Animal Friends

I know what you're asking. Did we spend part of our 30th anniversary celebration as you might expect, revisiting the grim site of the miserable death of Meriwether Lewis, which we accidentally discovered on a prior anniversary trip? Yes and no. We paid tribute to it as we drove by, sending good wishes aloud to Meriwether Lewis's ghost, but we were too busy thinking about how we hadn't eaten all day, and we were eager to reach our destination. Sorry, Meriwether Lewis! Now I'll fill you in on the rest of our trip in a massive, unreadable, unbroken chunk of text, such as has been a "blog" tradition for more than 19 years, God help us all. We saw lots of cool animals, including a donkey and a goat who seemed to be good friends. At one point we were stopped at a traffic light behind a huge tanker truck, and printed on the rear of the tank were the words - and only these words - THE WORLD'S BEST COFFEE. "Is that full of coffee?" I blurted idiotically, causing Dr. Theresa to laugh for the next 10 miles. In the instant, I meant it! You may recall that my brain was famously stunned into a stupor at a not entirely distant point in the past. You'd think it would have fixed itself by now! The truck was full of fuel, of course, which it was carrying, no doubt, to a convenience store/gas station purporting to serve THE WORLD'S BEST COFFEE. There is no conceivable reason to fill a tanker truck with coffee. One night we had a great dinner and walked back to the hotel, where, on the previous evening, we had sat in the lobby bar and gazed across at an elegant recess filled with a different kind of furniture, and upon that furniture there sat a man who Dr. Theresa swore was the late Truman Capote. Anyway, we vowed at the time that we would go sit in that elegant recess with the nice furniture on a future evening. Well! I thought it was time. Dr. Theresa wasn't so sure. I kept saying how much fun it would be to sit in the elegant recess and "people watch." Finally, I talked her into it. She sat there grudgingly sipping a ranch water as I tried out a towering wingback chair such as Mr. Burns might use on THE SIMPSONS. Anyway, we were sitting there like that when a woman in leather pants walked by and did a double take. Then she came back and - Dr. Theresa reenacted this gesture often in the aftermath - sort of displayed her palms and circled them in the air as if trying to encompass her wondrous vision (me). "You look regal!" she informed me from across the lobby. So I looked at Dr. Theresa like, "Huh? Huh? I guess 'people watching' was the greatest idea ever!" She laughed and we realized we were feeling pretty great, so we went up to the room and ordered an after-dinner pizza. That's right! We decided we were even because recently the guy who was restocking the greeting cards at Walmart tried to pick up Dr. Theresa. I don't think he was wearing leather pants. In the morning, Dr. Theresa had a few things to take care of, so I went downstairs before her to get some coffee and wait for her to join me for breakfast. As I would be alone for a short time, I brought along my anniversary reading material, Seneca's version of OEDIPUS, translated by Emily Wilson, because I know how to have a good time. A guy got on the elevator with me and said, "You a stoic fan?" I didn't know what the hell he was talking about until I looked down and recollected the Seneca book in my hand. I said, "Sure." He said something about admiring Seneca's letters and I replied, and I think this is an exact quotation, "Yeah, well, the plays are nasty." Thus ended our discussion of stoicism. Sitting there with my coffee, I started thinking about that book I read about ancient Greece not too long ago, from which I learned that the hyper-masculine bros of the "manosphere" are really into the Stoics these days. I wondered, was that guy a "manosphere" guy? Did he think I was part of his special "manosphere"? Well, it's my own fault for carrying around a collection of Seneca tragedies like some kind of secret handshake. As Oedipus says in Emily Wilson's translation, "The guilt of my times is mine." On the way back home, Jon Langford called, and I answered Dr. Theresa's cellphone because she was driving. See, Dr. Theresa is bringing Jon here (to Oxford, Mississippi) for some events soon, including a concert on Saturday the 25th, which you should really attend, though I know you don't exist. But anyway, please "click" on this "link" and get informed! I know you won't. So I kept getting disconnected and finally had to give up because we were tooling down the Natchez Trace, and for the first time in my life, I felt I was in that contrived horror-movie situation... as you know, in a contemporary setting, there must always be a reason for the protagonist's phone not to work. That seemed interesting when I started typing it. As we continued our journey home, the satellite radio with which our rental car came equipped began to play a song I could have sworn was called "Everybody Dance Now," but, as I learned from the accompanying dashboard display, is actually called "Gonna Make You Sweat," which I guess everyone knew but me. Dr. Theresa was very concerned when she believed she heard the narrator of the song declaring that he would make us, the listeners, "sweat until [we] bleed." Sweating until He bled is what the Savior did in the Garden of Gethsemane, as you probably know from Luke 22:44. Well, I looked it up when we got home and yes, the guy in that song wants people to sweat until they bleed. Is this a good way to end this "post"?

You Bet!

I know what you're thinking: "HENRY VI, PART 1 has an owl in it and so does HENRY VI, PART 3, but aren't we skipping over something? Does HENRY VI, PART 2 have an owl in it?" You bet your ass it does! Pardon my language, Shakespeare! Of course, in Shakespeare's time, an ass was nothing but a donkey. I assume. Ha ha "assume," get it? Neither do I! Anyway, from an owl perspective, the three parts of HENRY VI are like the old shell game... if there was a pea under every shell! What, you don't know what the old shell game is? I can't help what you know or what you don't know. I'm not your mother! I remember when I was working on Julia Pott's television show SUMMER CAMP ISLAND and for some reason I brought up three-card monte - I'm sure it was very important to the story we were working on; either that or I was just babbling away as usual - and the person who was taking notes wrote down "Three-Card Mafia." She had led a blameless life! She never heard of three-card monte, and why should she? What is she, a carny? Nothing against carnies! What was my point? I can't remember. That maybe I mumble? Anyhow, "The time when screech owls cry and bandogs howl, and spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves..." Which reminds me that I want to look up possible relationships between HENRY VI, PART 2 and MACBETH. Which came first? And so on. There's some kind of overlap happening. One great advantage of being ignorant is you can get old like me and have a lot of things to find out, if you can work up the energy, which is doubtful. Like, the other day Dr. Theresa and I were taking a walk and I said, "What is sweat, anyway?"

The Musical Question

I saw this title card (designed by Tom Herpich, painted by Joy Ang) for an upcoming ADVENTURE TIME episode and thought it was evocative of Machen, which reminded me that Megan Abbott had recently encouraged me to reread Machen's story "The White People," which I did, though I skipped the prologue, which is cheating. As I recalled, Megan had mentioned how scary the part of the story is in which the nurse is "sweating profoundly" (as opposed to "profusely"), I seemed to think those were Megan's words [maybe it was "prodigiously," or, you know, "profusely" after all - ed.] (in the actual story the nurse is "all streaming with perspiration") so I searched through my emails so I could quote Megan accurately but could not find anything about profound sweat or Arthur Machen in them. Megan, when contacted, said I was thinking of a phone conversation. Isn't this thrilling? Reading the story again, I was struck with this sentence: "And people said the wax man screamed in the burning of the flames." And I couldn't help but wonder whether Robyn Hitchcock might have been inspired by Machen when he asked the musical question, "Is your wax doll still crying in the fire?" A note in the introduction to this collection says that Machen also wrote an "owlishly learned disquisition on various types of tobacco," which makes this a book with an owl in it, but does it count? An owl in a scholarly introduction? I'll put an asterisk by it.

Melted Fezzes

Well! Megan and Dan came to town and we went out and had a ball. Bill Boyle appeared on the scene and we drove out to Water Valley to a place called the Crawdad Hole. Somehow Megan knew about it. Dr. Theresa and I had never heard of it. As Dan pointed out, a restaurant has to have a well-placed sense of confidence to put "Hole" in its name. It was great! Great enough for "hole." I'm kind of sorry to tell you about it, because they only serve food until they run out of whatever is fresh that day, and I don't want you to eat it before I get there next time. We had so much stuff spread over the checkered oilcloth (was it checkered? It should have been!) - crab legs and sausages and corn on the cob and Mississippi tamales - that's a famous thing, if you didn't know! - and oysters, both sweetly raw and succulently grilled, all superb, and all washed down with a pitcher of ice-cold beer that went perfectly with the food. No crawfish because they were out. Megan said they told her it wasn't crawfish season. But we didn't even miss the crawfish. Then we were supposed to meet Ace at a "secret bar" but we went to the "secret bar" and it wasn't a "secret bar," it was the shabby back room you have to walk through to use the toilet at a local pizza restaurant of small repute. So we were like, "THIS IS ACE'S SECRET BAR?" But the story hasn't ended. MORE LATER. Because we had made a basic mistake about the "secret bar" and it wasn't Ace's fault! Now I'm going to start looking at whatever I jotted down last night on scraps of paper in my wallet and on bar napkins. As I recall, some of it might be bawdy and shocking! You know I don't like to "go there." Blame the liquor and high spirits of rekindled camaraderie. The first note I see just says, "Remember the Night." I'm like, hmm, this isn't as scintillating as I recalled. Was I just telling myself to remember the night? Then it occurred to me. It's the name of a Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck movie that Megan thinks Dr. Theresa and I would like. A nice sentiment, but a disappointment in the realm of fevered inspirations scrawled on tattered scraps from bars. Muttering, we left the (temporary) debacle of "secret bar" and went up to City Grocery. There we encountered Randy Yates, owner of Ajax, who was talking about his former fez collection. That seemed bar-napkin worthy. I wrote down what happened to Randy's fez collection: "I lived in such a [crappy] house all my fezzes melted." That didn't seem like a sentence I had heard before. Oh yes, I have noted here on the back of a postal receipt that Bill Boyle claimed, "If you were stranded on a desert island, all you'd need was Guinness and breast milk." I told you you'd be scandalized! Ace came to CG and took us back to the secret bar. We had lost Megan and Dan by now, but Angela had appeared, a delightful and special treat! And the bar really was different all of a sudden. It was darker and there was a fancy man to make Bill Boyle take off his baseball cap! When we sat down, the server asked if we'd like a complimentary shot, and unless I am crazy, the shots were being offered in empty shotgun shell casings. You know, the way they do in a secret bar. Bill was the only one who drank one and - still miffed about his forcefully doffed baseball cap - said, "That was terrible!" But he said it in a gruffly charming way that made even the server laugh. And when they brought out ice water, they offered to put drops of rosewater in it. Which we accepted! Now, rosewater was popular in Cairo, Egypt, when Dr. Theresa was growing up there, but I believe in the U.S. I have witnessed only her little brother Hesham (he's a full grown man, not a "little brother"!) spiking anything with it. Bill had gotten himself into a rare mood I enjoy seeing him in on those spare occasions when it happens - a touch of lovable surliness that comes over him with just the right amount of fluid help. Surliness isn't the right word. Sweet irascibility? Acting the wiseacre? I don't know any good words. Anyway, he didn't seem to care much for the rosewater. He said - and I was afraid this didn't even show up on the napkin! It was so dark and the server gave me a pen that wrote in PALE ORANGE INK, and I couldn't tell whether words were falling upon the napkin at all - "They're serving us old lady sweat and we're drinking it like we got nothing better to do." Then he said, "It's like you're licking your grandmother's armpit." And then I THINK he said (I didn't write it down) "Don't get me wrong, I'd lick my grandmother's armpit, she's a great lady!" But I may have made that part up. I'm afraid I haven't done justice to the secret bar, which was very pleasant and conducive to much convivial talk and served excellent grilled cheese sandwiches.

He Makes Coffins

Look, it's Mary Miller and me at Tom Franklin's big annual birthday party. Mary kept saying how nice my hair looked so Lizzie took this picture. I don't know. Does my hair look that nice here? I am doubtful. Doesn't it look like a hairpiece? I kept explaining to Mary that whatever had happened to my hair that she was so taken with was just because I was sweating so much. It was hot! We live in Mississippi. Moments after this photo was taken, Tom Franklin shaved my head entirely... AGAIN. That's becoming a birthday tradition too, I guess. I was just complaining to Dr. Theresa that Tom left too much hair on my neck. "He did a better job than last time," she said. I don't think she cares! As my friend Brian pointed out on twitter, I now look "like the lifer in the yard [he'd] go to for advice as a new inmate." But I deleted my bald "selfie"

because I wanted to pretend not to be a vainglorious fool. I was just reading about vainglory in THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. He's against it. Okay, here. HERE'S A TRUE HISTORY FACT. Last time Tom shaved my head, JFK's granddaughter was present! I saw her the next day in the town square and she tried to engage me in conversation but I couldn't recall who she was. I thought maybe she was a former student who wanted to talk about grades or something! Gross! So I dismissed her curtly! Later I realized my mistake but nothing could be done. Well that's what I get for being a huge jerk all the time. I tweeted that last night and deleted it too. I also tweeted about the guy who, right after Tom shaved my head, handed me his business card and yelled, "I MAKE COFFINS!" Well, let's see, I saw Semmes at the party and he said he was recently sitting with Bob Rafelson (!) on Rafelson's balcony and telling him about how I forced Dr. Theresa to watch the movie HEAD while we were dating and it didn't go over too well and then they tried to call me, but the number Semmes had for me was out of service. So that's the story about the time I didn't get a phone call from Bob Rafelson.

And I had a funny talk with Cynthia Joyce about how movie sex scenes were edited in the 70s. She said she was watching Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway going at it in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR and couldn't figure out what anything was. "Is that a hairy knee?" she found herself asking during one shot.

Dramatics

Last night I watched JULIUS CAESAR, the version with Marlon Brando, and I don't even know why. I've watched it before and can't recall being much of anything but bored. This time I was really into it! I was like, "WHAT!" I was like, "These characters are really in a pickle now!" Also, Casca says, "And yesterday the bird of night did sit even at noonday upon the marketplace, hooting and shrieking." So I've decided that's an owl. Sure, there are night birds that are not owls, but what bird other than an owl hoots and shrieks? MY DECISION IS FINAL. Edmond O'Brien (pictured) is really good as Casca. Usually you think of him as a guy in noir or westerns. He's one sweaty assassin! Maybe that's why they hired him. He's especially good when he's acting at John Gielgud. He really shows up Gielgud's silvery vibrato. Ha ha, what a terrible description of Gielgud's voice. It does quaver dramatically, though. I think. I remember when Megan Abbott asked me for an adjective to describe John Huston's voice and I said, "Growly?" and Megan said, "I'd say the opposite! But I always use caramely." Anyway, Gielgud's voice is good for this one line where Brutus accuses him of taking bribes and he says, "I, an itchy palm?!!!???!!!!!??!!!!????!!!!!!!" And I'll add that the most sarcastic thing I've ever heard in a movie is the way Brando says, "Oh... NOW you weep." That's how he says it. "Oh... NOW you weep."

Loyal Gravies

It's in either Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 of ANCIENT EVENINGS that we get more plural "gravies" (sweat is described like so: "something loyal came out of the gravies of his flesh" [!]) and more "sweetmeats." Hey, I was looking around for sweetmeats on wikipedia and came across this terrible and utterly useless sentence: "Confections include sweet foods, sweetmeats, digestive aids that are sweet, elaborate creations, and something amusing and frivolous." Wikipedia! Who writes this stuff? Better check the old WEBSTER'S NEW TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, UNABRIDGED, SECOND EDITION from 1974, under sweetmeat. "1. any sweet food or delicacy prepared with sugar or honey, as a cake, confection, preserve, etc.; specifically, a candy, candied fruit, etc. 2. a mollusk, the slipper shell. [Dial.] 3. a varnish used on patent leather."

In the Land of Richard Dix

Let me tell you about my Tuesday. First, I saw Cher. Then I walked into a room and immediately started acting in a scene with Anne Heche. Finally I sang a song with Joey Lauren Adams and Mr. Belding from SAVED BY THE BELL. Tuesday! Yes, I went on a little trip and believe or not I didn't jot anything at first. I was like, "I am going to be too busy to jot down anything for the folks back home!" Such was my hubris! I did not jot for more than 24 hours! Twenty-four jot-free hours! But then I was sitting in the Starbucks where I once saw the guy from Tenacious D who is not Jack Black, and I was reading the New York Times, and I came across this first sentence of an article: "Forty five minutes of monkey impersonations?" A rhetorical question, I suppose, but one requiring a single answer: a resounding, Joycean YES! And that made me recall something I read in my new book about kings before I left on my little trip: "every chariot had a fierce great mastiff on a leash standing in a cart or walking behind it, and every sumpter beast had a long-tailed monkey on its back..." That's about a procession in 1158, and when I first read it I thought it was about monkeys riding dogs, a subject we have contemplated at some length on the "blog," but rereading it just now, never mind. Then (back to the New York Times) I read an article containing Robert Mitchum's pick-up line to Edna O'Brien (which totally worked): "I bet you wish I was Robert Taylor, and I bet you never tasted white peaches." Mitchum! What a smoothie! And that's when I started feeling bad for not jotting anything. I remembered something from the day before which I had not jotted, for example: we were driving down the street and Kent yelled, "It's the diner where Larry Crowne worked in LARRY CROWNE!" And so it was. We drove by it again a day or two later and Kent suggested that we stop and get a picture of me in front of it and at first I resisted, and Kent said "WHAT!!!!!" and stopped the car and took the photo anyway (below) and right he was to do so. I saw Kent eat a lot of chicken, as usual. He loves chicken! But I also saw him eat a pork chop and a steak. We ate big steaks at a restaurant where Bob Hope used to eat! Taking a stroll after one chicken luncheon, Kent and I observed a young woman communing with two tame rats, which were sitting on top of a Los Angeles Times vending machine. "Don't freak out," she was saying calmly and sweetly to the rats. As this actually very charming person put forth to us the argument that rats are among the most misunderstood of God's creatures, she was engaged in some sort of handiwork - she seemed to be, possibly, knitting some clothes for the rats. Let's see what else I jotted. I ate at a restaurant where they give you a coconut with a straw in it to drink! I guess this is a pretty common thing, but somehow this was my first time. I had previously seen such a way of drinking a coconut only on GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. (Coincidence: upon my return home, I found an email from McNeil about the fact that Ida Lupino directed several episodes of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. McNeil seemed ashamed for not knowing this before!) One of the people at lunch was Ako Castuera, who used to sell coconuts for a living, and she regaled me with lots of amazing coconut lore, including something about coconut water and its use in blood transfusions during World War II, which led to a discussion somehow of the immortal jellyfish (or maybe that came up when we were debating the preferable place to visit: outer space or the bottom of the sea), and Ako - entirely different subject - told about a vacation she took on a cruise ship when she was a little kid and she spent all her time in the library. There was a library! Ako first discovered Edgar Allan Poe on that cruise ship, which put the endearing image in my mind of little Ako in the dark ship's library reading Poe while everybody else was up on the deck playing shuffleboard in the sun. Jottings! I saw my old friend Tom Bissell. He lives directly over the Hollywood Walk of Fame! In fact, he lives almost directly over Richard Dix's star. Oh, Richard Dix! Can I not get away from you? Your inexplicable stardom continues to haunt me. (Pictured, above, Richard Dix.) Tom and I talked about CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS and walked down the block to get a Mexican dinner and on the way back we witnessed a car crash! Everybody was okay, but the cars were smashed up. Okay! Now we are back to the fateful Tuesday. I was sitting in my hotel lobby when Cher walked through! I mostly saw the back of her head. Then my ride came and I went off to act with Anne Heche. FOR REAL! In what project, I am not at liberty to say. YOU'LL FIND OUT SOON ENOUGH. Anne Heche was more beautiful in person than you can possibly imagine! She was not "done up" in any fancy Hollywood makeup and finery. You got the feeling she just walks down the sidewalk being all radiant. After we acted in a couple of scenes together she gave me a big hug and discovered, I am certain, that I was covered in flop sweat like Albert Brooks in BROADCAST NEWS. Like Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp before me (a phrase I type with astonishing regularity) I played Anne Heche's love interest. Okay, and then a bunch of us went out to sing karaoke (including Natasha Allegri, the nicest person in the world!) and Mr. Belding showed up and everybody was like, "Oh my God! It's Mr. Belding!" and somehow the last thing I did was sing "Jolene" with Mr. Belding and Joey Lauren Adams. Before that, I saw Joey Lauren Adams and Pendleton Ward do Elvis's "American Trilogy" together, and I thought to myself, well, that is probably the most surreal thing I will see tonight, but I was wrong.

Mickey Mouse Seems Crazy

Hey yeah so I am reading these Mickey Mouse comic strips from 1936 and Mickey Mouse comes back from a trip to discover that a house in his town is haunted. So he goes to the police station and yells at the desk sergeant: "I WANT T' KNOW WHY TH' POLICE HAVEN'T DONE SOMETHING ABOUT THOSE GHOSTS!" He is thrusting his hand at the desk sergeant in a dramatic fashion and giant beads of sweat are flying off of Mickey Mouse's head, the way they fly off the heads of cartoon characters who are being really intense. I have to say that the ghosts haven't even done anything to anybody at this point in the story, they're just hanging out, and I also have to say why is Mickey Mouse's first instinct to get the police involved? Is this really a police matter? And also it's not even his house, man. So, I mean, you know, butt out, Mickey Mouse. Those are the things I have to say.

History of Wind

Here's a casually tossed-off bit from the introduction to NATIVE AMERICAN FOOD PLANTS: AN ETHNOBOTANICAL DICTIONARY: "People have died from eating apple pits; 'poisoned apple' is redundant." WHAT? I think I've heard something like that before but I didn't pay attention. Anyway, watch out! Here is a funny use of an exclamation point in the introduction: "in a number of cases it is reported that the berries were eaten raw!" Leafing through the book I learned how the Rappahannock made beer from persimmons and that there is a plant called owlsclaws: "Roots used as a chewing gum." A panel from a Donald Duck comic I was reading last night showed Donald reading a book called HISTORY OF WIND. Here's the very panel, though the title is left out - probably because it's from that Danish Carl Barks site. Speaking of which, I also read in the introduction to my Donald Duck book about how Barks was tormented in his 90s by the "Carl Barks Studio" which was really just "a couple who was hired to take care of Barks in his twilight years" but instead they treated him like dirt and forced him to constantly draw new pictures of Donald Duck for them to sell - like a sweatshop! I'm sorry I told you about that. Sometimes life has sad parts. He got away from them when he was 97 and met some nicer people and lived a couple more years and was happy so okay.

This Really Happened

Ace Atkins came over last night to watch his bootleg of BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS. Don't judge him! A man has to find pleasure wherever he can in this horrible world. BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS was a TV show in the 70s. Network stars battled each other on it! ("Click" here to be reminded once again what we thought of as entertainment back then. You'll be surprised, kids!) We watched two episodes, lasting an hour and a half apiece. They were intense! Host Howard Cossell prodded his celebrity guests with searing psychological interviews! I'm not kidding. Cheryl Ladd, in an electric blue terry cloth sweatband, spoke with shocking bitterness about how glad she was to get out of Utah and how everybody who told her she could never make it sure was sorry now! Michelle Phillips from the band The Mamas and the Papas (and apparently a TV show called ASPEN [?]) injured her ankle on the obstacle course yet still made an admirable showing in the relay race ("She didn't even feel it," commented Ace, going on to make a wry observation about the recreational drug use in vogue at the time. DON'T DO DRUGS!). Michelle Phillips's show of determination caused Dan Haggerty from the show GRIZZLY ADAMS to come over and PUT HIS HANDS ALL OVER HER in a very creepy manner by way of congratulations. (GRIZZLY ADAMS was a show about a big hairy mountain man with a grizzly bear friend. Dr. Theresa recalled a schoolyard legend about his beard catching fire with tragic results, and I remembered it too. But I couldn't remember what Grizzly Adams and his friend the bear did on their show every week. "Solved crimes?" I said. Angela [Ace's bride - I hesitated to incriminate her by mentioning her involvement] disagreed: "There were orphans involved," she insisted.) Finally Howard Cossell had just about enough of watching Michelle Phillips trying to writhe out of Dan Haggerty's inappropriate grasp. "If you don't get your hands off her, I'll break your arms," he said. He really said that! Afterward, Dan Haggerty's penchant for groping became noticeable, though it often happened in the background. We all felt bad for Ben Murphy, star of television's GEMINI MAN, because none of us had ever heard of Ben Murphy or television's GEMINI MAN. Ace asked whether I had a copy of THE COMPLETE DIRECTORY TO PRIME TIME NETWORK TV SHOWS 1946-PRESENT by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh. I was so happy to be able to say yes! I raced to the bedroom to retrieve it. But by the time I got back Angela HAD ALREADY TOLD EVERYBODY EVERYTHING ABOUT GEMINI MAN thanks to her fancy electronic iPhone. That's one for you, technology, curse you! GEMINI MAN lasted barely a month on the air, which explains why Ben Murphy was on episode one of BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS and not on episode two of BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS. Telly Savalas accused Ben Murphy of cheating in the relay race. As the evening concluded we all imagined Ben Murphy sitting somewhere in a bar at THAT VERY MOMENT saying "I used to be the Gemini Man!"

KTW

I see in an obituary in the New York Times that Kathryn Tucker Windham of Alabama has passed away. When I was growing up in that state, her books were your main go-to source for "real-life" ghost stories. ("Now there's another Alabama ghost," emails fellow Alabaman Tom Franklin.) According to the NYT she also wrote about "encounters with sweat bees, which land on people and lick perspiration." And she delivered a radio address entitled "Honeysuckle Blossoms Smell Wonderful." Of her radio performances, one of her producers is quoted as saying, "Her pauses were almost as long as the content." That's the way to be! But for me, she'll always mean ghosts.

Mysterious, Shadowy Pacino

Who is this mysterious, shadowy figure? I will tell you. It is Al Pacino, as photographed by my brother from a long, long distance. Upon closer inspection, "he was wearing a cut-up red t-shirt around his head like a sweatband," my brother reports.

Oatmeal Tips

Just when you thought the "blog" had run out of things to say about oatmeal, we come charging back with another edition of our beloved regular feature "Oatmeal Tips." Today's oatmeal tip comes from Mack Sennett's autobiography, the official selection of the Doomed Book Club. Seems that when Mack Sennett was 17, he was employed by an ironworks, where he worked with "molten liquid often as hot as 3500 degrees." He drank "tepid oatmeal water to control perspiration." So that's today's oatmeal tip!

"Blog" Advent Calendar for Dec. 25, 2009

You know what time it is. Time for the culmination of the "blog" advent calendar, when every year it unfurls in its glory or something. "Click" here if you need a refresher course on how that works. Or just take this walk down memory lane with me right now. Our story so far: 1. The musical question, "Isn't it groovy in a daydream?" 2. The bubble organ. 3. Extraordinary experiences of Tesla. 4. Benjamin Franklin gives you some advice. 5. Kitten paintings. 6. A whole book! GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN by Violet Tweedale. 7. A robot that sweats! 8. "Mr. Sandman" in a moving car. 9. The Hawaiian Punch FAQ. 10. Joan Sawyer's new dance creation "The Aeroplane Waltz." 11. Win a real live pony (or a horse if you prefer). 12. About Little Lulu. 13. Instructions for making a bed of nails. 14. A couple of kids perform the "Safety Dance." 15. A woman dances in 1898. 16. "Ooey Gooey." 17. Squirrel plays harmonica. 18. Elevator shoes. 19. The Billy Strayhorn composition "Lotus Blossom." 20. PUT A GREEN LIGHT AT YOUR HOUSE. 21. A "hippie band" - in miniature bottle form, that is! 22. The bugle calls you need to know before you can earn your bugling merit badge. 23. A survey for tree farmers from Tree Farmer magazine. 24. Moon Woman "lays eggs, and sits on them, hatching giants" (!). And now, what will your 25th and ultimate surprise be? Will it be a match for last year's monumental William Blake archives? Probably not! Maybe it will go in the other direction, something small and subtle. Who knows? As always, there is but one way to find out!

Lap Talk

Welcome to today's edition of "Lap Talk." Our guest today is Dr. "M.," who confirms Mr. Whorton's account of his laptop problem. She has this to offer: "My laptop also makes my lap hot. In fact, I have been known to sweat as a result of laptop use! I recently spoke to a Dell salesperson--was purchasing a computer on behalf of my parents--and he told me that is why they no longer call them laptops but 'notebook' computers....because they don't want people using them on their laps! But here I am writing to you with my 'notebook' on my lap!!!! What's a girl to do??? Yours, M." Thanks for joining us for today's edition of "Lap Talk."

McNeil's Movie Korner

Just LOOK at what McNeil forgot to record on his DVR! It's not the first time such a lapse has occurred. I hate to say it, but those of us who no longer have access to TCM are no worse off than those who do have access yet take it for granted and do not use it wisely. The part that really smarts is this: McNeil found out about his latest blunder - TOO LATE! - from one of his college students. Yes, McNeil has been forcing his students to watch clips of THE BIG MOUTH (see the previous "Korner"). So one guy came into class today and said he had seen "another Jerry Lewis movie." When McNeil asked which one, the kid shrugged and said, "He was on a boat." "A boat? A boat?" McNeil asked, racking his brain and sweating with anxiety. "Maybe it was HOOK, LINE & SINKER," I suggested when McNeil repeated the story to me. "No," said McNeil. "I missed my one chance to record THREE ON A COUCH. They'll never show it again." He was filled with remorse. But at least he's got the kids relating to Jerry! For McNeil, a bittersweet victory. Pyrrhic, even. Well, not Pyrrhic, technically, but you get where I'm coming from with my classical allusions and all.

What We Leave Out

The "blog" is positive. That's why I can't really tell you about the Dean Martin movie that Theresa and I watched the night before last, a film in which it seemed, in Theresa's memorable analysis, that "the screenwriter had malaria." I can tell you, however, that Theresa and I made up for the experience by watching Martin and Lewis in SCARED STIFF last night, co-starring the always compelling Lizabeth Scott (you may know her from the Dick Powell classic THE PITFALL). Let's hear it for Lizabeth Scott (pictured), always someone positive upon whom to concentrate! And let's hear it for my torturous, if technically correct, syntax! All this leads me to confess something. For several weeks now, I have been withholding a cigarette holder sighting of the kind that I have vowed in good faith to apprise you of without fail. There were several gentlemen with cigarette holders in a DVD I saw recently. It was one of those plays that have been transposed to the screen direct from the stage. But it was filmed in close-up for no apparent reason, so that the waxen, caky, hideous, sweat-leaking rouge, etc., lit as blindingly as a grocery store, distracted wholly from the content. I could think of nothing positive to say about it. But that's no excuse for backing out of my solemn vow. Let's lay all our cards on the table and start the New Year right!

Listen Up!

Hey, if you listen to those songs I was talking about you'll hear a lot of Prince in that version of "Cold Sweat" and pure Talking Heads in "There Was a Time." No Prince without James Brown! No Talking Heads without James Brown! Listen to the whole thing yourself and make your own list of people who wouldn't be around without James Brown. James Brown, everybody! James Brown.

Speaking of Apollo...

Speaking of Apollo, don't forget JAMES BROWN LIVE AT THE APOLLO, VOLUME II, in the 2-CD "Deluxe Edition" from (I believe) Polydor. There's a six-minute "Cold Sweat" that lives up to its name, and with Mr. Brown's passing, the fantastic nine-minute "There Was a Time" takes on special meaning. James Brown!