House Style

The Million Dollar Book Club is working its way through a biography of Erich von Stroheim, in which we are apprised of the subject's "night-owl habits." As you know, that is just enough of an owl to encourage me to include the book on my ever-lengthening list of books with owls in them. Erich von Stroheim joins previous Million Dollar Book Club night owls such as Polly Adler and friends, Anna Magnini (as related in Bricktop's memoir), and, of course, Andy Warhol (you may "click" here for corroboration if you are not convinced that Andy Warhol was a night owl) in the Million Dollar Book Club Night Owl Club. But that's not why I'm here! I watched the rest of CAFE METROPOLE, and the plot hinged on games of chance, much like "McNeil Month by Month." And I considered how much I pitied a newcomer to the "blog," given our "house style" that, since the beginning, has avoided the separation of "posts" into paragraphs. I'm doing it right now! Or, rather, not doing it. I was talking about one thing and now I am talking about another thing, and yet there has been nary a paragraph break. I rest my case! Be that as it may, my original intention was to draw the novice reader's attention to some particular sparkling gem from the overwhelming slab of undifferentiated text that is "McNeil Month by Month," thereby giving an orientation... of... uh... what was I talking about? It's too late. As Adam once wisely observed, "If you're doing the thing, you're also doing the thing." Well, I just wanted to draw everyone's attention to the May 2023 entry of "McNeil Month by Month" in which McNeil came up with a way for a dog to win at blackjack. Believe in your dreams!

Ghosts Are Dancing In Space

"Eugenia smiled, her eyes sparkling, as if a small butterfly with golden wings and diamond eyes were flying around inside her head..." That's my kind of writing! It's from POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAS CUBAS, by Machado de Assis, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson. I have no other place to note it, so I note it here. As long as I'm here, I could tell you about a little email exchange that McNeil and I had recently. I told McNeil about BLESSED EVENT, a movie from 1932, which, I noticed while watching it recently, contains a passing allusion to television. A character ponders whether Dick Powell's sex appeal will translate to television, and another character makes a joke, which I paraphrase here: "Sex over the televison? It'll never catch on!" And I was filled with astonishment, as I often am, for no good reason. I was astonished, specifically, that the audience for BLESSED EVENT in 1932 would have been expected to know what television was. Well, right away, McNeil found a wikipedia page for a 1932 televison series called THE TELEVISION GHOST, which was just a guy dressed as a ghost for 15 minutes a week, telling you a story about how he got murdered. It seems to be legit, and of course I trust McNeil, but I could find scant secondary sources supporting its existence. When I checked the New York Times archives for "Television Ghost," I found that the august institution never saw fit to report on it. The combo of words did bring up articles with interesting headlines from the appropriate time period: WIZARD SCIENCE IS ANNIHILATING SPACE (that one had the subhead "Airplane, Televisor, and Radiophone are Signs of Wonders Yet to Come") and HOW TO EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE? SCIENCE IN A QUANDARY and RADIO IMAGES AND 'GHOSTS' ARE DANCING IN SPACE. When I looked up the broadcaster of THE TELEVISION GHOST (the station W2XAB) I did find reviews for some of their contemporaneous programming, such as when Mayor Jimmy Walker (pictured, above) literally (I think) lifted a curtain from the "sensitive photoelectric cells, or radio 'eyes,'" to reveal George Gershwin playing the piano, among other entertainments. Anyway, then McNeil sent me an article about a machine they have over there in China that heats itself up to ten times hotter than the sun. What could go wrong? The next day or so, McNeil and I ended up in a lenghty, discursive disagreement (?) about Bogart and Bacall's house keys, and what hidden meaning we could draw from a photo we saw of them. When asked whether it was our most pointless discussion to date, McNeil announced his intention to "crunch the numbers" on that.

A Squirrel Holding a Stick

I guess you wonder where I've been. Well, friends, you might just say I've been everywhere... and nowhere. For you see... what? You didn't notice I was gone? That hurts! In any case, the pleasant occasion of my absence was the 4th Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. My apologies, as I am sure you have these details memorized, but more than three years intervened between the first and second annual festivals, and more than four and a half years between the second and the third. So it may stun you beyond repair to learn that less than a year has gone by since the previous McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival and this one. Let's see, that makes for an average of one Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival every two years, yes, we're finally catching up. No sooner had McNeil rolled into town than we cranked up THE BAD NEWS BEARS (original version). We started with it because one of us, I won't say which (it was McNeil) fell asleep five minutes into it during the last festival. Next: THE WILD AFFAIR, a Nancy Kwan vehicle I learned about ("click" here to learn likewise) from "She Blogged By Night."

Here is a photo from "She Blogged By Night" showing Vidal Sassoon cutting Nancy Kwan's hair for the movie. I am sure you recall how badly Ms. Kwan was treated by a film in the first MMKFF. She was thanklessly blown up! So we wanted to make up for that by watching a movie in which she is treated in a kindlier way. Although she is at least not blown up in THE WILD AFFAIR, her character is treated almost as shamefully by the seemingly endless parade of sleazes she encounters. Kwan holds the movie together, though, and the article from "She Blogged By Night" argues for her agency. Still, it seems to us that Nancy Kwan can't catch a break. Then we watched CASANOVA'S BIG NIGHT and Paul Schrader's BLUE COLLAR. Here's something that McNeil noticed: earlier in the day I had made an incongruous reference to the character "Mr. Bentley" (pictured) from the TV show THE JEFFERSONS.

In BLUE COLLAR, a TV is tuned to that show and the characters are discussing, by name, none other than Mr. Bentley! Plus, a scene from THE BAD NEWS BEARS had reminded me of a similar scene from CATCH-22, a fact upon which I remarked at the time. In BLUE COLLAR, Ed Begley Jr. is seen reading a paperback of CATCH-22! Make of these astounding coincidences what you will. McNeil also observed that both Richard Pryor in BLUE COLLAR and Bob Hope in our previous feature, CASANOVA'S BIG NIGHT, boasted of having "a new technique": Pryor's for bowling, Hope's for kissing. We came very close to a direct Hope reference when Richard Pryor angrily imagines what he might do as a union rep: fly up to Palm Springs on a private jet and play golf with Gerald Ford. Why didn't he say "Bob Hope" instead? But he didn't. And there's nothing we can do about it. McNeil had me pause BLUE COLLAR so that he could expound at some length upon his admiration for the curtains Richard Pryor's character had in his living room. As you well know, the curtains in movies are one of McNeil's main concerns. My nonfiction cigarette lighter book, which has already been typeset, makes reference to close to a hundred movies and TV episodes, I think. I wish I had rewatched BLUE COLLAR sooner, because I would have certainly included the euphemism that Pryor yells at his union rep: "You can flick my Bic!" Richard Pryor comes up quite a bit in my book, and one sad and terrible fact I know from all my research is that Pryor used a Bic when he set himself on fire. But let us turn from thoughts of tragedy: I believe it was between BLUE COLLAR and Robert Altman's QUINTET that McNeil and I looked out the window and saw a squirrel holding a stick. An unusual sight! The squirrel seemed to be holding the stick with some intent. McNeil compared it to the scene in 2001 when the ape-people learn to use weapons. But the squirrel did not have a sufficient attention span, and soon abandoned the stick without putting it to any use. "He almost had it," I said.

"So many dogs eating so many dudes," I idly remarked during QUINTET. McNeil and I agreed that the dystopian snowscape would have benefitted greatly had Jerry Lewis driven through in a ice cream truck, hollering, "I can't sell this stuff!" But he didn't. And now it is my sad duty to report that this is the very first McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival not to include a Jerry Lewis movie. Pathetic! And now a digression. Ha ha! This whole thing has been a digression. But we took a break from watching movies and walked up to the City Grocery Bar, which has undergone a recent facelift. For one thing, the men's room is no longer just a hellish trough. I kind of miss the hellish trough! The new men's room is sparkling and elegant, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Owner John Currence tells me that he rescued the piece of sheetrock that has Kent Osborne's still-pristine drawing of his cat on it from the old men's room wall. He plans to frame it and put it in a shadowbox on a wall of the bar! Now, if you drink at the Grocery often enough, you might get your name and usual drink on a brass plaque on the bar one day. And the occasion of our break from the film festival was that Ace Atkins and I have been accorded that honor as part of the general refurbishment. Now. For reasons I cannot recall, McNeil had requested that I get my hands on a copy of the Elvis movie LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE for this year's festival. When the subject came up at the bar, Ace - an Elvis expert - began an excellent discourse on the film's place in the Elvis canon, up to and including the provenance of the dog in it! (In addition to the actual dog, LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE is the movie notorious for making Elvis dance with a man in a dog costume.) Naturally, Ace was invited to join us for the showing - a rare and welcome intrusion into the insular world of the McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. Plus he brought Popeye's fried chicken! So our last three films - QUINTET, THE PALM BEACH STORY, and LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE - all use dogs in striking ways. The last two - THE PALM BEACH STORY and LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE - also costar Rudy Vallee. So that's weird. I had a bunch of other stuff to say, but aren't you tired? I guess this year's theme was... dogs?

Maybe Kangaroos

Reading that biography of John Wayne, I was particularly mesmerized by the allusions to a movie produced by John Wayne, a brainchild of his boozy sidekick Jimmy Grant, a circus movie starring Mickey Spillane as himself - RING OF FEAR! It says something about me that I also watched ISLAND IN THE SKY, a very interesting John Wayne movie that starts out interesting and just gets more and more interesting as it goes along, a really fine movie, and yet I have no desire to "blog" about it. I'd much rather "blog" about RING OF FEAR, which is, as I just informed you, a circus movie starring Mickey Spillane. As himself! Many spoilers follow, ha ha. RING OF FEAR begins with thudding timpani and roaring lions. The theme song goes, "Here comes the circus/ Marching down the street/ Hear that thrilling beat/ The band... the band... the band is playing, Yay!" and that's the whole song. (See also.) The narrator lists all the animals in the circus, ending his litany with "maybe kangaroos." Maybe! Sounds ominous. Then we cut to a big, scary sign: STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION, and a guy saying, "I tell you I'm not crazy, gentlemen." We're less than 5 minutes in! Oh boy! Then the guy says something I didn't quite catch about "building a fence around the universe." He's in trouble for talking to a picture of a "circus girl." Then he escapes! I thought they were setting him up to be sympathetic but then he tossed a random guy under an oncoming train, so I guess not. He meets up with his pal, a guy named Twitchy. I thought I had that wrong until a surly clown said, "Twitchy must be hitting the bottle again," thereby confirming the name Twitchy. Twenty-five minutes in, here's Mickey Spillane for some reason. Somebody says, "Say, ain't you Mickey Spillane?" Spillane mumbles, "Yeah, that's right." Poor Mickey! As an actor he doesn't even seem convinced of his own name. He does walk around with copies of his new paperback in his jacket pocket and hand them out to strangers. Lots of circus acts in this movie. I hate to see them taunting the tigers with the whip and the chair, though, so I fast forwarded through that stuff, I must admit (though to come clean I enjoyed it - very guiltily - when some elephants danced to "Turkey in the Straw" - God have mercy!). Twitchy is a drunk clown, like so many sad clowns before him, but I wasn't sure I could safely categorize him as a sad clown until I saw that he was being blackmailed for murder. That would make anybody sad! Now we meet, for a few sparkling moments, an acrobat named Tiny. Boy, I liked her. Her "bum" of a husband works part-time as a department-store Santa. Golly, I would have watched a whole movie about them! But that's all we get of Tiny. Mickey Spillane calls somebody "a windy character" and Pat O'Brien responds, "Yeah, he's windy and he's a character." I am not sure what that exchange of dialogue got us! The sword swallower wants peppermint polish for her swords because her swords taste so terrible. (Hey, I've got eight pages of notes here.) She has a weird way of introducing herself: "Hello, Mr. Spillane, are you married?" Mickey says, "It slips my mind at the moment," a pretty good Mickey Spillane line, but the incongruous set-up is unforgivable. I have here in my notes that Mickey Spillane chews gum and squints. Half an hour in or so I find out that the crazy madman is named "Dublin O'Malley." He's Irish, by the way. Meanwhile, back at the circus! A clown comes out holding an umbrella. Cut to the crowd laughing hysterically. Cut back to the clown holding his umbrella. A clown holding an umbrella really seems to get to everybody. (See also.) By an hour in, Dublin O'Malley seems kind of like an interesting, complicated psychopath, or am I going soft? (Also about an hour in, a kangaroo actually appears - a kangaroo with, forgive me for saying so, surprisingly prominent testicles.) I did enjoy watching Mickey Spillane eat an ice cream cone. It seemed authentic. Was he getting more comfortable onscreen? Or was I getting more full of rye? Around this time, for example, I started thinking of the actor who played Dublin O'Malley as a poor man's Orson Welles, which is funny, because Dr. Theresa, who was in the next room and not even paying attention, later told me that she thought he sounded just like Orson Welles in LADY FROM SHANGHAI. Suddenly Mickey Spillane is wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Later, he will put on a tight sweater, too, before suddenly reverting to the usual baggy jacket, loose tie, and fedora. Turns out Twitchy used to be an aerialist, which reminded me of something that Bill Taft once said to me in a circus performers' graveyard. Dublin has a long, intricate monologue describing death by cyanide to Twitchy and yes, this scene clinches it, Twitchy is a super sad clown. Dublin O'Malley drowns that clown! Reaction shots of disapproving circus animals! Pat O'Brien gives a deadpan read of the immortal line, "Valerie, I'm sorry. We just got news that Dublin is a kill-happy maniac." Dublin is eaten by a tiger, cutting immediately to a song about the circus being "a magic wonderland" of "angels and clowns." THE END

Certain Musty Old Letters

You know whenever I go on a little plane trip I like to jot down some things about it to tell you when I get back and then you don't read it and I don't really care. Sometimes I get lazy and don't jot until the trip is practically half over. But this time I STARTED JOTTING BEFORE THE TRIP EVEN BEGAN. I was sitting on the couch, waiting for time to go to the airport, and the Fox Movie Channel was on and I took out my special jotting notebook and start jotting down some things about this scene in this Doris Day movie that was on. Doris Day wore a backless, sparkling orange dress. A fat German guy was swatting grapes into the air for some reason. One grape fell into the butt section of Doris Day's dress and she inadvertently started a "dance craze" by trying to shake the grape out of her butt. I was thinking about how smutty everything used to be. I couldn't think of what to read on the airplane. I was really hoping for ANCIENT EVENINGS, but Bill Boyle isn't back from his trip home yet, and anyway he writes me that he has lost the tattered old copy of ANCIENT EVENINGS he had when he was a teenager, and which he had planned to bequeath to me. So I impulsively grabbed THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL - this despite my reservations about VILLETTE as good airplane material, and VILLETTE was by Charlotte Brontë; THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL is by Anne, the Brontë nobody likes! Ha ha, just kidding, Anne Brontë. But one of the first things I read at the airport was this: "It is a soaking, rainy day, the family are absent on a visit, I am alone in my library, and have been looking over certain musty old letters and papers, and musing on past times... having withdrawn my well-roasted feet from the hobs, wheeled round to the table, and indicted the above lines to my crusty old friend..." Well, that is just the kind of thing I want to read on an airplane. Something about the hobs really got to me, and I don't even know what hobs are! My mellow mood was abetted by gin, my go-to remedy for fear of flying. I eavesdropped on a woman who was ordering crab cakes at the "Sun Studios" themed bar at the airport (!) and the book made me think of how Kelly Hogan and I used to write letters all the time, back when people wrote letters all the time, and how Hogan recently told me she keeps mine in a waterlogged suitcase in her once-flooded garage and sometimes she takes them out. Oh no, I said, don't remind yourself needlessly of the inanities of that callow twerp, and Hogan clarified: "I don't read them - I smell them." An intoxicating brew of moldy sentiments! I was met at the airport by some grad students from the University of Cincinnati, where I was set to speak. I should thank them all, and especially the ones who drove me around while I was there and tended to my every need, and who, in fact, were responsible for my invitation: Luke, Steph, Justine, and Woody - and there were so many more, all nice. Luke and Woody were waiting by baggage claim with a huge poster with my name on it - decorated as well with several startling portraits of me, drawn by Luke's undergrads. They had been reading my short stories in Luke's class and he asked them to draw what they thought I looked like. One had given me a neck tattoo! Another, according to Luke (I haven't yet had a chance to examine the poster in detail, though Luke says he is mailing it to me) wrote her phone number on the poster, and "Call me" - ha ha ha! Woody and Luke drove me into the city, remarking cheerfully as we went over a bridge, "Obama cited this as a dangerous bridge that needs work." I shouted repeatedly to Woody and Luke that I wanted to go "somewhere fancy" for dinner. They said they'd take me to "the fancy hot dog place." Maybe they were kidding, but it WAS a fancy hot dog place, though not pretentious like some other fancy hot dog places I have heard about. It was called Mayday, very welcoming and comfortable, with excellent beer, friendly service and a pleasant, dark atmosphere. My hot dog contained lamb sausage made with cherries! So you will have to admit that was fancy. Somehow people already knew when I walked in the door of the fancy hot dog place about my work with ADVENTURE TIME. Someone wanted me to sign an apron for the kitchen. "My favorite is Lady Rainicorn," she said. She kind of went "Ah!" when I started drawing something at the bottom of my inscription, but it was just a stupid heart with an arrow through it. I'm the only person associated with ADVENTURE TIME who can't draw, reliably disappointing all I meet. It's understandable and even delightful to me that the students at "literary events" now are more interested in ADVENTURE TIME than in my books, which are but dubiously in print - in fact, I have a lawyer working right now to discover who is getting that tiny kickback on the rare occasion when a copy is sold. It's not me! I stayed in a nice bed and breakfast near the campus. My vivid and relentless dreams that first night took place - as if I were awake - in the actual room where I was sleeping, and were populated by humorous, cherubic ghosts or pixies who wanted to remind me whenever I became too relaxed that THEY were in charge. The room and bed were very comfortable, let me stress. But I was tormented all night by mirthful pixies - a first for me - and was tired for the reading. I didn't really want to read from any of my old, dead books, so I read from my cat book that no one wants to publish. As I was preparing my selections - the introduction, part of Chapter One, and the conclusion - I realized that most of the book has been published in bits and pieces, as I've cut it up and used it in lots of different stories and articles and the like. I'm sorry, sort of, that it's never going to appear whole, as "my cat book," though I see in retrospect it is perhaps unwise to write a 10-chapter novel in which nothing happens until the last half of Chapter Eight - a little wholesome advice I was able to impart to the young writers who attended the reading! In the Q&A and in her poetry, my fellow reader Marisa Crawford made some good points in favor of the use of pop culture in literature. One of her poems had Joan Crawford in it (and another made telling use of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART FIVE!) so I was glad that by coincidence I was reading the Joan Crawford section of my "cat book." After the reading, a bar. I sat with two other grown men - the head of the English department and the poetry editor of the Cincinnati Review - and we all talked about our kitties. I noticed that the openly sentimental discussion halted when Chris Bachelder came back to the table! Or maybe I imagined that. Did he exude the air of a man who would not tolerate such weakness? He was friendly and funny. But the cat talk did cease with his approach. Mr. Bachelder is a writer whose fiction I have always enjoyed and admired. I was meeting him for the first time, and we had fun trashing various McSweeney's editors. Ha ha! Not trashing. Affectionately ruminating upon their individual styles and methods. The conclusion of my cat book was published in McSweeney's, and I mentioned how the editor had made me change "solar plexus" to "abdomen." The poet at the table (Don Bogen) kindly took up for "solar plexus." Then we talked about why I had cravenly reverted to "abdomen" during the reading that day even though I had brought an old manuscript with "solar plexus" typed on the page. The strange tyranny of the absent editor! The next morning at the bed and breakfast I sat there reading this in THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL: "I thought it but reasonable to make some slight exertion to render my company agreeable." And I thought, yes, THAT is the kind of sentence I want to write all the time, and no other, editors can go to hell. And then Anne Brontë introduced some complicated plot business about trying to fetch a ball of cotton that had rolled under a table without disturbing a cat. WHY CAN'T ALL WRITING BE THAT? But that was the next day. The night before, as the students were about to leave the bar, I had the sudden urge to inquire, "Where do you go to sing karaoke in Cincinnati?" Luke knew. So a group of us walked some blocks to a gritty, narrow, cash-only joint called, with refreshing lack of irony, Junker's Tavern. Here is a picture of some of us getting ready to go to Junker's Tavern. That's Justine and Luke.

I'm in the middle, doing my thing where I think it's hilarious to look surly in a photo, but it never is. It was a good evening, though I got tired and made Steph and Luke leave before they could do "Mambo #5." Back at the bed and breakfast, the ghosts returned only once in a dream, as parody ghosts with greenish faces and CARNIVAL OF SOULS style dark rings under their eyes, but dressed in colorful rags, shouting, "God bless us, every one!" with Cockney accents and well-meaning but gruesome smiles.

On the plane back, the narrator of THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL was saying, "I was by no means a fop - of that I am fully convinced" and I was like, "Right, pal, keep telling yourself that!"

10 Greatest Moments of 2013

Everybody is doing their year-end lists. It seems a little early to me! Something incredible could still happen! I'll let you know. In the meantime, what a year! Nothing has quite reached the level of last year's top-ten highlight, watching a rerun of WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU while eating a salad, but still, not a bad year. Not bad. Here's the list for 2013: 10) Hilary Duff laughs and claps in slow motion while a mime in a beret and a red-and-white striped shirt waves sparklers in slow motion. 9) Bunnies in a yard. 8) A brochure about shingles. 7) I watch almost a whole Jay Leno movie. 6) I stop being so certain of what Nixon's favorite drink was. 5) Hawkman is turned to salt. 4) I put on a wool hat while my hair is still wet. 3) An excited entertainment reporter. 2) A ghost on a toilet. 1) A farting goblin.

How I Met Your Sexy Nobility

Hey I was just flipping around on one of these movie channels and came across a movie scene in which the guy from HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER - the one who I believe met the eponymous mother (I'm using the word "eponymous" too much lately; what a jerk!) - was about to make a speech in a diner explaining the problems of the country, which I know because he solemnly announced his intention to enumerate the problems of the country and pinpoint their various sources, and then he opened his mouth but I changed the channel because I was afraid to find out! But I flipped back some minutes later, just in time to see a virginal young woman BEGGING the guy from HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER to initiate her into the mysterious secrets of womanhood, then she wept glycerine tears that sparkled and shone on her delicate face when he refused to sully her purity from being too noble and all. So in THE VERY NEXT SCENE he meets a foxy older lady who is also a brilliant genius and she finds his raw sexiness wildly irresistible. That's when I went to imdb and confirmed my suspicion that this movie was WRITTEN AND DIRECTED by the guy who single-handedly solved the problems of the nation in a diner booth then fended off ardent, quivering admirers from across the spectrum of human mortality. The movie poster shows the guy from HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER and the virginal young woman holding hands and WALKING ACROSS AN ENORMOUS OPEN SCHOOLBOOK REPRESENTING LEARNING. What do you want to bet he LEARNS A THING OR TWO ABOUT LIFE FROM HER BEFORE ALL IS SAID AND DONE? What a twist! He thought HE was the one with all the answers! Looking back, I see that this is my fourth negative "blog" "post" in a row. That's not my laid-back style! And I really shouldn't judge a movie from a few disjointed moments. BUT I DIDN'T INVENT THE REMOTE CONTROL SO IT'S NOT MY FAULT. Also, maybe it's only my third negative "post" in a row because that Jay Leno movie is starting to seem like an exquisite masterwork about now. (See also.)

Sometimes Hilary Duff

Yesterday I turned on the TV and it happened to be tuned to one of these here movie channels, so I saw part of a Hilary Duff movie. See, Hilary Duff was helping out a street musician. This young woman was busking with her violin but it wasn't going well - maybe she was playing uptight violin music that only squares and eggheads could love! (I hasten to add that I have no idea if I am interpreting the scene correctly; I came in at the tail end of it.) Anyway, Hilary Duff and some harmonizing buddies of hers convinced the violinist to play a Four Tops song instead, and Hilary Duff and all her friends sang along, and then suddenly everybody was thrilled. The music faded out and the scene went into slow motion and then it was just Hilary Duff laughing and clapping in slow motion while a mime in a beret and a red-and-white striped shirt waved sparklers in slow motion! This went on longer than you can imagine. I think the filmmaker's intent was whimsy but instead it really seemed that the sparkler mime was horning in on the street musician's turf. He just popped up and started waving his sparklers like a jerk, hoping to cadge some of that sweet Four Tops money, in slow motion, forever and ever, waving his sparklers, while Hilary Duff laughed and laughed, so slowly, kind of terrifying, HA... HA... HA. Then we cut to Hilary Duff on the roof of a building, saying to a boy, "Sometimes I come up here to think." I wonder how many movies that line has appeared in: dozens and dozens, I bet. Later in the day as I was attending to a mundane chore I turned on TCM for company (see also and also) and the movie MRS. SOFFEL was just coming on - a prison romance between Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson. I saw that one in the theater. It doesn't bother me anymore that movies I saw in the theater routinely come on "classic" movie channels now. All I remember about MRS. SOFFEL is walking out afterward and saying to my companion, "They should have called it MRS. SO AWFUL." Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ah, the thoughtless barbs of youth. I am sure Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson worked hard to provide an enjoyable experience, and maybe they did, maybe I was dumb back then, I guess we'll never know. Hey let's keep going with our theme of "movies." As you know, the homepage of my email provider has been illustrated lately with photos of "satisfied customers," I guess they are supposed to be, but they look more like deranged maniacs. Take this guy (above). He's the latest! I don't know if you can see the fine print, but he is supposed to be writing a screenplay... I don't know what that has to do with email. But here is what he has written: "The South Pole. Ext. Yves is sitting on a hill, sobbing. In the distance, Elliott shivers in the cold." He's grinning demonically at the human suffering he depicts in his incorrectly formatted masterpiece! It's obvious my email provider is TRYING TO DRIVE ME CRAZY. Sometimes Yves goes up there to think.

Delicate and Keen Reproach of the Fair Quaker

I like this "Mrs. Knowles, the Quaker lady." She gets the best of Samuel Johnson in a couple of arguments. Once, he says, "(with eyes sparkling benignantly,) 'Very well, indeed, Madam. You have said very well.'" But another time, "He was irritated still more by [her] delicate and keen reproach; and roared out another tremendous volley, which one might fancy could be heard across the Atlantick." (That's the way Boswell spells Atlantic, okay?) And I guess Johnson liked the looks of Mrs. Knowles, too: "Mr. Wilkes held a candle to shew a fine print of a female figure which hung in the room, and pointed out the elegant contour of the bosom with the finger of an arch connoisseur. He afterwards, in a conversation with me, waggishly insisted, that all the time Johnson shewed visible signs of a fervent admiration of the corresponding charms of the fair Quaker."

Glorious Haunch

Got an email from good old Burke telling me I should read Boswell's LIFE OF JOHNSON, which is something I have been meaning to do for, you know, decades. And it's funny, because I was thinking of Samuel Johnson anyway. I recently read (in FOUNDATION by Peter Ackroyd, the same place where I learned about Harold Harefoot) that Queen Anne touched Samuel Johnson when he was a tiny tot and cured him of the scrofula (see also) and he "remained a staunch royalist for the rest of his life." But I have always been bewildered by the array of available editions of the Boswell, and weirdly guilty at the thought of reading an abridgment. In his email, Burke recommended an "abridged Penguin Classics edition that [is] a nice length" and when I stopped by Square Books today, that's just what they had in stock and I took it as a sign. (Burke also said that the LIFE OF JOHNSON reminds him of MASTERS OF ATLANTIS [!].) Just thumbing through the introduction I came across a list of things that Boswell left out. For example, "an occasion when Johnson ate so much of 'a glorious haunch of venison' that it was feared 'he would have died of downright eating, and had not a surgeon been got to administer to him without delay a glister he must have died.'" So I was all like, "What's a glister?" But my WEBSTER'S NEW TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, UNABRIDGED, SECOND EDITION from 1974, usually so good with archaic terms, had only the definition I already knew, the sparkly one. With a little of my expert "googling," however, I found that it must be an alternate spelling of "clyster"... an old word for enema. I'm sorry! I didn't know the "blog" was going to go in that direction (again!) when I started this "post"! I didn't even know what a clyster was when I started this "post"! Well now I've ruined everything.

Kelly Hogan Is Frank Sinatra

PLEASE NOTE: Despite the title of this "post," the nice man and lady pictured above are not Kelly Hogan and Frank Sinatra. Now that Hogan's album has finally come out officially and actually in the real world where we all really live in reality today I can talk about it all the time and tell you of all its many delightful hidden tantalizing secrets and sparkling golden nuggets of intriguing celestial mystery without getting in trouble from "the man." Like I can tell you that on one song (written for her by M. Ward), Hogan sings in character AS Frank Sinatra. And that song has maybe my favorite couplet on the whole record: "Playing dominoes with some princess in France/ French francs falling out of my pants." That's some couplet! Maybe it's the way Hogan sings it. It sounds good. The words sound good and it sounds good the way she sings it plus it just sounds like a good situation. This is all the more interesting given Hogan's ambivalent attitude toward Sinatra as first reported here on the very "blog" you see before you with your very own eyes that God gave you. Immediately after I heard that song of Hogan's I became powerfully moved to start listening to 1980s Frank Sinatra recordings, and that is how I found out that the first line of Hogan's song was inspired (I assume) by the first line of that weird Frank Sinatra devil song I told you about before. Now, as demanded by the government, I am supposed to mention that I received a free advance recording of this wonderful record I LIKE TO KEEP MYSELF IN PAIN by Kelly Hogan - now available at a store near you! Speaking of stores near you, I was at The End of All Music the other day and came across a 50s (I think) LP entitled EVERY INCH A SAILOR, which struck me as hilarious for some reason, and it had a song on it entitled Guantanamo Bay, but I still didn't buy it - I'm getting pretty good at not buying things.

Taper-Witted

I used to "blog" all the time but now I only "blog" almost all the time. Yeah, so, I was in Square Books yesterday and I glanced at a blurb on the back of a Muriel Spark novel and I thought it referred to her as "taper-witted" but I had misread it and it said "rapier-witted." After I put the book down, still not realizing my mistake, I stood there and pondered what "taper-witted" might mean. It seemed more like an insult than anything, but I knew it couldn't be an insult, not printed on the back of a book like that, so I tried to rationalize how "taper-witted" might be interpreted as praise. Finally I looked again and it was "rapier-witted" which is a terrible old meaningless cliché - is that why my brain refused to accept it? Man is this dull. I feel sorry for you. But this is what a "blog" is! Nobody forced you to read "blogs." I was also flipping through the book NO HEROES by my pal Chris Offutt and everything in it seemed so good I kind of thought I ought to buy it, but here's what clinched it, brother: I came across a chapter entitled "Burying an Owl." And then there was this sentence: "Owls are so much like humans that we are afraid of them." And you know the rest. Maybe I should mention that Chris is casually holding a possum under his arm on the cover and that automatically became my new standard for author photos, yeah, maybe I would have bought that Muriel Spark book if only she had appeared on the cover holding a possum under her arm as she was wont to do.

Literary Matters

Time again for "Literary Matters"! And I am so sorry to tell you this, but there are lots and lots of them. I'm not even going to tell you how many, because you'll certainly stop reading. As well you should! Cursed literary matters! 1) TODAY ONLY! Roy Blount Jr. will be at Off Square Books (5 PM, the usual time) to read from his new book ALPHABETTER JUICE, some of the mighty pleasures of which have already been outlined here. Don't miss a chance to see Roy Blount Jr.! Note to the government: I bought my own copy of ALPHABETTER JUICE, so shut up! I am no publisher's shill! In fact, as far as I can tell, publishers hate me! 2) After Mr. Blount's reading, why not head over to the Kitty Snacks party conveniently located at Southside Gallery? The decent fellows at Kitty Snacks have a brand new issue out, featuring work by John Brandon and many other notables. And the gray cover screams, "Buy me! I'm entirely gray!" But I think that's one of those tricks that only the hippest of the hip can pull off, you know, like that billboard for bail bondsmen I saw once, or a club with no sign on the door. But when you get in, it's lots of wholesome fun! Kitty Snacks! 3) You know who is also reading at Off Square soon (June 9)? That's right, Ace Atkins. He has a brand new novel out called THE RANGER. I'm halfway through it and loving every minute. Yes, government, Ace gave me a free advance reading copy, so what? Though THE RANGER is set in the here and now, Ace wanted it to have the feel of those great Burt Reynolds (or Joe Don Baker, pictured) revenge pics from the 1970s, popularly known as "hixploitation." And boy did he succeed, spectacularly! Now that I have given you the code, you can read the book on dual levels, because I know how much you enjoy doing that, experiencing things on dual levels. You love that! 4) Ace also loaned me an advance copy of THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott. I read it and think it might be her best book yet, though it is so hard to pick just one! Were I to blurb it, I would say, "Do you like great writing and being really nervous and creeped out all the time? Even when you sleep? Do you want to be pulled down into a terrible and beautiful and inexorable nightmare, no, dream, no, nightmare, no, dream, no, nightmare? Then this is the book for you!" Also, SHE is coming here to read at the end of July so we have that to look forward to. 5) Megan's book just got a starred review from my sworn enemy Publishers Weekly! So this is the one thing we can agree on, PW and I, like characters making an unholy secret alliance on GAME OF THRONES. PS: My blurb might also say, "Abbott's beloved Freud glimmers darkly from every riveting page!" Ugh, that's awful. Just read the book! I keep blurbing Megan's books in retrospect. 6) Speaking of blurbs that will never happen, Kevin Brockmeier says something really, really nice about me in the new issue of the Oxford American, something too nice for me to repeat here, something that would make a perfect blurb, but as we have seen, no book of mine is ever going to come out ever again, not even the cat book that is alarming, confounding, and distressing publishers' flunkies the world over even as we speak, but I have the blurb ready to go, thanks to the generous and gracious Kevin Brockmeier, and I will always have it, and the book will never come out, no book will ever come out, so maybe they can just carve it on my gravestone, that thing that Kevin Brockmeier said. 7) The real attraction of the new OA (well, I haven't read the whole issue yet, it's usually all good!) is a sparkling new short story by Elizabeth Kaiser, also known as "Elizabeth" of "blog" fame. 8) And another former "student," John Oliver Hodges, has a really good and bold and moving article in there, too! It's a follow-up to his piece in the previous issue, also about his (and Elizabeth's) great mentor Barry Hannah. Speaking of which, the new Kitty Snacks (see #2 above) features several never-before-published full-color photographs that John took of Barry. He is not only a fine writer, John Oliver Hodges, but an accomplished photographer, yes, where do these people get all this talent? It makes me sick. I didn't teach John or Elizabeth a thing. 9) Check out John's novella WAR OF THE CRAZIES, just out from Main Street Rag press! Now that one, I really did blurb. Blurbs! Is there anything less useful? (Note to the government: yes, I read WAR OF THE CRAZIES in manuscript, but I won my actual copy in a raffle, I really did, so that doesn't count!) 10) Yes, John Brandon and I are in the new Kitty Snacks together AND we are in the new Oxford American together, just as we were in the previous issue of McSweeney's together. In fact, we are going to get an enormous shirt with two neckholes and just walk around like that from now on. 11) Are you still reading this? Don't lie to me! 12) McNeil has found what seems to be a series of mysteries featuring members of "the Rat Pack." It is not for me to say whether on the surface they appear to be the worst books ever written. After all, haven't we been told time and time again not to judge a book by its cover? Like, didn't I tell you that earlier in this "post"? I did! But it was so long ago you have probably forgotten. Look again. Still, the titles do not inspire confidence! There is one called EVERYBODY KILLS SOMEBODY SOMETIME - this dubious assertion a "play on words" inspired by the Dean Martin hit "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime." While I was checking to make sure this is a real mystery series (and it is, but those covers, they just don't LOOK real somehow... in fact they seem vaguely illegal to me) I ran across one not listed on McNeil's "link," one called LUCK BE A LADY, DON'T DIE. What does that EVEN MEAN? I "get" that it is supposed to be a "play on words" based on the song "Luck Be a Lady Tonight" from GUYS AND DOLLS, but it's just barely that, isn't it? And does it MEAN something? Isn't it just a string of words, I mean, isn't it? Well maybe these will turn out to be the greatest books ever written and I'm just a jerk. 13) The new "LaFa Shopper" got shoved into our mailbox yesterday, but once again John Arrechea IS MISSING! We do hear from Faylene Bryant with the breaking story "Vacation Bible School Approaching Fast," plus there's a column called "The Playhouse" in which one Camille Anding lists "Things I'd Like To Find" (dozens and dozens of them!) including "My keychain that remains hidden since last January" and "More movies as charming as 'The Sound of Music.'"

True Fact!

The romantic triangle in CRITIC'S CHOICE consists of Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, and a young Rip Torn. At one point Rip Torn luxuriates on Bob and Lucy's silken bedspread, smoking a cigar and barking insults at the elderly Hope. Here's a fun fact to share with your friends! In the movie the bedspread is sparkling blue. On this lobby card it is pink! Think about it for hours. I guess there's nothing you can count on in this world.

Glamorous Years Gone By

Mr. Ward remembers even more sparkling details about those aforementioned occasions upon which he and I a) attended the BLUES BROTHERS 2000 press junket and b) years later, wrote an unrelated pilot for MTV. Please don't be confused: the two have almost nothing to do with one another, really, and were joined together only by free association in the former "post." And now, join Mr. Ward as he travels down memory lane. He writes: "I remember coming up to John Goodman before the shoot and eagerly asking him if he was clear on what we were about to do and he said something along the lines of 'Let me guess: you ask questions, we answer them,' leaving the 'you idiot' implied... I remember you telling Dan A. what an admirer you were of his and his career and his response was a grunt... At the BLUES BROTHERS 2000 screening there was only one small group of people laughing and cheering. When the lights went on after the film we saw it was director John Landis and his pals... At our pilot taping we overheard [pilot actors] Dan Lauria and Austin Pendleton [pictured] mocking our show, and I think it was Dan who said 'It should be rated 'M' for morons.'"

A Big Year For Gold Lamé Banjo Straps

Recently I was up before dawn watching Porter Wagoner again. He was wearing a red shirt and a green jacket with sparkling yellow ears of corn represented. And for some reason he was holding up a big, scary picture of Jack Palance, which surprised me. Turned out Jack Palance was there to sing some songs! And the big, scary picture was Jack Palance's album cover! So Jack Palance sang "Green, Green Grass of Home." Here is a picture of him singing on the very show. My one regret is that his microphone hand is blocking a proper view of his ascot. His singing voice was not the most accurate in regard to pitch. Sometimes he half-talked it. He was dramatic to make up for his problem staying in tune. For example, "Down the road I look and here comes Mary/ Hair of GOLD! and lips like CHERRIES!/ It's GOOD! to touch the green, green grass of home." Mr. Palance came back out later and sang a song about beating a man to death with a chain! For real! His rhythm slipped and he got a fraction behind the beat but the band just kept plugging along, trying to help him out. He and Porter exchanged the most halfhearted pleasantries I have ever witnessed. Porter had to remind Jack Palance to hold the microphone to his mouth when he talked. On this episode, Porter Wagoner's band wore solid pink suits with white shoes and sparkling purple ties. A featured banjo player had a sparkling golden banjo strap. He did a neat trick in which he would bend the notes his banjo was playing by adjusting the tuning keys while continuing to pick with admirable rapidity. Dolly Parton sang a song. She was great. Her guitar strap appeared to be fashioned of gold lamé. The capsule description of the episode indicated that it was from 1970.

While It Was Still Dark

So I got up for no reason while it was still dark and watched this old short film on TCM. It was put out by "The National Clean Up Paint Up Fix Up Bureau." Did you know there was such a thing? Well, I guess there was! And the point of the film, no kidding, was that you shouldn't put a lot of magazines on your coffee table because when the communists blow up your city, your house will catch on fire. No kidding! They put these different little houses on a nuclear testing site. Like, one would have a lot of magazines on the coffee table and one wouldn't. Then BOOM! And the house with no magazines on the coffee table didn't burn as fast. They also said, and if I am paraphrasing, it is only by a little, "A fresh coat of house paint will keep your house from burning down." Close to an exact quote: "Is this your house? A dingy house? Or do you have a clean white house?" It did not take much imagination on my part to envision a mob leaving the movie theater and heading to Old Mr. Johnson's to help save the neighborhood from communists by giving the place a coat of paint, because Old Mr. Johnson has really let things go to seed ever since Ethel passed away. There are beer cans in his yard! And by the time they get there they have decided to just go ahead and preemptively burn down Old Mr. Johnson's house. That's the feeling I got from the movie. Then I switched to an unusual channel way down there at the far end of the satellite, and they were showing an episode of THE PORTER WAGONER SHOW and I was like, "WHAT?" Porter Wagoner was wearing the most amazing suit ever, a suit so amazing it could have its own show, people could just stare at that empty suit for half an hour very happily. But as a bonus Porter Wagoner was in it! And he was giggling! His is not a face one expects to see giggling. His is a long and solemn face. But String Bean was on the show, yes, a man named String Bean, I've told you about him before, back when I had been "blogging" for no more than a week or two, surely you remember when I told you about String Bean that time, well, he made Porter Wagoner giggle, just the sight of him! (Above, the very suit to which I was referring! My powers of "Googling" are not to be matched! The photo doesn't do it justice! You should have seen it sparkling and shimmering under the big bright lights!) After String Bean's number Porter put his arm around String Bean's shoulder and called him "String," which seemed chummy and kind of amusing. Like his first name is String and his last name is Bean, I guess! Then Roger Miller made a dry, surreal cameo, dapper in a black suit and full of secret unspoken humor.

A Cold Glass of Tom Hanks

Jerry Lewis is never in the New York Times anymore. He's only in their "blogs," of which they have millions, and that's not good enough. What happened? Most recently I spotted Jerry in a wine "blog" of the New York Times, where the guy compared him to Prosecco, I think. Here: he said that for him (the writer) to refer "to cava as the 'Prosecco of Spain'" is "as if the French were to refer to Tom Hanks as the Jerry Lewis of America." I am making some charts and graphs to figure out what that means. No, wait, that makes Jerry the cava, doesn't it? No, I was right the first time, he's the Prosecco. In this Spenserian allegory, the writer is the French, Tom Hanks is cava, Jerry Lewis is Prosecco, and Spain is America? Even if that's right, WHAT DOES IT MEAN? What would it MEAN for a French person to call Tom Hanks the Jerry Lewis of America? Because isn't Jerry Lewis the Jerry Lewis of America? And what does that make Tom Hanks? Plus, isn't the writer complaining about his own headline (he is quoting the headline of an article he wrote)? It could be that he didn't write the headline. I think I'm missing the point. Let us substitute some of the words in his "blog" article with their allegorical counterparts and see how they stand up. "It’s a sad indication of the lack of respect accorded Tom Hanks that this sparkling wine, with a production that completely dwarfs that of Jerry Lewis, still gets second-banana billing... All over America you’ll see people refreshing themselves with a cold glass of Tom Hanks." No, it's still not working. Is Tom Hanks a second banana in France? Do people spit on him as he walks down the street? Maybe I'm thinking too much. Where it really breaks down is that Prosecco isn't produced in Spain, while America can proudly claim to be the producer of Jerry Lewis. For the allegory to work completely, Jerry Lewis would have to be from Hungary or somewhere, AND very popular in the present-day US, more popular than Tom Hanks. Is that right? No, Jerry would have to be currently the biggest star in France, AND from some other place entirely, let's say Monaco. My head hurts. I'm tired of taking these bones the New York Times is tossing to me. Plus it's the old snickering and inaccurate "the French love Jerry Lewis" gag I've worked so hard to abolish - I think that's what it is! I don't know, because it doesn't make sense. Have my efforts been for naught? Yes. Yes they have. I hope you have enough self-respect not to have read this far.

Frances Ford Lopalla

Did you ever notice how sometimes good reviews make you want nothing to do with their subjects and bad reviews of things make you fall in love? No? Maybe it's just me. Like, I read a great review in the New York Times of a guy who plays the bass fiddle and uses his wonderful voice to sing sparkling, witty lyrics about being seated on an airplane next to Leonard Bernstein. For no reason, my heart recoiled and shriveled within my bosom at the thought of entertainment so very sparkling and witty - though I am fascinated by Leornard Bernstein! And the more sparkling and witty and smart and elegant yet accessible and devil-may-care the reviewer made everything sound, the more appalled and repulsed I became through no fault of the actual artist being reviewed, who is probably fantastic. On the other hand, I read a crummy, prissy, disdainfully sniffing Publisher's Weekly review of a novel called HOLLYWOOD by Charles Bukowski. Here's part of it: "This book deteriorates into juvenile satire in which familiar, real-life figures appear with the letters of their names shifted slightly: the famous director Jon-Luc Modard, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sanrah, Frances Ford Lopalla and an obvious Norman Mailer stand-in called Victor Norman." I mean, come on! Though I am a far, far cry from the world's most ardent Bukowski fan - I wouldn't call myself a fan at all - I knew I had to have it. Frances Ford Lopalla! (Back to random illustrations for now.)

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up

Welcome once again to "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up," where we report all the latest in sparkling entertainment news from the sparkling world of entertainment. Mr. Ward read in the New York Post that Professor Irwin Corey "had to be removed from the podium [at the memorial service for Soupy Sales] after his eulogy turned into a diatribe about health-care reform." To which Mr. Ward responded, and I quote, "Professor Irwin Corey? PROFESSOR IRWIN COREY?!!?!! How can he possibly still be alive?! He was a thousand years old back when he was famous... well, maybe 'famous' isn’t the correct word. But seriously, he’s complaining about our health care system!? If that guy’s still breathing and moving I think our health care system must be working pretty d*** well." Mr. Ward emailed me about this matter because, as he noted, we are the last two people alive who remember Professor Irwin Corey. Well, maybe Phil. Still, perhaps Mr. Ward (and the New York Post) are being a little hard on Professor Irwin Corey, who was in CAR WASH, a movie I love, and certainly has a right to his opinions - and his long, healthy life! I will include a non-random picture of Professor Irwin Corey so you can be doubly sure you have never heard of or seen Professor Irwin Corey, as if I had to ask. That's it for "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up!" Until next time, keep "reaching" for the "stars!"