Words

1. Dr. Theresa and I have been watching DARK SHADOWS, the original series. Yesterday, Angelique (pictured... photo taken directly from our TV!... spoiler, she's a witch!) said the word "gazebo," only, get this: she pronounced it "Ga-ZAY-Bo." I was instantly transported to 2007, as I usually am all the time. I remembered doing a reading from my second book at A Cappella, and I was reading from a short story that had the word "gazebo" in it. Suddenly, I froze up. My brain did a thing. Foreshadowing? I was like, wait, how do I say this word? I stopped the story cold and rambled aloud to the stupefied audience about the weird thing I was experiencing. "Is it Ga-ZAY-Bo? That can't be right. But I kind of want to say Ga-ZAY-Bo." It stopped not just the story but the event - and perhaps time itself - dead. Or maybe it did the opposite. Because for once in my professional life something got people interested. They were all going, "Ga-ZEE-Bo! Ga-ZEE-Bo!" So I felt crazy. Probably the only reason I remember this so well is that I "blogged" about it at the time ("click" here. I know you won't! I hate you!). Also, this nice guy I knew back then in Atlanta, Jamie Allen, "blogged" about it too, providing more details, which selfsame details I recall, though his "link" has become a "zombie link." He found it amusing that I could think even for a split second it was pronounced "Ga-ZAY-Bo." So, yesterday, when the beauteous yet evil Angelique said it that way, I paused the show and exclaimed about it and relived the whole experience, like Proust. Dr. Theresa seemed to recall the incident as well, and speculated it might be a "Southern" way to say gazebo. (We had previously researched Angelique, or the actor Lara Parker, who played her, and found out she went to high school in Memphis.) I was thinking maybe that's just the way people said it in 1968. I was alive then! I must have heard it somewhere. Anyway, this little kid on DARK SHADOWS, David Collins, came into the room (in the same episode) and also said "gazebo" for some reason, pronouncing it just as Angelique had, with a ZAY. And he's from New Jersey. What a night! Nor had the night concluded. I went upstairs and looked in the OED, which gives both British and American pronunciations with the everyday familiar ZEE, not the mysterious and intrusive ZAY. But here's the interesting thing. Ha ha, there's not an interesting thing. Among its historical examples of usage, the OED includes the spelling "gazabo" from 1828. Now, are you trying to tell me the person who wrote down "gazabo" was pronouncing it "Ga-ZEE-Bo"? Get real! To be fair, there is the spelling "gazeebo," two e's, in a cited work from 1843. And wait, there's more! The OED provides an alternative meaning for "gazebo." It's a rude expression for a guy. An example from 1896 has some dude being called "a cheap gazabo." There's that spelling again! Oh my God. We're really uncovering some big stuff here. I'm resisting the urge to look up "gazebo" in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG. 2. In the past few days or weeks, I used the word "descendants" in a couple of "posts." For whatever reason, I started wondering if I had spelled it right. And I hadn't! I put an "e" where the "a" should be. And I wondered... have I been misspelling it my whole life? Further research into the "blog" revealed... yes! I have been misspelling "descendants" my whole life. I haven't corrected earlier occurrences if you want to go back and search for them and look at them and make fun of me. 3. This one is about a string of words. To be specific, "A churchyard haunter at whom the owl hoots and the ivy mocks..." A character says it in BETWEEN THE ACTS, and the context implies he is quoting from a preexisting literary work, so I poked around a little bit, wondering what he might be quoting. My flimsy research indicates it's a mash-up or scramble of quotations, or possibly a jumble, or maybe nothing. So that settles it. But while I was looking around, I came upon a wonderful "web" site in which a scholar has catalogued all of Virginia Woolf's allusions to plant life. Well, maybe not all of them. I don't know. But a lot of them! And I felt pride because it has a "blogspot" address. There are so few of us left, I assume. Her entry on ivy ("click" here) contains, incidentally, a number of asides on owls, a bird with which Woolf seems to have habitually associated ivy. Well, I think we've covered everything. Just like ivy! 4. GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG: "gazabo (also gazab, gazabe, gazaboo, gazaybo, gazeaboo, gazebo, gazebu, gazeebo, gazimbat, gazuny, gezeybo) an awkward, strange or stupid person... also any fellow." 5. Update [added May 31]: A couple of episodes later, Angelique says "gazebo" twice in quick succession, each time using the more familiar ZEE pronunciation. Who got to her?

One for the Fan

This one is for you synchronicity fans (that is to say McNeil... see also). So, recently, I was watching the Joel Coen version of MACBETH and I was taken with the scene featuring some old dude. I was like, "What's the deal with this old dude?" So this morning I found my copy of the text and I read the scene, and boy has this old dude been seeing some dire portents and such! "A falcon, towering in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd." That's the kind of dire portent I'm talking about! This I must have heard while watching the movie, but maybe it didn't register so good in my sad brain parts. But when I read that, I thought, WAIT! Wait, I thought, while I was walking around the neighborhood yesterday, listening to an audiobook of FINNEGANS WAKE, didn't I hear something about owls hawking? I did recall that in the graphology section, as I think of it, though, to be clear, I have no idea what I'm talking about, there was something about E's looking "like sick owls." So my investigation began. I got out my trusty and seldom-opened (until now!) hardcover of FINNEGANS WAKE, given to me, as mentioned previously, by a defrocked preacher, and there I found that the passage was one and the same: "crisscrossed Greek ees awkwardlike perched there and here out of date like sick owls hawked back to Athens" (see also the owl's connection to Athena, as hinted at by "hyperlink" in the previous "post")... anyway, so there you have it, owls hawking and owls being hawked, yes, there you have it, all right, but what is it? I mean, I know what it is, but what is it?

Dr. Theresa's Grocery Store Adventures

Yes, I have another episode of "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" all loaded up in the cannon and ready to fire. But first I have to tell you that there was this guy in line behind Dr. Theresa in the grocery store yesterday, and she turned and looked at him, and to her amazement, he was an exact double of Rufus Sewell. She generously pointed him to an open lane for self checkout, for which he kindly thanked her. "AND HE WAS BRITISH!" Dr. Theresa concluded her tale, triumphantly drawing the conclusion that Rufus Sewell spends his free time shopping for groceries in Mississippi. This caused me to remember a story I have believed for many years, that Dr. Theresa encountered Tea Leoni in a Blockbuster Video parking lot in Atlanta, and gave her directions to the Margaret Mitchell House. And I'm sure it is true! Let us never forget the time I gushed fervently to either Francis Ford Coppola or a random man with a beard. Hey, look, man, when I was a kid, I heard that Ernest Borgnine (and George Kennedy? Or is that a figment of my medical condition?) had been spotted at Schambeau's grocery store in Bayou La Batre. Supposedly, he was in town making a movie called THE RAVAGERS, which I'm not sure even exists. POSTSCRIPT! I looked it up, begrudgingly, and it is called RAVAGERS, with no "THE" - much like GILMORE GIRLS, which I used to erroneously call "THE GILMORE GIRLS." Also, in the first version of this "post," I called the movie "THE SCAVENGERS." And George Kennedy is not in it. As predicted by many, my brain no longer works.

A Weird Creature of the Night

Here's one of the many, many narrators of THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA: "Pliny says that elephants have been taught to dance, and that once they were found rehearsing in the moonlight." When I read that, I decided to find out more! I scurried downstairs like a disgusting little rat and nosed around in the bookcase where I knew I had seen my books by Pliny the Elder when I was looking for something else. I had just two volumes out of the huge, sloppy pile of books that make up his NATURAL HISTORY, and I was pretty sure I didn't have the one with elephants in it, and I was right. Noticing that one of my Pliny (the Elder!) books did not have a dust jacket, I recalled that I had bought it used in San Francisco, and as I strolled down the sidewalk with my purchase in hand, that's when (as recorded previously on the "blog" - "click" here, you uncaring monster!) I either spoke to Francis Ford Coppola or some guy with a beard. Then I remembered that after I walked away, I thought, "I should have gotten him to sign this Pliny the Elder book. They're both Italian!" Well, now, in what we call "the present," I'm glad I didn't, because then I would have known for sure whether or not this guy was Francis Ford Coppola, and I might have been disappointed. And humiliated! As it is, we all dwelled in what may have been a pleasant illusion, and what could be nicer? I can keep you in suspense no longer! I got hold of the Pliny volume with the elephants in it, and the reality of the anecdote was much sadder than the light tone of Potocki's narrator would have one believe. That's what I get for wanting to know things. As you can imagine, once I had book eight of the NATURAL HISTORY, in which Pliny promises to tell us all about animals - and delivers! - I skipped greedily ahead to the bird section, hoping to find some owls, which were, indeed, forthcoming. "The eagle-owl is a funereal bird, and is regarded as an extremely bad omen... it inhabits deserts and places that are not merely unfrequented, but terrifying and inaccessible; a weird creature of the night, its cry is not a musical note but a scream." Scarily put! But old Pliny gives the eagle-owl (not to be confused with an eagle) a fair shake: "I know several cases of its having perched on the houses of private persons without fatal consequences." That's a relief! Now let's get back to THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA, which, although it hasn't had a single owl in it yet (except on the cover), does have monkeys riding vicuñas, which I only mention because my list of monkeys riding dogs has so few entries, whereas I am adding to this list of books with owls in them, upon which you never "click" anymore, all the time. Look, put down your quill, I know that a vicuña is not a dog. Which reminds me. I was reading that Lord Byron poem, and there's a character called the Chamois Hunter. And I was like, hey! This guy can't find his chamois, a small, soft cloth for polishing things! That's not really what I thought. What I really thought, given my capability for contextualizing, was, huh, a chamois must be an animal. I'm 61 now and I went my whole life thinking a chamois was just a kind of rag or cloth! I never gave a thought for the poor chamois who gave up its life, I assume, so I could polish up the trophy we won for the battle of the bands in 1989, largely because my brother was one of the judges. Which reminds me. Jon Host and I once rhymed "chamois" and "clammy" in a song.

Hoot

As I am sure you think about all the time, my friend Megan and I have read 60 or 70 or 80 books about celebrities together and we show no signs of stopping until one of us (I) drops dead. Well, we ordered Brian Cox's diary (ha ha! I don't know why that's funny) from the time he played King Lear, and mine came, but Megan's still hasn't yet, are you taking notes? Because we each have a copy of the new oral history of Hollywood edited by Jeanine Basinger and some dude. So we decided to read that while Megan waits for Brian Cox's diary (ha ha!) to show up. Anyhow, and now we are getting to the really good stuff, we start in the silent era, of course, a section including reflections from Hoot Gibson (pictured, above), a very famous silent-era cowboy star as I am very sure you know. Before he was a cowboy star, Hoot worked as a delivery boy at the Owl Drug Company, which is how he got his nickname! People called him "Hoot Owl," which was shortened to "Hoot," because in those days, people were too tired to say the whole thing.

A Realist

I came here to tell you one thing, but two other things intervened, so now I have to tell you three things. I will save the thing I originally wanted to tell you for last. I don't know why. First, here are the other two things. 1. Last night Dr. Theresa and I watched another mediocre movie, this one about the devil. To compensate for its mediocrity, it starred Vera Farmiga. "I know I always say this, but I think she's really pretty," said Dr. Theresa, to which I replied, "I know I always say THIS, but I saw her in my hotel lobby in Burbank once. She was wearing a hat!" Then we chuckled knowingly, for what is marriage but saying things to one another that you know you've said before, and enjoying it? Well! We are not even to the first thing I am going to tell you yet. Later in the movie, some other dude came along, some old dude, I was like, "Who is this old dude? He looks familiar." Dr. Theresa was like, "He was in some TV show? I can't remember." So we sat there a while and I suddenly remembered: "Oh yeah! He played a mad scientist on a TV show called FRINGE. And once, on an entirely different trip, I saw HIM in the lobby of that SAME HOTEL!" As you can imagine, the coincidence made at least one of us giddy with excitement. 2. Saw a tiny bit of BLUE HAWAII this morning. You may be asking yourself (you aren't), "Why are you watching so many Elvis movies lately?" Why, he is nothing less than the "star of the month" on TCM. Anyhow, for Elvis's first onscreen number, as he zooms toward the beach with his girlfriend in a convertible sports car, he sings a swingin' version of the old French (Canadian?) ditty "Alouette." What? They couldn't come up with an original melody for the first number in BLUE HAWAII? So they do a nursery song? (See also, the time he was forced to sing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" in a movie.) But that's not what I wanted to tell you either! What I wanted to tell you is that the wikipedia article on "Alouette" somehow skips over this usage entirely (as of this writing), meaning that I know something wikipedia doesn't know. It makes me feel like a god! I would fix it (would I?) but I don't know how. To be fair, the lyrics bear no relation to "Alouette," relying thematically, rather, on Cole Porter's "Always True to You in my Fashion," although (as perhaps goes without saying) employing none of the wit. 3. Finally! All I meant to do is quote a letter from Katherine Anne Porter to Tennessee Williams: "I am a realist in that sense that everything is real to me, nightmares, daydreams, the world visible and invisible."

A Thing I Noticed

It was exactly one week ago today that I viewed the Elvis movie G.I. BLUES, and I noticed something about it that reminded me of other things I had noticed about other things. And if there is one thing you know about me, it is that when I notice something that reminds me of something else I previously noticed, I have to tell you about it. And by "you," I mean nobody. But then some things happened that are none of your beeswax, and I didn't get a chance to reflect upon the matter further... UNTIL NOW! I am sure you will recall how I told you that in the Clint Eastwood vehicle EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, they play a diegetic song, the chorus of which mentions Clint Eastwood (the actor, not the character he portrays in the film). More aligned with our current subject (as you shall soon see for yourself!) is DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, in which the eponymous Susan, portrayed by Madonna, listens to a Madonna song on a jukebox! So! In G.I. BLUES, Elvis Presley, playing a guy named Tulsa, sings a little ditty in a nightclub. Well! One guy doesn't seem to like it so much, and decides to disrupt the proceedings by playing something rowdy on a convenient jukebox. As a closeup of the label confirms, he chooses "Blue Suede Shoes," as performed by one Elvis Presley. A donnybrook ensues! Yes, you are reading this correctly: the performance by Tulsa (Elvis Presley) is ruined by a recording of Elvis Presley. In fact, we may speculate that the much-derided "movie Elvis" is successfully attacked and devoured by "primal Elvis." Ha ha! I hate myself. (See also.)

Somebody Did It

The other morning at 4:18 AM I had - and recorded here - the big idea that someone should cast the same actor as both Claudius and the ghost of Hamlet's father. So last night I was watching the 2009 version of HAMLET starring David Tennant, and guess what? It's been done. So I felt the need to tell you I'm not the big brain I thought I was. That seems like too short, and too obvious, of a message, so I'll change the subject and tell you that though I'm just 20 pages into the book that Megan and I are reading about the making of THE WILD BUNCH, the author has already found time and space to call beach movies "stupid," the work of Lucille Ball's production company "idiot-box pablum" and Jim Hutton "annoyingly goofball" in "most of his films." Most of them! So I'm starting to get the feeling he doesn't think very highly of comedy, humor, jokes, general happiness, and the laughter of innocent children. I'm no stranger to the opinion. Someone expresses it to me nearly every day. But comedy - particularly its relative importance in art - has nothing to do with this dude's book as far as I can see, so the fact that he feels the need to trash it once every seven pages is fascinatingly perverse.

Wonderland of Weeds

I guess it was two months ago I was sitting around the house wondering what the hell a weed is, exactly. Then I remembered (two months ago) that I have a whole book about weeds. I could see it across the room from me at the very moment I asked the question out loud to Dr. Theresa: "What is a weed, anyway?" I think she had mentioned something about pulling weeds. Then I said, "Never mind! I have a whole book about weeds! I'll see if that book will tell me what a weed is." So anyway, I thought about it for two months and this morning I finally made the effort to pull that book off the shelf - WEEDS OF THE SOUTH by Charles T. Bryson and Michael S. DeFelice, with photographs by Arlyn W. Evans - and I opened to the introduction, and I'll be damned if it didn't say "Any plant can be a weed in one situation and unobtrusive or even desirable in another." WHAT! Are you trying to blow my mind, Charles T. Bryson and Michael S. DeFelice? Because mission accomplished! Are you telling me some dude could look at a full-grown pumpkin and say "Yep, that's a weed," and you'd be cool with it? Okay! I believe you. I flipped through a couple of pages, and the "toxic properties" of each weed, if any, are listed, and damned if I didn't come across two weeds in a row that can cause depression! And then I thought about Arlyn W. Evans, lovingly photographing each weed and breathing in its toxic properties.

17th-Century Booger

Speaking of Shakespeare, I went up to the campus and looked at the First Folio they have on display in a big, dark room. I was the only person there. Well, there was a young woman sitting in a chair against a far wall. I believe she was the guardian. They had the First Folio opened up to Hamlet's "To Be Or Not To Be" soliloquy, which I thought was a little on the nose. I asked the young woman if they ever turned the page. "I've been here two days and they haven't turned the page," she said. It was a foolish question: all the banners and posters and informational plaques were about that soliloquy. You can't really see the front cover or back cover. I bent myself into all kinds of positions trying to look. But you can see some fancy gold filigree along the inside of the covers. Here's what caught my eye (I'll use the spelling from the HAMLET facsimile that Lee Durkee gave me, so it might not be exactly the same): "the power of beautie will fooner transforme honeftie from what it is to a bawde, then the force of honeftie can tranflate beautie into his likenes, this was fometime a paradox, but now the time giues it proofe, I did loue you once." And then Ophelia says, "Indeed my Lord you made me belieue fo." I didn't really need to include her reply for my purposes but ouch! Poor Ophelia. The point is, there was something pale - a splotch, a lump - lying there over Hamlet's phrase "what it is" - maybe it was a 17th-century bug that accidentally got mashed when the book was shut! Or maybe some old dude from ancient days sneezed on the page. Or it could be a 19th-century piece of chicken for all I know.

Crossing a Fence

Today is Record Store Day, so all locals please go support the fine people at The End of All Music. I'll tell you how fine they are! It became a running gag: I kept going in and asking in vain whether the new Blind Alfred Reed compilation had arrived. The anticipation really worked me up! Like the Beatles were coming to America! This Blind Alfred Reed record took on a glow and a power in my mind that it can't have possibly earned. I was a walking joke! So David stopped his busy day to email me the moment it came in and I ran down and got it. He didn't have to do that. But he remembered me. He respected my incoherent ravings. Service at its finest! Shop local. Now I have played it and Blind Alfred Reed turns out to be a bit of a misogynist! More than a bit. That's what you get for wanting things too much. Like he has a couple of tracks telling girls not to bob their hair. He really hates bobbed hair! On a girl. Of course Brian Wilson did once ask "Where did your long hair go?" in a judgmental way, addressing the Caroline of "Caroline No"... but as presumptuous as it was, that seemed to be a purely personal matter between individuals, whereas Blind Alfred Reed believes - and I don't think I am exaggerating - that women will go straight to hell, literal hell where the devil reigns, for the sin of bobbing their hair. So that ain't good. I detected a strong note of compassion in Blind Alfred Reed's "Always Lift Him Up and Never Knock Him Down." Very forgiving! "When he's sick and tired of life and takes to drinking," says Blind Alfred Reed, "You should lift him up and never knock him down." No talk of this particular sinner going to hell, so I thought that was a step up. And I was waiting for a similar verse about sinning women, but none came. It should have tipped me off when another affliction visited on our hypothetical dude who we shouldn't knock down was "a scolding, aggravating wife." There's another song where Blind Alfred Reed is upset about women wearing "skirts so short and tight they can hardly make it when they cross a fence." Ha ha! What I want to know is that if Blind Alfred Reed is blind - I haven't read the copious liner notes yet, but he must be, right? - how does he know about how tight the girls' skirts are and how short their hair is? I guess somebody told him. Or maybe he was like, "Come over here and let me make sure your hair isn't bobbed." (Opening up the booklet to confirm the copiousness of the liner notes I see that Blind Alfred Reed's fiddle was made in Italy in 1695.) In conclusion, I am no doubt being reductive in a knee-jerk way about Blind Alfred Reed's artistry, and the more I listen the more subtlety I will be bound to detect, I am sure. He has a song called "There'll Be No Distinction There" - a mystical view of total equality in heaven, transcending all races and religions... though he does feel the need to point out that "no woman will be flirting with another woman's man" up there.

Old Paperbacks

Met Bill Boyle and Ace for coffee last night. Afterward, Ace and I walked back to his office on the square. Ace had to pick up some things for a plane trip he's making today, and he mused aloud, glancing over his bookshelves, about what he should read on the plane. Maybe John D. MacDonald, he was thinking. I jokingly suggested I COULD GO ON SINGING, MacDonald's novelization of a Judy Garland movie. Ace has it! He has every single John D. MacDonald book, as you can confirm via this interview ("click" here) I did with him a while back. Ace picked up one and fretted over bringing a "vintage paperback" on an airplane, which reminded me that I had been considering just such a thing. (Ha ha ha! Are you still reading this? I don't care.) I need to figure out something to read on an airplane pretty soon. All the things I'm reading now are big, heavy, bulky monsters that no one would enjoy carrying through an airport in today's complicated times: THE BOOK OF MAGIC, OSWALD'S TALE, and I'm finally back into THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, come on! Get real! Get with it! So, someone... I think it was Kent Osborne... recently told me he (or she) was reading Vonnegut again. Was it Kent? [It wasn't. - ed.] I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember (see also). That - combined with the sighting of a colorful row of spines along a shelf at Square Books: slick new(ish) Vonnegut paperbacks - made me remember a neat little cardboard box I had requested and received for Christmas when I was about 13, a cardboard box of five mass-market Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks.

Here, I found a picture of one on the "internet." I have a deep feeling that this could be the most boring "post" I've ever written and yet I feel no compulsion whatsoever to stop. For example, here's something funny I remember about this cardboard box of Kurt Vonnegut books. It used to have WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE in it but I removed it and hid it somewhere in shame or fear and, with some effort, squeezed my older and somewhat fatter copy of Vonnegut's PLAYER PIANO into its place (to avoid uncomfortable questions, I suppose). Why? I have the vague notion that something offended or terrified me about WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE! Whereas I spent a lot of time casting the movie of PLAYER PIANO that I was going to make when I grew up. All I remember is that Peter Sellers was in it. Wait, I'm almost to the point. I remembered that although I've had this cardboard box for around 40 years (see also), there are two books in there I've never read! What a crummy way to treat such a nice Christmas gift. What an ingrate! So I thought I might read my 40-year-old paperback of THE SIRENS OF TITAN on my upcoming airplane ride. I like everything about this edition (above)! Look at the purple pulpy (purply?) cover! Look at this dude in the loincloth and the (I assume) sirens in question. I like the price of 1.95 on the cover! I like that the edges of the pages are green-blue. I'll show you:

Are the pages of current mass-market paperbacks still edged in blue or red or gold? Once again I'm reminded that I'm just not observant enough to be a "writer." So THE SIRENS OF TITAN looked pristine!

And I opened it up and the first eight pages fell out. But I don't think that's going to stop me. Crack it open in the middle and you can see that most of the glue holding the book together has dissolved. I still feel okay.

White Apples

I keep seeing this commercial where some bald mannequins are having a feast of white apples and this dude comes in and his phone is so powerful it allows him to jump on the table and kick over some bowls of white apples and this one mannequin turns into a real live person because she is so taken with the dude's apple kicking abilities. I bet poet Donald Hall is thrilled by all the free publicity his poem "White Apples" - about a visitation from his dead father - is getting thanks to this timely bit of drama about a guy whose phone is so cool it allows him to jump on a table and kick the apples.

Christmas

Christmas. Listening to a Johnny Rivers LP. Dr. Theresa making figgy pudding. A gigantic spider descends swiftly on a thread from the ceiling, straight down for the uncovered sugar bowl, providing Christmas drama. Report from Los Angeles, where my parents are visiting my brother and the grandkids: Mom says that Dad saw Larry King in a bagel shop and hugged him on Christmas morning. "I was overcome," Dad explained. I switched the record to an old compilation called "Jingle Bell Jazz" that always got on my nerves. Who can explain my complex behavior? It has rained all day. The yard is flooded. Sixty-three degrees fahrenheit. Yesterday afternoon the thawing goose was still frozen in the middle and I was unable to extract the giblets. Now some jazz flute dude is going to town on "We Three Kings." Reading Norman Mailer for Christmas. Just got out of a flashback that lasted almost 800 pages, and I can remember little of what is going on in the novel's "present." (By ominous coincidence I come to a passage about Allen Dulles falling fatally ill on Christmas Eve.) While in the shower, I recall that I dreamed about M. Emmett Walsh. He threatened someone with a pistol, then ate it and said, "It's no secret this gun was made of chocolate." Figgy pudding has come out of the oven and looks and smells spectacular. I fear that my goose could never measure up! Christmas tweeting with Hogan. She says Christmas spiders are good luck. I play an LP she gave me a long time ago, Paul Williams's "Here Comes Inspiration." His version of "Rainy Days and Mondays" (a song he wrote) sounds especially appropriate today. I see a cocktail fork that I bought from Bob Hope's estate among the drying dishes. Dr. Theresa says she used it to test the consistency of the figgy pudding. Am I upset? Far from it! Wassail is simmering. Megan Abbott suggested wassail. She was somewhat upset that I found a wassail recipe with bourbon in it. "Surely Bob Cratchit didn't have bourbon?" she objected. We switched from LPs to Bing Crosby on iPod, because it's hard to flip over records while you're cooking a goose. Chris Offutt and Melissa Ginsburg came over. Chris soon tired of Bing. He asked me to play some Frank Sinatra. Chris stood with his head respectfully bowed for several minutes, listening to Frank do a live version of "I Could Have Danced All Night." Then he compared the rhyme scheme of "Come Fly With Me" to Bob Dylan, which got us listening to Bob Dylan. Chris dramatically acted out Dylan's entire song "Isis," thrillingly grabbing me by the shoulders during some verses. He also carved the goose (as seen above).

Old Spinning Wheel Dude

Everyone loves the saucy obituaries of Margalit Fox! And I am no exception. How oft have I championed her work. Twice, that's how oft. But my old brain got to thinking today after I hyperbolically emailed Megan Abbott that the New York Times is "SO BORING!" and she semi-ironically countered with a Margalit Fox obit of an old spinning wheel dude. I suddenly recalled tweeting this back in January:

margalit fox is spiraling out of control

— Jack Pendarvis (@JackPendarvis) January 31, 2015

but I couldn't remember why. As you can see, it deserved and received no faves or retweets. What set me off? Why did I think, apparently, that Margalit Fox was going mad with power, ha ha, mad with obituary writing power, I suppose? Or did something remind me of when Larry King's tweets became too self-aware and I had to block him? An investigation was called for! The NYT published two Fox obits on the date in question, and I suspect it's this opening paragraph that put me over the edge:

In her spinning wheel obit, Fox refers to the deceased as "a Burl Ives of a man." Can someone be a Burl Ives of a man? I mean, other than Burl Ives? Shouldn't the object of comparison be something other than an actual man? Isn't that like calling a Chrysler "the Cadillac of cars" or something? Now I'm just complaining for the sake of complaining. Maybe I'm in a bad mood. I'm sorry, Margalit Fox! Don't write anything bad about me when I'm dead. PS This photo of Mitzi Gaynor in today's paper is what started the whole discussion.

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.

Rice Droppin'

So Dr. Theresa and her coworker Kevin and her whole department (which is, like, one other person) and all their partners and helpers and students and affiliates did an amazing thing pulling off this 10-day musical event, culminating in last night's joyous Neko Case show. The "green room" was the balcony of the Lyric Theater, and I crept up there and stole a plate of Neko Case's food. So I was leaning on the balcony railing watching the show and two grains of rice fell off the plate! And they hit some guy on the head. And he looked up, right at me! And I just slowly stepped backward and disappeared into the shadows like the Phantom of the Opera! I did not take responsibility for my actions. But the point is that things have been busy around here and also I went out of town and my reading of THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY and THE FAERIE QUEENE has been temporarily stalled. These are nice editions I can't take out of the house! And I just haven't been in the house. But don't worry, I'm gonna get back to them eventually. I don't want you to worry! Promise me you won't worry. Because I'm also doing a presentation for the upcoming Southern Foodways Symposium and I have to get some research done for that! My topic: TV cook and "humorist" Justin Wilson. So I have to read a lot of his "humor." AND! I was sitting at Square Books looking through the new William Gay book, which is a short manuscript found in his papers after he passed away, and I read the compelling introduction by Tom Franklin and I started reading the book and I suddenly realized I had read a certain quantifiable PERCENTAGE of the book and it no longer seemed right to just sit there and read the whole book, maybe, so I bought it, so that's something else.

The Trembling Ghosts

"The trembling ghosts with sad amazed mood,/ Chattring their yron teeth, and staring wide/ With stonie eyes; and all the hellish brood/ Of feends infernall flockt on eury side..." That's some ghosts in hell being afraid of NIGHT (kind of terrifyingly described as "O thou most auncient Grandmother of all"), who is riding her chariot - or "charet" as Edmund Spenser calls it - ha ha! Get a dictionary, Edmund Spenser! - through hell... "Their mournefull charet, fild with rusty blood." I won't lie to you, THE FAERIE QUEENE is giving me the heebie jeebies. Even Sisyphus with his rock and "thirstie Tantalus hong by the chin" and Tityus, who "fed a vulture on his maw" (!) "Leaue off their worke, vnmindfull of their smart,/ To gaze on them..." So that's gotta be pretty intense! A sight so unusual it makes you temporarily forget that a vulture is feasting on your maw! And I haven't even told you about the very beginning, when the dude chops off a monster's head and the monster's babies start drinking blood out of the neck hole. I think I'm remembering that correctly. I guess what freaks me out the most is that the ghosts have iron teeth. Anyway, who writes this stuff?

A Thick Envenomed Froth

I was reading in LIVES OF THE NECROMANCERS about Apollonius of Tyana, who once defeated some guy who turned into "an enormous black dog, of the size of a lion, and whose mouth and jaws were covered with a thick envenomed froth." And the footnote told me that this story comes down to us by way of Philostratus, and no, I had no idea who that was. But I was like, "I'm gonna walk up to Square Books, and if they have any Philostratus I'm gonna buy it! I want to read more about magic evil dogs!" But part of me was like, "They won't have any Philostratus, ha ha ha, I'll save some money." But then they HAD IT. So I had to buy it. Godwin writes that Apollonius was born "nearly at the same time as Jesus Christ... The publicity of Apollonius and his miracles has become considerably greater, from the circumstance of the early enemies of the Christian religion having instituted a comparison between the miracles of Christ and of this celebrated philosopher." My new Philostratus book flap confirms his life story to be "a pagan counterstroke against the New Testament." It's not Apollonius's fault! He also confronted a mysterious bride (pictured) who "at length owned that she was an empuse (a sort of vampire)," writes Godwin, "and that she had determined to cherish and pamper Menippus, that she might in the conclusion eat his flesh, and lap up his blood." (!)

The Leopard

I just watched a whole TV series that Godard made. And my main thought was WOW! This is what a TV series is in France! One part I especially loved was when Godard talked with deep love for Italian movies, and how they always shot the visuals first and added the audio later. This has never bothered me! My friend Eugene told me about it from personal experience! I was just thinking about it when I watched the movie version of THE LEOPARD. Because there is no way that dude sounds as magisterial as the actual Burt Lancaster. But I have heard a lot of dummies complaining about how the audio doesn't "match up" with the video in Italian movies. WHO CARES? That is just some fake rule some dope made up. And Godard put it beautifully, though I can't recall exactly: "The language of Ovid and Dante continued through the images." That's not it, but something like it! And at the very end of the TV series, Godard said, "If a man visited paradise in his dream, and received a flower as a sign of his visit, and he had this flower in his hand when he woke up, what can we say? I am this man." WHAT! I BELIEVE IT. I don't have that quite right either. And he was probably quoting somebody. He is always quoting somebody. Also, he uses the Jerry Lewis movie HARDLY WORKING as an important recurring touchstone, so go to hell.