A Very Important Announcement

I can't believe it took me so long to watch the ending of THREE RING CIRCUS. I just got around to finishing it last night. So Jerry does a clown act with a tiny monkey. This is one tiny monkey, believe me. And it runs over and starts riding around in the sawdust on a tiny scooter and I was like, "Gee! They really found a tiny scooter to fit that tiny monkey. Look at him go!" This isn't the important part, but it was pretty great to see that tiny monkey really booking it on that tiny scooter. And he's wearing like a red silk diaper. Suddenly he's off the scooter and posing Burt Reynolds style in his red silk diaper. We haven't gotten to the important part. Now Jerry, for reasons I can't quite recall, picks up something like a bazooka and starts shooting something - maybe they're long foam tubes? - at the reclining monkey. It's all real harmless and Jerry misses by a mile anyway. Don't make me swear to what it is coming out of that bazooka. But one thing is for sure: that monkey needs to escape, and pronto. So he jumps up and hops on the back of a convenient dog we haven't seen before and rides away to freedom. That's the important part: THREE RING CIRCUS has A MONKEY RIDING A DOG IN IT! As I'm sure you will recall, I have mixed feelings about monkeys riding dogs. They (the feelings, and the monkeys riding dogs) even come up in one of the stories in my most recent short story collection MOVIE STARS, in which they (the monkeys riding dogs) symbolize... the futility of existence or something? I can't remember. But in this case I was okay. I even laughed! The dog seemed into it.

Graham Ogden

Last night I was watching the movie version of UNDER THE VOLCANO and Albert Finney had this awful neighbor who made me think of the character actor Grady Sutton. But he didn't really look like Grady Sutton, nor did he behave in the usual sweet and befuddled Grady Sutton manner. Something about him made me think of Grady Sutton, though. I knew he couldn't be Grady Sutton. I figured Grady Sutton was certainly dead by the time of UNDER THE VOLCANO. [Wrong! Grady Sutton died in 1995, if you can believe it. - ed.] But the point is, I couldn't think of Grady Sutton's name. It was driving me crazy. "Is this the beginning of the end?" I asked myself. I kept thinking, "What is that guy's name? Graham Ogden? Graham Ogden? It's something like Graham Ogden." It's all over for me. But I did get up this morning and check the "internet": a professor at a school of dentistry, a real estate agent, an Old Testament scholar... these are just a few of the many Graham Ogdens in the world, to my surprise.

I know I should have led off with a photograph of Grady Sutton but I was too mesmerized by the shot of Jacqueline Bisset in UNDER THE VOLCANO, standing between an orange (?) wall and an aquamarine (?) armoire (?), a color move which should have made me think of Jerry Lewis, but didn't.

My Resonators Don't Buzz

Yesterday in the New York Times I read about the gyil, "a xylophone with gourd resonators that buzz with the silk of spiders’ egg sacs, called paapieye, that is stretched across the gourds’ openings." Reader, I have one! I just never knew what it was. I used to play it in my old band. No, my OLD old band. One or two songs we'd drag out the gyil. Not that we knew it was a gyil. Do you care? No. Do I? Yes, barely. Anyway, I could turn around and look at the gyil if I wanted. It's right behind me! One gourd has been long missing. And one stick. There used to be two sticks to play it with. And there was never any silk of spiders' egg sacs, or maybe it was knocked off in transit. So my resonators don't buzz. Never did. Story of my life. Anyway, I have a gyil with no spider sac. The buzzing is half the point! Now I've listened to some gyil with the silk intact and it makes all the difference. We could've been big!

Elaine Stritch in a Western

Last night when I couldn't sleep I watched a whole Charlton Heston western with Elaine Stritch in it! If that sentence doesn't interest you, just stop reading, I won't mind. It only goes downhill from here. For example, I also thought I saw Jamie Farr and Robert Blake standing around in a few scenes. As brothers! And today I checked imdb and I was right. But back to Elaine Stritch. At first I thought it was odd to see her in a western. She didn't make that many movies, did she? I'm not going to look it up. But when you think about it, she was kind of born to play a cynical dance-hall madam, as she did here. I wanted to illustrate this "post" with a nice shot of Elaine Stritch from the movie, but there doesn't seem to be one on the "internet." They used this as a publicity still, apparently.

That's Stritch sitting at the desk, signing a document. Wow! What action! You can see why the publicity department wanted to use it. Speaking of which, the title of the movie is THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE, ha ha! (I added the ha ha.) Sounds like it took the whole marketing department and a couple of focus groups to come up with that. And there are way more than three violent people in it. And one of the "three people" we're supposed to infer is violent isn't violent at all! Anyway, "internet," why no color pictures of Elaine Stritch in THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE, in her green silk dance-hall madam get-up, say? I mean, look, there's even a good one of Forrest Tucker:

Forrest Tucker! I saw him in some Katharine Hepburn movie the other day and I was like, "Who is this guy?" If you're my age you mostly recall him mugging his way through awful live-action Saturday morning goofball comedy. But in this Katharine Hepburn thing he was like a weird, brooding, mysterious, silent hunk.

Look! Look how he broods. Ah, time. Who can escape you? Speaking of Jamie Farr - ha ha! - You should really listen to "Conversation Parade." It's a podcast all about ADVENTURE TIME. On a recent episode, Steve Wolfhard revealed that his inspiration for the character of BMO's creator (see below) was Jamie Farr. That's the kind of information you won't get anywhere else! Except here, apparently. There's going to be a brand new episode today featuring Olivia Olson, the voice of Marceline the Vampire Queen. CHECK IT OUT!

This must be the worst publicity they've ever gotten. People who are googling "Elaine Stritch + Jamie Farr + Forrest Tucker" are gonna love "Conversation Parade." In conclusion - no, NOT in conclusion! - I decided to watch THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE because I am curious about costar Thomas Tryon. He wrote the fine horror novel THE OTHER which I taught in a couple of classes on the recommendation of Laura Lippman. And the other day I found a mass-market paperback of his other horror novel HARVEST HOME at that used book stall I like. And he quit acting and became a novelist because Otto Preminger was such a hateful, screaming lunatic as a director. He once fired Thomas Tryon right in front of Tryon's parents! At least that's the way I remember the story from Chris Fujiwara's Preminger book, but I'm not going to get up and go into the other room and find it and check the index. In conclusion, the conclusion of THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE features Anne Baxter embracing Charlton Heston, and a big puff of dust and dirt rises off of him. It had to be on purpose, didn't it? But it looks like an accident. But it's kind of thematically fitting, you'll see. Wait, I lied! Here's Elaine Stritch.

The Stump, the Candle and the Pencil Sharpener

Read in this book about the Middle Ages about Francesco Dantini. "Orphaned when still young, he began trading everything that could turn a profit: weapons and spices, cloth and silk." Upon his death in 1410, "he bequeathed his entire estate" to a charitable trust he had founded, called "the poor people's stump." By doing so, he "hoped to avoid punishment in Hell." His charity "still exists today, a miraculous survival," the author calls it. So that's pretty good! I hope he got into Heaven okay. Speaking of the Middle Ages, didn't they believe in unicorns back then? I'll check one of my many reference books about unicorns. Yes, yes, I see in THE LORE OF THE UNICORN that the legendary figure Prester John (in whom a lot of people believed, according to my book about the Middle Ages) was supposed to have plenty of unicorns running around in his kingdom. Oh yeah, and I forgot William Davenant got a job fetching powdered unicorn horn for a duchess way after the Middle Ages, even. So! Rhea sent me this picture of some cupcakes she had made, and as you can see, she placed them decoratively around a golden unicorn. Who wouldn't? But then she had second thoughts! She felt, perhaps, that the makers of this unicorn had improperly given it a horn, when, as you can plainly see, the candle sticking out of its head should have cleverly served in that capacity. The horn is redundant! Or so Rhea feared. And I believe that Rhea is right. Take, for example, this pencil sharpener (below) given to me by Beth Ann Fennelly. Here we have the unsharpened silver pencil properly representing the unicorn's horn. I can only hope that future manufacturers of unicorn novelties will take a lesson from Rhea's tragedy.

The Victorian Match Industry

I was so antsy about hosting the Square Books Q&A with Patton Oswalt that I left the house three hours early! I paced around the square. I went to Square Books and saw a new hardcover called THE MATCH GIRL AND THE HEIRESS or maybe it was THE HEIRESS AND THE MATCH GIRL and I thought, "Oh no, am I going to buy this for 'research'?" I looked through it and there was a lot about "the match industry" in the nineteenth century and the hellish (I assume) condition of Victorian match factories (I didn't let myself read about that) and the plight of the little match girls on the street, oh no! But my book is about cigarette lighters (though - spoiler alert! - matches make an appearance). Anyway, I decided to pretend I never saw that book, let's never speak of it again. (I feel like I've mentioned this before, but I remember when I was in eighth grade with McNeil and he read a report he had written about matches in front of the class! A report about matches! I thought that was hilarious for some reason. I should see if he still has it, maybe I could put it in my bibliography.) But back to the fascinating story of how I killed time. I looked through a biography of Marilyn Monroe. I found out she had some therapy sessions with Anna Freud, which places her at two degrees of separation from Mark Twain... AGAIN. I was like, "When I get home I need to tweet Megan Abbott about this!" The Freud part I mean. But guess what? She already knew. She knows all. You can't stump Megan on Freud stuff. Or much of anything else. Then Kaitlyn of Square Books showed me a good trick for making my pocket square look nice. Talk about a full-service bookstore! And yes, I wore a jaunty polka-dotted pocket square of the finest silk for Patton Oswalt! Soon enough it was "Megan Abbott time," speaking of Megan Abbott, so I went up to City Grocery Bar and had a slug of rye to soothe the old nerves. Just enough time before meeting Patton Oswalt. At one point, I put my wallet on the bar, which made me remember TWO THINGS SIMULTANEOUSLY. 1) Once I put my wallet on a bar in New York City and when I looked down it had vanished! Famed mischief-maker Amanda Stern handed it to me and said, "You don't do that in New York." She had taught me a lesson! 2) On one of our first visits to Oxford - maybe the very first; it may have been 2003, I don't know - I was up on the balcony of City Grocery Bar having a good time. But when we got back to the hotel, my wallet was gone. I ranted to Dr. Theresa, "We're getting out of here. THIS IS A CITY OF THIEVES!" Ha ha, I remember saying that. I was sure my pocket had been picked by an expert. When I got back to the bar, my wallet was just lying there on the balcony where I had dropped it, its contents untouched. What a rube. I met Patton Oswalt and he was very nice. I knew I would bring up Jerry Lewis - I can't help myself! - so I tried to get all of that out of the way "backstage" (in the back of Off Square Books, before the Q&A). I don't think Mr. Oswalt entirely shares my deep feelings about Jerry Lewis! He compared Jerry to Bono of U2 in a way that was unflattering to both gentlemen! Anyway, I got the Jerry out of my system. There are a couple of good stories about Jerry Lewis in Mr. Oswalt's highly engaging new book SILVER SCREEN FIEND. Then we talked about THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, among other things, and then, just when we were about to go out to face the packed bookstore and start the "show," Patton said, "Jack!" And I said, "What!" And in reply he played the rousing theme from THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE on his phone. Maybe it was to "pump me up" so I wouldn't be nervous! Whatever the intent, it was a fine gesture.

The Wrong Mistakes

Finished that Bob Hope bio (which had an owl in it, like every book: Bob Hope described as a "night owl") and now I've moved on to a Thelonious Monk bio written by Robin D.G. Kelley, which I picked up in hardcover at Square Books back in 2009, and it's just been patiently sitting there on the shelf ever since. It starts out with something pretty surprising: the subject of the biography coming to the author in a dream! This was 30 years before the writing of the book, when the author was an aspiring pianist: "he came to me in a dream. Decked out in divine alligator shoes, a dark green silk suit, yellow tie, bamboo sunglasses, and a cold straw hat, he snuck up behind me as I sat hunched over my stepfather's Steinway upright, looked over my shoulder, and simply mumbled, 'You're making the wrong mistakes.'" I also read this about Monk: "One of his favorite pranks was to stare intensely at a spot on the ceiling or in the sky... Invariably, several people would look up with him." That reminds me of the gag Saint Thomas More used to pull!

Pushing the Anthodites

Don't watch this youtube clip. This is another thing that's just for McNeil. It's Jerry Lewis guest-hosting THE TONIGHT SHOW with Bob Hope as his guest. It will just confirm all your worst feelings if that is your inclination. Shame on you! Bob makes a bunch of awful ethnic jokes about the Italians and Irish then he makes an off-color remark about Ed Sullivan and then Bob and Jerry have some reactionary banter about "the young people today." It's 1970! Bob is wearing a striped jacket and what I think might be a powder-blue silk shirt. The commercials are included! One is for "wild blueberry" flavored cigars! An antiperspirant commercial shows us a new direction - understated, semi-documentary, almost like Godard shot it, it reminded me of MASCULIN-FEMININ. Edit out a few seconds here and there and it could be an indictment of pop consumerism. Repressive desublimation? No! But it used "revolutionary" techniques to sell antiperspirant. It really does stick out in the clutter. Don Draper probably thought of it. And of course you can see right there the world passing Bob and Jerry by. Then there's a charming local ad for Skyline Caverns, just a photo of two nice women standing in some caverns, I guess. (Not the photo presented here, obviously, but something similar.) And the announcer plays up the "anthodites" they have in the caverns. And when I looked at the present-day homepage for Skyline Caverns, well, they are still pushing those anthodites pretty hard! When we get back to the show, there's a lot of underlying hostility between Bob and Jerry, I think, some muttering about an incident in their past I couldn't quite make out. They're muttering at and over each other on television! Or maybe my hearing is going. Something about Bing Crosby. (A late addendum! Here ["click"] is some info about when Bing Crosby got scared that Jerry Lewis was going to pull off his hairpiece. Also - ironically, given how the times seem to have rushed past Bob and Jerry - a brash, pitiless, hilarious and supremely energetic young Jerry is giving Bing [by implication] a bunch of stuff about being old and passe.) Then when Bob leaves THE TONIGHT SHOW set, a big bunch of pencils gets knocked off the desk. Freudian! And Ed McMahon subserviently bends over and picks up all Johnny's pencils (another telling gesture!) and praises Bob Hope in a way that makes Jerry jokingly - but also not jokingly - prickly and defensive. Maybe all this helps confirm a bunch of scintillating analysis McNeil and I recently did of Bob and Jerry. My attention wandered so I may have missed a few things. Jerry asks Bob how much time Bob would give him on Bob's new special and Bob says "Thirty seconds" and Jerry says something and Bob says, "You bow for thirty seconds." Zing! It sounded like an ad-lib. A hostile ad-lib! But I don't know. And once Bob has gone, Jerry says a bunch of passive-aggressive stuff about how he admires the way Bob puts himself out there as a product. Anyway, why are you still here?

"Blog"trospective 14: Graveyards

If there's one thing everybody loves it's a graveyard! So let's make a list of "links" to all our graveyard-related "posts" (and don't forget to "enjoy" our previous "blog"trospectives: 1. Tom Franklin 2. Phil Oppenheim 3. Movies 4. The Moon 5. Sandwiches 6. The United States 7. The Beach Boys 8. Arnold Stang 9. Books With Owls in Them 10. Gelatin 11. Monkeys Riding Dogs 12. Kent Eating Chicken 13. When Megan Lived Here)... GRAVEYARDS! APOSTLE by Tom Bissell features visits to the graves of all twelve apostles---artsy project includes grave desecration---bad idea for McNeil's tombstone, a---barbecue next to a graveyard---bats at Faulkner's grave---being funny after a funeral---"The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church"---Bissell, Tom; plays Marvel Ultimate Alliance while he should be searching for the apostles' graves---Bissell, Tom; searches for the graves of all 12 apostles---block of wood psychologically represents a coffin---"blogs" are like tombs---Bohemond's gravestone---Britton, Connie; sighted when we were staying at a motel with a graveyard attached to it---character in DRACULA wakes unclad in a churchyard at night---churchyard haunter---churchyard with gravestones in THE COMPANY OF WOLVES---circus performers' graveyard---coffin inspectors---coffinmaker who yells about his craft, a---confounded from beyond the grave---corpse preserved in a bog; Freud allegedly likened to---cowherd lies in open graves---Dee, Dr. John; grave of used as touchstone in children's game---discussion of appropriate things to carve on gravestones---doll cemetery---dream of---eating dirt from the graveyard---engraving of Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly hanging out with a spirit in a churchyard---Evans, Linda; slaps a man with a leather strap at her father's grave---exhumation of Tycho Brahe---fairybabes hang around in---famed ventriloquist confronts his mother's ghost at her grave---few loose rails thrown over Meriwether Lewis's grave, a---flea climbs into the grave of the flea who loved him---frogs as quiet as grave-rocks---funeral bell---ghosts break up their graves---Gigot peeks through some graveyard shrubbery at his own funeral---grave gone to without its occupant being aware of the entire catalog of celebrity memoirs I have read---graves of the Scribner family---graveside service for Thomas Paine poorly attended---graveyard right there in the parking lot of a Ramada Inn---guy dug up from his grave and mocked on a throne---hair growing out of cracked-open tombs---Hayden, Sterling; attends the funeral of Marshal Tito---I am reminded of something Bill Taft said to me in a graveyard---Johnson, Robert; disputed gravesites of---Lee, Sir Henry; has an effigy of Mistress Vavasour placed on his grave---listening to "Brick House" by the Commodores on the way to Meriwether Lewis's grave---man buried under the flagstones of a kitchen---man who collects coffins, a---mansion where the arrangements for Jayne Mansfield's funeral were made, the---Mature, Victor; consults the caretaker of a cemetery---McNeil ponders a career as a graverobber---men run howling about graves---monkey ghost described outside of tomb---monks rob a grave!---mortuary makeup man---Murray, Bill; attends the funeral of Elvis Presley---my brother attends Michael Jackson's memorial service (there's no graveyard here but you can "click" back on several interesting "posts" about the day, so why not?)---Naked-Rumped Tomb Bat---night-crows on tombs---old tombs break open, releasing hordes of wandering dead---ominous crow cawing in a graveyard's barren tree---"Pale Pity" asked to consecrate Meriwether Lewis's final resting place---parrot screams curse words at Andrew Jackson's funeral---passing the resting place of Meriwether Lewis without stopping---pasta recipes inscribed on tomb---PET SEMATARY---pigs get skinny after drinking from a trough made from a coffin---pinball machines as coffins---"Policeman at Cemetery"---purported King Arthur and Guinevere dug up from their graves and wrapped in silk---resting place of the Biblical Jacob---Roman vampire burial site---Saunders, George; writes book set in a graveyard---shirtless man reads at grave---shrugging disrespectfully at graveside---Shubuta cemetery---STRIKING DISTANCE (film) concludes at cemetery---supposed gravestone of Till Eulenspiegel---toad dressed as Elvis suggested as candidate for formal burial in a grave---tomb of Talbot, the terror of the French---tombs of the prophets, the---"Tombstone Blues"---trip to Poe's grave postponed in favor of GILMORE GIRLS finale---UFO lands behind a cemetery---Van, Bobby; grave of---where all biographies end---witches dance on Berlioz's grave---Yorick skull (from gravedigger's scene in HAMLET)---York, Joe; makes a complex and satisfying visual pun using a gravestone---youthful graveyard encounters of Megan Abbott and Barry Hannah---Zola heroine lives next door to a drunken undertaker.

Among the Pine Cones

Ha ha, Paracelsus gets right to it in his Credo: "I am different, let this not upset you... By nature I am not subtly spun, nor is it the custom of my native land to accomplish anything by spinning silk. Nor are we raised on figs, nor or mead, nor on wheaten bread, but on cheese, milk, and oatcakes, which cannot give one a subtle disposition... those who are raised in soft clothes and in women's apartments and we who are brought up among the pine-cones have trouble in understanding one another well." Anyway, take that, wheaten bread! Yes, I guess you could say Paracelsus was the original punk rocker, but don't. Don't ever say that. It sounds dumb.

Jack Warden's Realistic Shish Kebab Reaction

Remember what I told you about Jack Warden's performance in WAKE ME WHEN IT'S OVER? Of course you don't! That was like half an hour ago. But look at him in the background of this publicity still, reacting realistically (grim concern laced with irritation) to the "zany comic spectacle" of that guy from STALAG 17 dressed in an elaborate plumed and silken costume and bearing enormous flaming shish kebabs before him.

Remember to Have the Marble Scratched

Something Natasha Allegri just tweeted ("SILKY CHICKENS" read the entirety of her tweet) made me think of some phrases from ABSALOM, ABSALOM!: "a cloud of chickens" and many pages later "a cloudy swirl of chickens." I had an actual vision of William Faulkner standing in his yard watching somebody (Estelle? Would she feed the chickens?) feeding the chickens, and thinking, "Wow! Those chickens are like a cloud. That is like a cloud of chickens." Old Faulkner! He is Shakespeare one minute and Beckett the next. "... all of a sudden it's all over and all you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it provided there was someone to remember to have the marble scratched and set up or had time to, and it rains on it and the sun shines on it and after a while they dont even remember the name and what the scratches were trying to tell, and it doesn't matter." Just twenty or so pages later here he is on the same subject (mortality) describing a man's whole life in a succinct deadpan that anticipates Beckett's later innovations: "Yes. One day he was not. Then he was. Then he was not." You know, I almost thought this book had an owl in it, like every other book, but it was "huge fowl," my eyes tricked me, "the trees along the road not rising soaring as trees should but squatting like huge fowl." I have high hopes for an owl, though: there has already been a metaphorical bat ("He was the light-blinded bat-like image of his own torment" - ouch!) and as we have seen in DRACULA and as we have seen in JANE EYRE, bats and owls are cheeks by jowls - ha ha! that's a little rhyme I just made up - in your fancier literature. In conclusion, I am glad Faulkner did not have to bring ABSALOM, ABSALOM! to a fiction-writing workshop nor attend much college at all. "Hey, so this guy's dad is talking to him on the porch for like 25 pages? And then out of nowhere the dad goes into the voice of this other dude he never met? And like gives a whole long complicated monologue from the point of view of GOD in this other guy's voice he never even met?" And Faulkner would have been like, "Yeah?" That part made me think of Barry Hannah's story "Nicodemus Bluff" when the narrator's father "when he played chess, became the personality of a woman, a lady of the court born in the eighteenth century... The woman would 'invest' Dad and he would win at chess with her character, not his own man's person at all... The chess game, as it went on, changed him more and more into a woman, a crafty woman."

Duchess Gig

Reading in this history book about William Davenant, who comes to town in 1622 and buys "a splendid silk suit" with "no means, and possibly no intention" of paying for it. Then he gets a job fetching powdered unicorn horn for a duchess! So that sounds like a good gig. I may have to put this book aside for the "social history of ice" I just picked up at Square Books because I'm writing a short article with ice in it so I have to read a 400-page book about ice.

Black Marble

It is St. David's Day and by coincidence I am reading a little about the brave people of Wales right now in FOUNDATION by Peter Ackroyd. In this part, Edward I wants to take over Wales. He claims kinship with King Arthur, the problem being that Arthur is often considered Welsh, and "It was rumored that he was not dead, only resting, and that he would come again to destroy the enemies of the Welsh." So anyway Edward dug up a couple of people he said were Arthur and Guinevere. "The corpses of Arthur and Guinevere, if such they were, were wrapped in silk by Edward and his queen before being placed in a tomb of black marble. Their skulls were retained for public display. They were definitely dead." Hey, I don't know anything about St. David. Later today I promise to look him up in my waterlogged set of BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS and I'll tell you all about him!

Our New Year's Day Conversation

Me: "Oh no, THE LAST DRAGON isn't letterboxed, what do you think?" Dr. Theresa: "I think I can handle it." And then, when William H. Macy appeared in THE LAST DRAGON, Me: "That must have been one of his early roles." Dr. Theresa: "You think?" William H. Macy had a bit part as Vanity's assistant. He wore an extremely shiny silk jacket and appeared just long enough to tell her about "a very heavy dude" who wanted to see her, by which he meant an important person. That's right, Vanity is also in THE LAST DRAGON, and when her name popped up in the opening credits, Dr. Theresa and I both shouted "Vanity!" with genuine excitement at the same time, and scared the cat. (See also, the time Ward and I yelled "Austin Pendleton!" to the bewilderment of many.) THE LAST DRAGON was recommended by Ace Atkins, who by coincidence was a surprise (though welcome) New Year's Eve guest. He showed up last night in the dark, in the rain, at the back door, already holding a highball glass with half-melted ice in the bottom of it, like the ghost of Dean Martin. The hero of THE LAST DRAGON (seen above, with Vanity) beats up Chazz Palminteri too, but don't you think I have better things to do than tell you everything that happens in THE LAST DRAGON? Because I don't.

Dazzling Kimono of Doom

I know you want to be kept informed about our annual Halloween film festival so I will tell you a few things about X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES. 1) Before the credits even start there is an eye attached to a stalk kind of wiggling around in a jar of pink fluid, and you will think of Samuel Beckett's novel THE UNNAMABLE. 2) Then the credits appear over a black-and-purple swirling hypno-wheel. Dr. Theresa approved. 3) Suddenly, about halfway through, I guess, it takes an unexpected turn in the general direction of NIGHTMARE ALLEY, with Don Rickles doing a good job as a shady carny seeking to exploit THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES! Don Rickles removes Ray Milland from his carnival-appropriate kimono of dazzling yellow silk and sets him up as a phony "healer." Matters of faith and determinism are addressed! 4) Speaking of which, it all ends on a mystical note, not unlike THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (if nowhere near that level), following its premise through to its cosmic conclusion. THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES sees through everything, he SEES INTO THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, but I won't spoil it for you. 5) I forgot to mention a RAIN MAN-like side trip to Las Vegas. "This movie is all over the place," Dr. Theresa remarked at that point, but she didn't mean it in a bad way.

Cultural Studies

Welcome once again to "Cultural Studies," the part of the "blog" for studying culture. Last night I watched DAS RHEINGOLD on PBS. A solid two hours of it is some guys standing around arguing over a bill. In song form! SPOILER ALERT! They finally decide to put a woman in a big fishing net and cover her with golden trinkets and when she's all covered up, that's how much money they get. And for you comic book fans, Thor and Loki are in it! But they call them Donner and Loge. Loki gets all the best lines. Thor kind of sulks around in the background. He looks like Seth Meyers from Saturday Night Live. But I know it's him from his trademark hammer and right near the end just when you think it's all over and you can stretch your legs he suddenly brags for a while about how he's going to make it thunder then everybody climbs on a rainbow and goes to Heaven, natch. Hey, you may be asking yourself what this supervillain who turns to silk by touching a curtain has to do with DAS RHEINGOLD. Nothing, baby. I kept looking for a good picture of Thor on the "internet" and this popped up instead. CULTURE!

Things Got Fancy

Part of me - most of me (all of me?) - knows that you don't care about my big long list of every book with an owl in it. Yet here we are. When Megan Abbott was here most recently we talked about H.P. Lovecraft a good bit and she told me about a comic book that was part noir and part Lovecraft and she said she was going to send it to me and Megan Abbott always does what she says so she sent it to me and I have it and here it is. It is called FATALE by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips and it is dedicated to - a comic book with a dedication page! Things got fancy as I reached my twilight years though no one alerted me - Megan Abbott and Joe Hill, and look! It talks about "a silk ribbon that's wound around the world every night, held in the beak of an owl" and that must be some owl all right. Laura Lippman was here recently too, and we went together to a live broadcast of the Thacker Mountain Radio show and Padgett Powell read about butter-and-sugar sandwiches, which appear in his new book, and we have noticed butter-and-sugar sandwiches in books before - books by James Whorton, Jr., Harper Lee, and Toni Morrison - but we haven't made a list, not yet we haven't, although we have made a list of sandwiches in general, but I know you don't care, you don't care about owls or sandwiches.

Silkiest Legs Around

This obituary for a croquet champ in the New York Times includes the quote "Women say he has the silkiest legs around."

Successfully Creepy Goo

There's a good part in this ghost story by Oliver Onions when a guy is sitting alone in his cozy apartment and he starts to hear a "soft and repeated noise - the long sweep with the almost inaudible crackle in it... The silky rustle came again; he was trying to attach it to something..." Anyway, it turns out to be "the sound of a woman brushing her hair." Scary! I learn from the introduction to this collection that Mr. Onions was born George Oliver Onions "and, although proud of his unusual name, he was taunted at school because of it. In 1918 he changed it to George Oliver, partly to please his wife, who found it distasteful... However, by this time he had established himself as a successful author and so he continued to publish his work under the name of Oliver Onions." What I really like is that his initials were GOO.