIRLS manifested itself. We were laughing in hysterical relief at the stale jokes of THE GOLDEN GIRLS. We made it to a cheap Chinese restaurant in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and I suppose no food has ever tasted so good. Just moments earlier we thought we were going to die on a mountaintop! But where was I? In Los Angeles, we went on a tour. As we bounced along on the Universal Studios tram I saw some dude with long, greasy hair in a baseball cap walking through the lot with a sense of purpose and wondered whether he might be an actor. Back in Mobile, I went to the movies and saw the preview for JACKNIFE and thought, "Hey! That's the same dude I saw in Los Angeles." Obviously, it wasn't. There are countless holes in that theory. "Look at that baseball cap and that greasy hair!" I exulted, however, as I enjoyed the no-doubt suspenseful preview for JACKNIFE, which I no longer recall. I do recall that on our trip Tony and I stopped at a restaurant in Beaumont, Texas, where everyone was cold and silent as the grave. That was the quietest restaurant I've ever been in, filled with the stoniest, least communicative families of Texas. Upon our return I went back to the ad agency that had fired me (I can't remember why - to pick up one last check?) and they had a new receptionist who was so cute I asked her on a date. And she turned out to be from Beaumont, Texas! Yeah, that went nowhere. Even though I was able to say, "I've just been to Beaumont, Texas!" As I recall, I drove her around the city of Mobile and environs with no destination in mind. I seemed to think that's what a "date" was. I want to say we ended up in a bleak, rusted-out industrial area. I was probably lost. And certainly broke. I wonder why she never took my calls after that. I was probably like, "I don't have any money but I can show you the world!" As I recall, Tony and I walked all the way down into Walnut Canyon (Arizona?) and for the first time in my life I realized how much harder it was to walk up out of a canyon than to walk down into a canyon. That hadn't occurred to me somehow. I was sheltered as a lad. Boy, it hurts walking up and out of a canyon.

Time Enough For Chicken

"The only way I survived winter in Iowa was glamour." So said Melissa Ginsburg last night. The occasion of this wonderful remark was our unseasonable drop in temperature. Just earlier in the day Kent Osborne had said that the weather gets a bad rap as a topic of conversation. "It's supposed to be boring to talk about the weather," Kent said. He disagrees! And Melissa is living proof. Kent and Seo Kim and I went to see Dr. Theresa introduce David Simon yesterday afternoon. He gave a talk! Just a few days ago he was hanging out with President Obama in the White House. And now here he is giving a talk. After the talk, there was just half an hour before an ADVENTURE TIME video conference Kent and I were required to attend. Time enough for chicken, thought Kent! "This will be my fourth chicken meal in a row," he said. "Oxford is a chicken town." It may be the highest form of compliment Kent can bestow. We went into Gus's. Kent ordered one chicken wing, which I found amusing. Kent had no qualms. It was just what he wanted. But it made me think of the scene in WAITING FOR GUFFMAN in which Parker Posey is poignantly turning over a single chicken wing on a grill. An image included in large part for its absurdity! Or so I have always assumed. Seo laughed unreservedly when the chicken wing came out. There it was, shining, in its own little basket. A funny sight. Pitiful! Exquisite with mortality. Kent consumed it without irony. He reviewed the most recent chicken dishes he had enjoyed. The wings at another place were different than on a previous trip, bigger, and of a lesser quality of chicken, Kent thought. He suspected that the establishment - which shan't be named here - had gone with a new, cheaper supplier, which started me thinking about THIEVES' HIGHWAY, the great old movie about the crime surrounding apple orchards (!). I jokingly suggested that we should create a TV show that starts out on a free-range chicken farm and follows the chicken to the shady gangsters who push out the good chicken farmers with their bad, poorly raised counterfeit chicken, which they force restaurants to buy... and as we had just seen David Simon, we suddenly knew: "We could call it THE CHICKEN WIRE!" We were very amused. VERY amused! But we both resisted the temptation to tell David Simon about it when we saw him later that day, as Kent consumed his fifth chicken meal in a row. At one point, far across the table, I heard David Simon say something about the Visigoths and I slammed the table and yelled, "I'll tell you something about Visigoths!" THIS WAS IT! Reading that book about the Middle Ages was finally going to pay off. "They killed the Romans but preserved their knowledge!" I screamed. That's all I had. Is the action over? It is not! Just a couple of hours ago Dr. Theresa called our friend Ron Shapiro, who is driving John Waters here from New Orleans. "They're on the road!" said Dr. Theresa.

Shiny New Garbage

Hey! Remember in early 2012 when I vowed to be "the kind of old man who visits the old neighborhood and looks around all disappointed in the world and says, 'That's where such-and-such used to be'"? I'm doing it! I'm really doing it! In an ADVENTURE TIME meeting the other day, Kent Osborne, of all people, sitting there in faraway Burbank, told me that something shady is going on with Manuel's Tavern, my old neighborhood watering hole in Atlanta. "That's where we saw Mark McGwire break his home run record," Kent reminded me. The way I remember it, Ward McCarthy and I were sitting with our backs to the TV screen and Kent kept trying to get us to look. Why didn't we look? I think we were just being jerks. I emailed my brother-in-law for more details about Manuel's. He says they're selling the property, which is going to be turned into some kind of "mixed use complex" (I'm not sure he used those exact words), but supposedly after everything is torn down and rebuilt Manuel's will remain in some refurbished form. Huh! Atlanta is kind of famous for "refurbishing" things right out of existence and replacing them with shiny new garbage that wouldn't fool the world's biggest chump. And I even wrote about Manuel's in a fancy "favorite bar" anthology last year. Now it's all a lie! Just like when I wrote a "think piece" about ice buckets and then months later there's the "ice bucket challenge." Everything I write immediately becomes obsolete. Like the time I had to change a Heath Ledger reference to a Joaquin Phoenix reference to a Zac Efron reference to no reference. Ha ha, everything is pointless. Boo! Boo to you, world. Boo, say I. Boo!

That Dang Vampire

Megan Abbott emailed this morning. She's thinking of rereading H.P. Lovecraft for the holidays (!) and wanted to know my favorite stories of his. By coincidence (OR WAS IT?) there was a Lovecraft allusion on last night's ADVENTURE TIME, when a little creature on a pilgrimage, hoping to see a god, saw Finn eating spaghetti instead. The poor little thing cried out, "I thought you'd be beautiful!" and started weeping and melted. And by coincidence (OR WAS IT?) yesterday's ADVENTURE TIME meeting was about a creepy episode idea from Seo Kim (who also storyboarded last night's episode along with Somvilay Xayaphone). It was also based on a night terror (OR WAS IT?) that a friend of Kent's had. And by coincidence (OR WAS IT?) I ran out of things to read on airplanes and at an LAX souvenir shop where by coincidence (OR WAS IT?) a large glowing poster of pal Mary Miller's novel THE LAST DAYS OF CALIFORNIA decorated the register I bought the new, Lovecraftian Stephen King novel. (Also in that souvenir shop: a lifesized cardboard cutout of Martin Short, for which I fantasized about buying a seat next to me on the airplane.) Also (OR WAS IT?) I have been tweeting little fragments of the ghost book I just finished reading to Megan and Jimmy, like so:

@kingfergus @meganeabbott "After she broke up with him, she returned his dead wife's clothes, twisted into 'doll-like shapes'"
— Jack Pendarvis (@JackPendarvis) November 21, 2014

And Bill Boyle, inspired by this, emailed Jimmy and Megan and me some scary "links" to recordings of poltergeist activity (little kids talking in SHINING voices, yaaaah! Dr. Theresa hates it when I say in a raspy voice, "Jack's not here, Mrs. Pendarvis" - as much as I hate and fear her creepy impression of Helena Bonham Carter in FRANKENSTEIN! - so I guess Bill Boyle has taught me a valuable lesson in empathy) and a medium named Leslie Flint channeling the Brontë sisters. I shan't include the "links" lest they drive you mad with fear (see Lovecraft). Hey did I ever tell you that one of my little sister's first words as a baby was "poltergeist"? True story! Plus I'm reading that dang vampire novel now, what is wrong with me. OR WAS IT

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up

Welcome once again to "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up," the only place on the "internet" where you can always grab the latest and greatest all-star news of entertainment celebrities on the go! ITEM! I promise never to talk about Jerry Lewis again. BUT WAIT! Guess who was JUST strolling down the Hollywood Walk of Fame and sent me this photograph?

That's right, NIGHT OF THE LOUP GAROU star Ace Atkins. Jerry's star has some dirt on it! Who's responsible for shining up these stars? Get on it! It's a national disgrace. You know I still have Jerry on the brain because I gave a lecture about him and though that was a while ago he's still bouncing around in there. McNeil left behind a dvd of CRACKING UP on his last visit. "I have two copies. I think this is the bad one," he said. AND HE WAS RIGHT! It started getting glitchy then it froze up completely only an hour in. So I put in WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT? and watched some of that and took four pages of notes on the two movies, NONE OF WHICH I AM GOING TO SHARE WITH YOU. I sent a couple of my observations in a private email to McNeil. BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO SEEM LIKE A CRAZY PERSON WHO ONLY THINKS ABOUT JERRY LEWIS ALL THE TIME. NEWS FLASH! I had to stop following Larry King on twitter. Somebody - I believe it was my reliable informant Jessica - told me that NPR had done a story on Larry King's tweets. After that, his tweeting was reinvigorated. Instead of the sporadic jewel, a deluge. Stuff about why he doesn't like snow and how he's never ridden a tractor and please don't serve him catfish. Why so negative, Larry King? He does like cashew chicken, that's one thing he likes. Anyhow, the tweets just kept coming and coming and seemed "self-aware" in a way that ruined their "outsider art" vibe. Reader, I blocked him! "'Outsider art' vibe?" PERHAPS I WAS THE FOOL ALL ALONG. Or could it be that NPR HAS CREATED A MONSTER? As usual, we can say a big thanks for ruining everything to the folks at NPR, always so hard-working and well-intentioned, just like Dr. Frankenstein. HE WAS ONLY TRYING TO HELP. Speaking of Halloween, you will be relieved to hear we found our copy of SON OF DRACULA. Anyway, to compare Larry King's tweets to "outsider art" is insulting to "outsider art." "Outsider art" IS "self-aware" and to suggest otherwise is also insulting. The term "outsider art" is probably insulting. WHAT IF WE CALL IT ART? Okay! WHAT ELSE? Ace told Dr. Theresa and me that we were BOTH wrong about one of his lines in NIGHT OF THE LOUP GAROU. His character actually says, "It is time to rock and roll... like the Mickey Mouse." No wonder we misunderstood! Mickey Mouse neither rocks NOR rolls. You heard it here first at "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up." Until next time, keep "reaching" for the "stars"!

About My Solar Plexus Area

Despite the humorous titles of its chapters, I find that I cannot recommend the book with the paranormal jelly bags in it. What a letdown! I won't name it or its author because why hurt someone's feelings? But it's just a sloppy grab-bag, really - one minute the author is helping some people get a ghost out of their attic, next minute he's talking about a UFO case he has nothing to do with... there's just no point of view, and I don't believe his dialogue for a minute. ("There's no way in h..., ah, heaven that I would go up there when those crying noises begin.") It's all hooey. When I used to teach a scary story class, I think I made the observation that no kind of story benefits more from realism than a ghost story. I suppose that's doubly the case when the story is supposed to be "true." So let's move on to what seems to be a much better ghost book: A GALLERY OF GHOSTS by Andrew MacKenzie. It's the first one that Dr. Theresa held up in the shop for me to consider, and I am afraid I rudely and instantly dismissed it. I didn't like the generic title and I didn't like the cornball cover with the full yellow moon and the crooked black tree. Luckily, Dr. Theresa was persistent. Always respect Dr. Theresa's instincts! First of all, A GALLERY OF GHOSTS has an academic-sounding subtitle: AN ANTHOLOGY OF REPORTED EXPERIENCE. Classy! And I like the introduction, in which MacKenzie makes an interesting distinction: "Unlike the ghost stories of fiction, which have a beginning, a middle and an end and deal with dramatic happenings involving revenge or remorse... the true ghost story is fragmentary and often apparently meaningless." Well, now he is talking my language! I am sick of things with beginnings, middles and ends, truth be told. I do like a nice shiny fragment. I like that the book flap says with exquisite formality, "Mr. MacKenzie presents many hitherto unpublished supernatural stories from his own collection." I like that he drops allusions to weighty-sounding tomes such as "G.N.M. Tyrrell's masterly work SIX THEORIES ABOUT APPARITIONS." I like that the very first thing he does in the very first chapter is admit to his interviewee, "I have never seen a ghost, possibly because I am a poor visualizer." She - the Vice President of the Society for Psychical Research - has reportedly seen two ghosts (the modesty of the number, especially for one in her position, is something else I like). I like that she says, "I wasn't in the least frightened, but afterwards I did notice that I felt cold about my solar plexus area." And I like that MacKenzie responds drily, "That is most interesting." None of this flailing around and trying to be "colorful" like that other book with the flying jelly bags, which shall remain nameless, and which, as you may recall, had something sticky on the cover anyway. (The image above popped up for reasons unknown as a search result for a photo of Rosalind Hedley Heywood, the Vice President of the SPR at the time of MacKenzie's writing. I didn't find a photo of her but this one is all right too.)

Properly Crammed

I would like to apologize to the labels ADVENTURE, BLOOD, DREAMS, DRUNK, EMPTY, FAVES, FISH, FURNITURE, GLORY, HAPPINESS, HEADS, HEAVEN, PROUD, RICE, SHINY, SILENCE, SLEEP, SPIRIT, and STATUES, which should have been appended to a recent "post" but could not be crammed properly into place.

Narcotic Effluvium Christmas

I was reading KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL by Anthony Bourdain and NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs at the same time. I picked up the latter and read, "Like a vampire bat he gives off a narcotic effluvium, a dank green mist that anesthetizes his victims and renders them helpless in his enveloping presence." And for a minute my brain sincerely tried to figure out which of Anthony Bourdain's friends he was writing about, because that's kind of how Anthony Bourdain writes about his friends! But of course it is a monster from NAKED LUNCH. I briefly thought I was reading the other book, you see. Grand times! Grand times here on Christmas Day in the morning. Interestingly (ha ha ha! I know you are not interested - you don't even exist!) Bourdain and Burroughs both enjoyed childhoods of wealth and privilege (about which both have written; Burroughs: "I remember the lamplighter lighting the gas streetlights and the huge, black, shiny Lincoln... I could put down one of those nostalgic routines about the old German doctor who lived next door and the rats running around in the back yard and my aunt's electric car and my pet toad that lived by the fish pond") and went on to shoot up in grim alleyways, is that interesting? (Do note: as I was typing this, Bourdain appeared on twitter, assembling a Barbie Dream House.) I leave you with the final words of "A Christmas Thought" by Barry Hannah, which I recently read aloud (from Jimmy's copy) at the holiday meeting of Good Idea Club (seen here; photo by Bill Boyle, featuring a portion of Lizzie): "When you read and wonder, for six seconds, about the random, pointless violence of these days, then are blissful it was not you, having, really, a better day, stop and think: Could not these felons be, really, God's children, loose, adept, so hungry and correct in our world?"

Let's Look Up Things About Mirrors in Books

Where have I been? Nowhere, I guess. Well, here I am. I've really let things slide. I feel like there are lots of emails I should be answering. Elizabeth broke a mirror, for example, and wanted to know how she might counteract the bad luck, IF she were superstitious, which SHE CERTAINLY IS NOT. And NEITHER AM I. But I was doing other stuff, I guess. So I hope Elizabeth hasn't had too much bad luck yet. At the time I grabbed a handy book: THE WHITE GODDESS by Robert Graves, and checked the index for "mirror," just because it was right there where my hand could grab it with no effort. All I found was something about a mermaid with a mirror and a comb. Colorful, but of little use. I emailed that useless information to Elizabeth then did nothing for several days. The mermaid represented the dangers of love? Something like that. I've got the book right here but I already opened it once, so that's plenty. I am going to walk around now and look for, let us say, five other books that might have mirror information in them. I seem to recall that THE GOLDEN BOUGH has a whole dang chapter about mirrors, or reflections, or something. I'm getting tired just thinking about it. The "internet" seems to be the wrong way to go. Sure I could type in some clever "google search term" and get all the latest info about counteracting the ill effects of a broken mirror, but that's the cheap way of living and who can trust it? Okay, are you still there? Me neither. I walked around and grabbed five books. Let's take a look! First up, THE MAGICAL UNIVERSE: EVERYDAY RITUAL AND MAGIC IN PRE-MODERN EUROPE. Did they have mirrors? Let's find out! Not in the index. But "Mississippi" is on page 132, so let's see what Mississippi has to do with pre-modern Europe. Wow, here's a photo of a statue of a saint covered in snakes. Scary! Scary but unrelated. But wait, here we go: "in northern Mississippi in the late nineteenth century, according to Faulkner, 'the full moon of April [shining on the marriage bed] guaranteed the fertilizing act.'" The footnote says it's from THE HAMLET. Hey, I read that book! But I guess I skipped the part about the moon fertilizing everybody. Books are no use at all. Let's check the next one. It's called THE MIRROR OF ALCHEMY. It has MIRROR in the title! But not in the index. That's what I call the bait and switch, author Gareth Roberts! It does have "Miriam" in the index where "mirror" should be, a name I recall from Robert Graves's mermaid page. Hmm, it says, "see Maria Prophetissa." Okay, I will! She's the sister of Moses, "credited with the invention of... the bain-marie, a vessel containing hot water and giving gentle heat, which still bears her name." Ha ha, I like typing. Up next, the dreaded GOLDEN BOUGH (which, PS, Richard Burton was reading in his diaries). All right! This is my kind of index entry: "Mirrors, superstitions as to, 231." Oh brother, though, it's just all that old jazz about your reflection being your soul or something. Everybody knows that! Nothing in GRIMOIRES: A HISTORY OF MAGIC BOOKS (though see also). Cirlot's DICTIONARY OF SYMBOLS has lots of sentences like "The fluctuation between the 'absent' mirror and the 'peopled' mirror lends it a kind of phasing, feminine in implication, and hence - like the fan - it is related to moon symbolism." Wow, books are the worst. Okay, but the "Mississippi" thing - the nearest word to mirror in that index - was about the moon, and according to this other book, mirrors are about the moon, and this other index in which "Miriam" is the nearest word to "mirror" leads me back to the mermaid ("Marian, Miriam, Mariamne...") in Robert Graves, who he says "can be identified with the Moon-goddess Eurynome whose statue... was a mermaid carved in wood." So what can we conclude from our studies? That writers will eventually bring everything back to the moon. Writers love writing up some junk about the moon. Writers are like, "Let me stick a moon in here, everybody will think I am so great." How I hate them with their fancy ways.

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up: Dunkel Edition!

Hello, friends, and welcome once again to All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up, the only place on the "internet" that combines entertainment with the entertainment all-stars! Let's get things started with our first juicy tidbit! Okay! Halfway through that newish movie of ON THE ROAD, up pops Peggy from MAD MEN in the thankless role (in the movie, the book, and life itself perhaps) of Galetea Dunkel. When we first see her she's on the phone to Sal Paradise, complaining, "These people are mad! They're mad!" And I wanted Sal to reply, "Would you describe them as... MAD MEN?" But he didn't. (See also.) Bewilderingly, the movie did not include the scene from the novel in which Sal looks through the window of a Buick dealership and sees Jerry Colonna (pictured). Buddy Ebsen is in THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON, by the way. I wonder if he ever sat around on the set of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES bragging about how he was in Fitzgerald's final, unfinished masterpiece. Probably not. He seemed too nice to brag. But hey let's talk about something else. That movie I don't like (though it's rude to say as much) keeps coming on TV all the time. Now I have seen the part where the younger woman gives the older man (who wrote and directed the movie) a "mix tape" of "classical music" and he walks around listening to it and looking at buildings and then writes her letters about it which are quoted from at length in his voice-over narration while she sprawls out dreamily in a moony daze, grinning in a helpless rictus of joy as her shining eyes caress his profound and touching words, such as, "When I listened to the overture you sent, I suddenly realized I had hands... AND LEGS!" And in defiance of Billy Wilder's famous rule, we see exactly what he is narrating as he narrates it: the man who wrote and directed the movie staring at his own hands in childlike wonder as he listens to his "classical music." He also says, "I echo your sentiment about the Beethoven: Whoa." I know what he's doing there. With false modesty he is undercutting his sense of grandeur to seem real cool or something. I do it on this "blog" ALL THE TIME. Wait, this movie I claim to hate just made me realize it's myself I hate most of all. So let's talk about something else! McNeil sent me a 25-minute youtube clip (see also) because Johnny Carson's name appears on a marquee at 5:08, and I understand that! And McNeil understands that I understand that. The marquee is for one of Carson's early hosting gigs, a game show called "Do You Trust Your Wife?" That may bring us back to the oppression under which women like Galetea Dunkel labored, I don't know, sure, let's say it does. It's a MIKE HAMMER TV show, and I was surprised at the opening when Mike Hammer turned toward the camera to reveal that he is played by Darren McGavin, who is far too zany and lovable to play Mike Hammer. In an email, McNeil agreed. "They try to play the whole thing like a comedy it seems to me," he said, making a few more observations on various subjects before concluding, "what a fairy land goes on in my head." Mike Hammer drops his napkin on the floor of a restaurant to get a surreptitious look at a suspect, which is just about broad and cornball enough for the real Mike Hammer to do, but not in the vaudeville style McGavin does it. The suspect closely resembles Wimpy from the Popeye comic strip. He fiddles with his derby and makes funny faces. In conclusion, I guess nothing is good enough for me. That's it for today's All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up! Until next time, keep "reaching" for the "stars"! And go to hell.

Miracle Helium of Love

Kent and Adam and Pen sent me these balloons for my birthday. That was July 8, like six weeks ago, and they're still floating! They sent me a dozen red roses too. Those guys! The roses died. Flowers die! Flowers must fade and die, the poets tell us. Yet the balloons just keep going. "Tight seals," mused Adam, ever the pragmatist. "Did you tape them to the wall?" asked a suspicious Pen during a recent writers' meeting, during which, as always, the balloons were visible behind me thanks to the miracle of skype. No such chicanery! All natural, this floating. These balloons are the wonder of the age. But I don't know, maybe it is no big deal, maybe our modern balloons are built by cold, pedantic experts to float forever, maybe all of you have some balloons that have been floating in your house for six weeks, maybe six years, maybe you are laughing at me, that's right, go on, laugh at the old fool with his misty eyeballs and feeble dreams. Full disclosure: one of them stopped floating almost immediately (see photo below). Still tethered to its luckier brothers as a reminder that glory is fleeting!