Of Donkeys and Robots

So I'm reading ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC and Gideon Bohak, the author, is telling of an "erotic spell" in which a charm is written on a piece of tin, to which he adds the parenthetical statement "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Let me explain. This is nothing like the Gideon Bohak I know. Well, there is a footnote in which he makes a fond, gently humorous allusion to his hometown. But the violent whimsy of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" is present nowhere else in this academic... some might say dry as burnt toast... work. Well! Gideon Bohak does favor a jaunty exclamation point in his parenthetical statements (as seen in the example already given), which might count as whimsy if you are a scholar of ancient esoterica. Before I continue exploring this thought, I want to say that I wonder what Gideon Bohak's editor thought of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Did Gideon Bohak have to fight for it? I am developing an enhanced sense of respect for Gideon Bohak. Anyway, so, yes! In the very next paragraph we have an example of Bohak's penchant for parenthetical exclamation points. He has moved on to a spell which requires the magician (or is it the client?) to "take meat of a donkey in your mouth." I'm sorry I told you that. But I had to! Because Gideon Bohak presently adds the parenthetical statement that putting donkey meat in your mouth is "not very kosher!" Exclamation point his, I reemphasize. He goes on to examine cultural depictions of donkeys as "stupid, stubborn, and lazy," which reminded me, by way of contrast, of the other book I am reading right now, THE ILIAD, in which mules have been put forth more than once as some of the greatest animals you'd ever want to meet. They're always plowing fields faster than an ox, or pulling a big tree trunk down the side of a mountain. Those are the two things I can remember mules (in both cases, metaphorical mules) doing in THE ILIAD. Which brings me to another subject! Last night in bed, as I read THE ILIAD and Dr. Theresa worked a crossword puzzle, I suddenly shouted, "Hey! There are robots in this book!" Let's let that hang in the air for a while. Because I also want to say that I ran into Kelly Kornegay in Jackson, Mississippi, a couple of weeks ago, at the 50th anniversary party for Lemuria Books, which I didn't even tell you about, because why should you know every single thing that goes on in my life? Anyway, Kelly and I were talking about THE ILIAD, and she mentioned living in a new place where she can look out the window and see a donkey, and I got to tell her about the heroic mules of THE ILIAD. Pretty soon it got dark and Ace Atkins and I were standing in front of a stage watching 92-year-old bluesman Bobby Rush, of whom I took a photo with my very own phone and perhaps I will "post" it below. Also, there was a guy dressed as a cowboy who did some of the greatest dancing I've ever seen. He was up there all by himself dancing in his cowboy suit while opening acts played, and finally I thought, I should go dance with this guy! Let's get this party started! And Ace took a video of it, which I texted to Dr. Theresa (who had stayed home) so she could see my moves, and she immediately texted back "Have you been drinking?" And that's an interesting question but I bet you want to get back to the robots I read about in THE ILIAD last night. "They were made all of gold, but looked like living women." So you know I immediately thought of the DC comics characters the Metal Men, just as Homer intended. Furthermore, I checked Emily Wilson's endnote, and she calls them "robot women," so I'm not just coming to crazy conclusions. In fact, I think somebody installed A.I., because "They had a consciousness inside their hearts." And as I was lying there marveling about the golden robot women with consciousness in their hearts, I remembered thinking that I had noticed robots in the RAMAYANA as well. And I didn't just lie there and think about it for a change. I hauled my sorry carcass out of bed and went upstairs and found the RAMAYANA and refreshed my memory about these hydraulically powered automatons: "mechanical men, silently driven by falling water in some hidden way." And much like them, I am now running out of steam.

The Toastmaster Who Wasn't There

Now, how was Ace to know of my disenchantment, or whatever it is, with the idea of the Oscars? So he casually mentioned that he thought Conan O'Brien did a good job. "Well, we'll see about that!" I thought with churlish... I don't have a good noun to finish that sentence. The adjective churlish stopped my brain! So I scurried around on the "internet" like a little rat and watched a couple of minutes of Conan O'Brien doing his monologue. In my foul mood, I couldn't concentrate on his razor-sharp wit or whatever everybody thinks it is. All I noticed was how he amateurishly clapped his hands together every 10 seconds. He didn't know he was doing it! Such was my interpretation. His body was out of his control! And so on. Such was the content of my bitter thoughts. So I used email, the old person's medium, to craft a sentence only a 200-year-old man could appreciate: "All I’m saying is you wouldn’t see Bob Hope clapping his hands together every 10 seconds like the toastmaster at the Kiwanis Club." Ace responded that the Kiwanis make excellent pancake breakfasts and have programs to help children in need. So I really felt like a jerk after that. After some thought, I realized what a few of my problems were, and I encapsulated them thusly: "Once I was in a play and someone videotaped it, and when I watched the videotape I was horrified to see that I was involuntarily and unconsciously clapping my hands together every 10 seconds for no discernible reason. Conan's only real crime was reminding me of my own many failures! Also, I picked the Kiwanis Club at random, assuming they were a generic men's fraternal organization such as Fred Flintstone used to belong to. I didn't know anything about them! I should have turned the merciless spotlight on myself, not on the innocent members of the Kiwanis Club! I don't even know if they have toastmasters!" It was like when the guy in MULHOLLAND DR. (above) said "There is no band." That is, there was no toastmaster. Or to paraphrase Stanley Kubrick, I have always been the toastmaster. It's like in ANGEL HEART when... never mind. I don't want to spoil ANGEL HEART for you. I know you've been meaning to get around to it. Similar to the plot of that one Dan Duryea movie of which I can't recall the title. Wait! BLACK ANGEL. Why do they all have angel in the title? Let's forget it. Please join us tomorrow, when we start over with a clean slate, beginning with McNeil's revelation of some startling theological insights. I'm unemployed. PS The toastmaster I'm imagining wouldn't clap his hands together every 10 seconds anyway. He'd be gripping the podium in white-knuckled terror.

Artist's Statement

Hey! Tomorrow is the big gallery show opening in Alhambra, California, so check it out! I think I forgot to mention it's ADVENTURE TIME and FIONNA AND CAKE themed, featuring works by more than 50 artists associated with those shows. My piece is called “100 Adventure Time Characters from Memory, Made with Covid.” I call it that because of all the Covid I had when I drew it with magic markers in a sketch pad that Dr. Theresa bought to cheer me up. Now, I was afraid maybe I had shortchanged the lucky buyer, if any, because, despite the ambitious title I had prematurely scrawled on the paper, I didn’t count the characters as I was drawing them, and then, after I had drawn them, I found them impossible to count. Until! Some weeks later, I struck upon the notion of identifying them all by name. Somehow, and I know how, but I’m too tired to tell you, a list of names was a much easier thing for me to count. So I’m happy to reveal that I overachieved, at least quantitatively: there are 106 Adventure Time characters in my drawing. A couple of them were driving me nuts because I couldn’t figure out, once I had recovered from my feverish agitation and actually examined what I had drawn for the first time, who the hell they were supposed to be. I worried maybe I had made some of them up in a delirium. But I thought about it all night and decided that one was a Gumball Guardian (I had forgotten they have noses) and one was the King of Ooo (I had forgotten a couple of his identifying marks, plus I had him in Princess Bubblegum’s crown, which, in my defense, he did wear for a while). Adam said I should sponsor a contest and see if anyone could guess them all. But who was a guy who was good at guessing? Oedipus? Well, he was until he wasn’t. Anyway, not even Oedipus at the height of his guessing powers could have figured some of my drawings out (Pen, for example, thought Chips and Ice Cream were Hot Dog Knights), so I’m going to tell you who I drew, in (once you see the "art") not a really helpful order: Cinnamon Bun, Hunson Abadeer, The Bear Who Liked Finn, Starchy, Tree Trunks’s Alien Husband, Little Dude, One of the Villagers from “The Visitor,” Shoko, Mr. Cupcake, Billy, Abracadaniel, Party Pat, The Comet, The Squirrel from “Up a Tree,” The Cosmic Owl, Bartram, Gridface Princess, Martin, Ice King, Y5, Banana Guard, Patience St. Pym, Flame King, The White Lion Who Became the Vampire King, Abraham Lincoln, Jermaine, Chips, Ice Cream, Lemongrab, Lady Rainicorn, Gumball Guardian, Shelby and his little brother Kent, Big Destiny, Marshmallow Kid, Blank-Eyed Girl, Peppermint Butler, Breezy, Scorcher, Simon, Original Gunter, Ice Thing, Ricardio, Mannish Man, Wildberry Princess, The Squirrel Who Hates Jake, Glob, Grod, Grob (we can assume that Gob is behind them, but I can’t in good conscience count that) Fionna, Mr. Pig, Shermy, Huntress Wizard, Snail, Sleeping Old Man (Prismo’s Physical Form), Tiffany, Princess Cookie, Finn, Joshua, Choose Goose, Toast Princess, Cherry Cream Soda, Flambeau, The Empress, Slime Princess, The Crabbit, Farmworld Finn, Betty, Toronto, Wooby Woo, Dream Warrior, Lumpy Space Princess, Lumpy Space Prince, Tree Trunks, Uncle Gumbald, An Ant, Crunchy, Glass Boy, Magic Man, Leaf Man, Banana Man, King of Ooo, TV, Wyatt, Bubble, BMO, Skeleton (from the Ble offices? Or maybe that’s a guy from the Deadworlds), Jake, Gunter (classic penguin version), Embryo Princess, Rattleballs, Mr. Fox, The Music Hole, Lemonhope, Prismo, Hot Dog Princess, Dream Bird Woman, Owl from “Up a Tree,” Loafy, James Baxter the Horse, Gingerbread Muto, Minerva, Bufo, Morty Rogers, Marceline, Princess Bubblegum. In retrospect, perhaps my biggest mistake was thinking until very recently (today!) that The Empress had one eye in the middle of her forehead like a Cyclops (though I knew better at one point). I could lie and tell you I was trying to draw Blaine from “Wizard City,” but I would only be hurting myself.

A Whisper in the Night

"I heard something like a hoarse whisper behind me while walking the dog the other night, and when I turned around...THIS..." So goes McNeil's caption for the above photo. Now, if this "post" were more artfully presented, I would have moved McNeil's photo of the owl down below the text alluding to it, so that the owl might work as an astonishing revelation, worthy of the drama of McNeil's caption. The fact remains, however, that though I no longer claim to have "stopped 'blogging,'" I am still very, awfully lazy. Just to let you know, in a possibly related matter, I continue to read old comic books every night in bed as a perhaps superstitious ritual tied to my recuperation. I've been reading a few issues of one with the poorly punctuated - not to mention misleading - title KID COLT OUTLAW. Mostly, this "outlaw" seems to go around helping cops, based on the little I've seen of him in action. Can't say I care much for Kid Colt. He's no El Diablo! In fact, as I was texting to Tom Franklin a while back, though DC had the milquetoast reputation and Marvel was theoretically what the cool kids enjoyed in the 1970s, the DC western comic books feel meaner and grittier than the Marvel ones. Yes, yes, I'm as shocked as you are. Let's all calm down. The main takeaway is that one Kid Colt character blurts out, "Well, I'll be a double-dyed hoot-owl!" Why anyone would dye a hoot-owl once, much less twice, is a mystery I intend to leave unexplored. In conclusion, between typing this sentence and the one before it, I happened to find a typo on page 1,256 of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS: "world" where "word" is clearly meant. Ironically (?), a fitting typo for a translation of Mann. (See also.)

Experiments in Intercourse

First of all, relax! There is nothing at all wrong with the "blog." The culprit that drove me mad was just a curious virus that only I could see, infecting a particular browser in the hotel's business center... the very business center immortalized (in a tastefully fictionalized version, of course) in my almost-new book MOVIE STARS, suddenly the toast of New York town! I, however, was out in Los Angeles, and I brought my jotting book of precious jottings, but in my new anti-"blogging" spirit, I jotted nearly nothing on my trip. And yes, I made that decision out of pure spite! Okay, I will tell you one thing. Julia and I walked up to Ako and I said, "Ako, tell Julia what you told me about the miraculous powers of coconuts!" And Ako shouted with hilarious urgency, "IT'S NOT TRUE!" It turns out that I have been going around telling lies that Ako accidentally told me about the miraculous powers of coconuts. One day, as she related to us ruefully, she was telling the same story when it dawned on her with the force of epiphany how suspicious it sounded. So she looked it up and was mortified at the extent to which she had been misleading an innocent coconut-buying public for so many years. Then she explained to Julia and me what the powers of coconuts REALLY are, and to be honest, the coconuts still sounded pretty miraculous. Okay, I feel bad for you, so I am going to tell you two funny things from the airplane ride home. There was a peperoncino garnishing the plate of food they gave me. So I bit into it. It was just a small, ordinary peperoncino but it seemed to contain an abundance of juice. The amazing quantity of juice expelled even by my rather timid bite squirted all over my personal airplane video screen. It even squirted onto the ceiling over the passengers in front of me! So it dripped down on them and they urgently pressed the button to summon the harried flight attendant. "The airplane is leaking bright green fluid!" they told her. "We're doomed!" Or words to that effect. So I had to confess that I had squirted the peperoncino juice that had rained down on them like the stinging hot portent of a deadly malfunction. Then I was enjoying THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON by H.G. Wells, my chosen airplane reading, and I suddenly came to a chapter called - in embarrassingly big letters - "Experiments in Intercourse"! Ha ha! So I put my thumb over the word "intercourse" so the guy in the next seat wouldn't think I was reading something too sexy for an airplane. Wells just meant that his heroes were trying to find a way to communicate with the moon men. He didn't mean anything dirty! He meant "intercourse" in the sense of "communication." That's how people talked back in crazy times! But I hid it with my thumb anyway. Okay, I'll tell you two more things. Look at this picture. Adam says it's okay to show it now. I was going to wait until season seven of our show had concluded. There are still two more wildly surprising episodes to come but Adam says the titles are out there in the public now and everybody knows them so it doesn't matter. Well, some quite literal spy took this spy picture with her sneaky spy camera very early in the season and spread it around the "internet" without compunction, our most personal and private business, including some very revealing episode titles, though I don't believe I've given a large enough representation for you to see them. But the funny part is the map of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County that's on the wall. Look and you will see it! You may furthermore recall when it was presented to Kent and Pen. Scores of young detectives taken in by this remorseless charlatan and thief thought it was some kind of map of a previously unknown territory of Ooo, the land where ADVENTURE TIME occurs - as did, no doubt, the budding Mata Hari herself. Well, there are probably tons of 13-year-olds all inspired and debating ABSALOM, ABSALOM! now, propelled forward by their initially misguided researches - so everything turned out all right; aren't you as sure of it as I am? In my preferred version of these events, the emotionless miscreant helped everybody learn and grow even though she was trying to hurt and spoil! I'll finish up with something I've been sitting on for a month or so because I don't care about you anymore. I started reading a book called THE YEAR OF LEAR, about KING LEAR, sort of, and it has owls in it, but not even the same owls that KING LEAR has in it! Some other owls. Thomas Dekker is describing a miserable denizen of a plague house: "And to keep such a poor wretch waking, he should hear no noise but of toads croaking, screech-owls howling, mandrakes shrieking."

Clink

And now it comes to pass that I must tell you how I went to New York City for the Peabody Awards ceremony and all the marvels and wonders that the Good Lord did cause me to witness there. I know the first thing you want to know is "WHAT DID YOU READ ON THE AIRPLANE?" Calm down! Thanks to my precious book of jottings, I can tell you everything. 1. That cursed book about the Middle Ages got me thinking about THE DECAMERON. Wouldn't you know that Bill Boyle, knowing of my keen interest, purchased me a nice chunky mass-market paperback - perfect for airplanes - that promised "the complete text of this ravishingly rich and robust work." So I started reading THE DECAMERON and the guy starts right off about how people are dying like goats in the street. But he's quick to reassure us that he has to get that part out of the way so the fun stuff can start! 2. I turned down a Biscoff offered to me by a flight attendant! The world's greatest cookie. All part of my ongoing effort to button my suit for the Peabody Awards. 3. Met Megan Abbott at the Temple Bar, a great bar of the darkest kind, where I had the most refreshing gimlet of my young life. I mean, it was a dark bar. Megan took pics of our drinks and gee just look how dark they are.

Having sworn off hooch for two weeks (part of the aforementioned jacket buttoning resolution) I was ready for some gimlets. Kent Osborne showed up! And soon enough, Pendleton Ward! A fellow there in the Temple Bar pooh-poohed the artistry of BARRY LYNDON and I cursed him succinctly! That's not like me. OR IS IT? Pen drew several pictures of me on coasters and gave them to Megan. They were much like the religious icons of yore, immortalizing my various stages of peacefulness and cursing. In one of them I have my arm around Kent and I believe I am saying of him, "This guy is the king of love." I'll show you that one. The others are hilarious and I will keep digital copies of them for my own enjoyment and, perhaps, edification, but I shall never show them in public, festooned as they are with the vilest profanities. 4. We went to the hotel, where Pen taught Megan to rhumba! There is a vine of it happening if you would care to "click" here to see it. 5. Then Pen taught me to rhumba (as he had once promised to do). He had to remind me not to lead. He warned me before he dipped me. Today I don't remember how to rhumba. 6. On the bathroom wallpaper in the hotel room: whimsical black-and-white line drawings of wry cartoon birds. Closer inspection revealed that a previous guest had taken a pencil and decorated random birds here and there with graphic bits of anatomy I shan't shock you by naming.

7. Now here's the part about the Peabody Awards. I wore a tie pin that Megan had given me the night before at the Temple Bar. This picture was supposed to show off the tie pin for Megan (that's why I'm pointing) but you can't see it. It's in the shape of a cigarette lighter! 8. Before we left for the Peabodys, Pen's mom gave all of us really nice pens! Because her son's name is Pen, as she explained, and also because of our professions. Very thoughtful! 9. Now look. Here is the gang who went up onstage to get the Peabody Award for ADVENTURE TIME.

You can see that we are all dudes. I feel very lucky to have been invited, but I am also sorry for whatever quirk of timing or fate or scheduling or process that means you don't see any of the women here who are so integral to giving ADVENTURE TIME its voice. The show wouldn't be the same without Seo Kim (last night's episode was a perfect example!) or Rebecca Sugar or Natasha Allegri or Ako Castuera or Ashly Burch or Elizabeth Ito, and I could name many, many other women, past and present contributors to the show, who put their personal stamp on it and just as easily could have been up there with Pen and Adam and Kent. Not taking away at all from the immense talent of the guys you see assembled above. In fact there are infinite combos of women AND men absent from that picture who would be just as appropriate to share that stage with Adam and Pen and Kent (three people who should be in ANY picture celebrating the show). Once again, I feel really lucky that it happened to work out that I could attend. But I'm getting ahead of myself chronologically; don't you want to hear about the delicious pigs in blankets they had at the pre-Peabody reception? The server called them "cocktail franks." 9b. Speaking of bad chronology, and speaking of Natasha, she tweeted this last night: "bury me with my husband hugging me." That reminded me of the "Classics Illustrated" comic book of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, which I probably haven't thought of in at least 40 years. So I dug up the final panel, and boy what an impression it must have made on me, because it's just the way I remember it:

To which, when I tweeted it back at her, Natasha responded: "so romantic!!! so romantic that i can't think of a good bone joke!" And that's just one reason I love Natasha. 10. Fred Armisen hosted the show. Remember when I met him before he was famous and he was just some non-famous guy having a sour day? 11. We stood backstage behind Amy Schumer and her gang, who were to receive their award just before us. Tina Fey was there! Kent pointed her out to me but I could only see a vague figure gracefully flitting in the dark.

12. Steven Soderbergh was at the table next to ours! I told him how much Dr. Theresa and I love THE LIMEY and he said, "That's not something I hear very often." Ha ha ha! Here's a shot from Dr. Theresa's very favorite scene in THE LIMEY. 13. And at another adjacent table sat Ray McKinnon.

You remember him from beating up George Clooney in O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU! I met him at the Ajax Diner here in Oxford, Mississippi, a couple of years ago, so I was able to strike up a little conversation about some mutual friends of ours. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to introduce him to Tom Herpich, who is a huge fan of Mr. McKinnon's TV show RECTIFY. I missed my window on that! Boy did I feel guilty. For a good portion of the "after party" I chased Mr. McKinnon around like the prince going after Cinderella, but I never found him. I really wanted to introduce him to Tom. I apologized to Tom perhaps to a point at which I should have begun apologizing for apologizing, which I may have also done. 14. Ray McKinnon wasn't the only Peabody recipient I knew from home. Isn't that weird? Tina Antolini was there to pick up an award for a radio show she works on. And I've had drinks with her at City Grocery Bar! Oxford is weird. 15. The Adventure Time folks rode to the show in a stretch limo that had tiny lights on the ceiling that kept changing color. I said, "I want the inside of my coffin lid to look like this." And Pen's mom said, "That's the sixth joke you've made about death!" 15b. Somewhat related: I guess after I went to bed on that previous night, the night before the Peabodys, a few people stayed in the hotel bar and Pen decided with some passion that we should all dress as English peas for the Peabody ceremony. These would be, then, our "pea bodies." And according to Kent, it came close to happening, if only a quick enough delivery had been possible. Look at the casual morbidity of this tweeted report:

"ADAM!! We're all gonna die in 30 years! ORDER THE PEAPOD SUITS!" - Pendleton Ward

— Patrick McHale (@Patrick_McHale) May 31, 2015

16. I talked to Amy Schumer at the Peabody "after party." I was curious about the dynamic in an interview I'd seen her do with Jerry Seinfeld. I think I kind of put down Jerry Seinfeld...? For being "old-fashioned"? Ha ha! I don't know what I was talking about. Why was I trying to subtly badmouth Jerry Seinfeld? What did he ever do to me except try to make my life a little nicer? Amy Schumer told me that he's like her best friend now, pretty much, so I was like, "Okay!" I kept clinking her glass with mine, like giving her a toast, every time I told her how great she was. Ha ha ha! What a jerk. I just kept habitually clinking her glass each time I made another expression of genuine if hackneyed praise. I suddenly realized I had clinked her glass about half a dozen times and I apologized. She was nice and said, "No, I like it."

17. Okay! So after you go onstage, you're led to a "press area" and you miss most of the rest of the show. (We've completely abandoned chronology now, who cares?) When I finally got back to the audience area, my chair was gone! The ADVENTURE TIME table had one less chair. So I went and sat on the other side of the room with the people from the show Radiolab. I have to say they were the nicest, sweetest bunch of people at the Peabodys! Everybody loved talking to them. They love ADVENTURE TIME and Pen feels just the same way about their show. I have a lot of happy memories of riding around in a car with my brother and my nephews and all of us just enjoying Radiolab. So, anyway, those people are just as nice as you might think. They let me sit at their table a long time! 18. I have to say this about the Peabody Awards: the people who win them are doing serious work! This one guy came out and introduced his friend who shared the stage with him. The Chinese authorities had tried to take her bodily organs! Just take them! I mean, what can you say? And here she is. It's a miracle she's alive. And there was another winner who showed a clip of a beautiful child singing a song about freedom, and as she's singing, a bomb suddenly destroys the street she's standing on. Just right at that moment! It was one of the most powerful and visceral things I've ever seen and it was an introductory clip at an awards show. And I want to say this about Pen: he watched all of those documentaries in their entirety to prepare for the show. Pen is a man with great perspective. He cares about the world and that's one thing that makes his work so personal and good. 19. Pat McHale was part of the ADVENTURE TIME contingent, so I got to meet him for the first time and he was a treat to be around. I talked about how much I loved his casting of Jack Jones as a crooning frog in his masterpiece OVER THE GARDEN WALL and after saying a lot of nice things about Jack Jones, he began to analyze Rudy Vallee's singing technique.

You can't know, as an old man who works with young people all the time, what a tonic it was to my poor heart to hear a fresh-faced youngster such as Pat McHale rhapsodize about Rudy Vallee. IT JUST DOESN'T HAPPEN IN MY LINE OF WORK. Then Pat said that his grandmother had been a dancer at Radio City Music Hall! He said she had a problem with Frank Sinatra... something about how he handled a microphone. 20. Now I'm going to type about how I ate a lot of good vegetables. Ha ha ha! Vegetables! Too bad for you. I went to a place that had great fresh seasonal vegetables. Tom Herpich brought us there. And pleased were one and all by his felicitous choice. Lunch with Kent and Pat and Adam and Tom. Kent was talking about the films of Eric Schaeffer, which he finds morally, emotionally and aesthetically repugnant.

I hope I am not misrepresenting Kent's opinion! Blame me, not Kent. Let's say that I am not sufficiently describing Kent's complex attitude. Anyway, Kent was describing a particularly pornographic obsession that haunts Mr. Schaeffer's oeuvre and I said, "Hey, Kent, there are some little kids at that table over there!" and Kent said, "They have to learn about Eric Schaeffer sometime." Ha ha! Kent's witty implication was that the very idea of Eric Schaeffer was the offensive part of the conversation, you see. The next day my old friend Ward McCarthy suggested the very same place for lunch and I was only too happy to go back. I was excited! Like, "I will try different vegetables this time!" Vegetables! 21. I had eaten so many vegetables that I felt no guilt whatsoever about the mountain of fried clams I consumed that evening at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station. Clams are something we just don't have in the South... or shouldn't. I recall a time that Caroline Young and I had clams in a seedy dive in Atlanta, GA, with unspeakable results. BUT! I am getting both ahead of and behind my story. It's not a story, is it? 22. Megan and I went to MOMA and saw Martin Scorsese's collection of movie posters, which were on display. Here's one for THE KILLERS, the Don Siegel version, and I am standing under Lee Marvin's legs, I guess.

But you can't see the guy so there is some possibility that I am standing under Ronald Reagan's legs. They could be Clu Gulager's leg's too. I would rank the possibilities like this: first, Lee Marvin, second Clu Gulager. There is really very little chance that I am standing under Ronald Reagan's legs. Honestly, they are abstract legs and could belong to any "killer." 23. We went up to the Yoko Ono exhibit, which I found to be a barrel of fun! I just loved it. I can't speak for Megan. She would go around a corner and come back and command me, "Don't go around that corner, Jack!" Later, telling Dan about our day, she described whatever was around that corner as "very gynecological." She was looking out for me! Well, Megan I both saw the movie of the waddling butt that just waddles along and I guess we averted our eyes from it most of the time. It doesn't do anything but waddle along, we got the gist. I believe Megan read the placard next to it, in which the waddling was described as "a sexless march," if I am remembering what Megan read aloud correctly. But I found Yoko Ono's art to be fresh and fun. Once again, I cannot speak for Megan. 24. But I was disappointed that Yoko's apple was in pristine shape. There's an apple on a pedestal and (I think) it's just supposed to stay there until it rots. I have to say, that is one hale apple she has there! In sadly perfect condition. 25. As we were leaving the exhibit, we had a chance to participate in the "bag performance." There were two "facilitators" there and no line. Megan urged me to do it. But the bare feet of the facilitators seemed ominous and then Megan and I read the plaque and discovered that we were expected to take off all our clothes and get in a bag together and, I don't know, stumble around. We didn't. 26. Speaking of facilitators, Megan took me to St. Patrick's cathedral to show off its beauty. She said the lines on Ash Wednesday had been crazy! But once you got inside it was very efficient, with 25 ash stations, and 25 priests - facilitators, I call them - just throwing that ash on you in frenzied handfuls (from what I imagined were large buckets); sounded like to me they had a real penitence factory going there.

27. After dinner at the Oyster Bar, Megan and Dan and I went to the famous 21 Club for a nightcap. I remembered from reading (as much as could of) that Errol Flynn autobiography that something big happened to Errol Flynn at the 21 Club... either an unexpected moment of graciousness from a kind friend or stranger at his lowest point of abjection or maybe he beat up some guys there, or maybe both! 28. So the mural in the men's room at the 21 Club is hard to understand. It shows a guy peeing into a goldfish bowl. I'm pretty sure! From an impressive distance. And the goldfish is surprised and for some reason a lady's skirt is flying up. Also in surprise? And as long as we are talking about restrooms, let's go back to the Oyster Bar, in which Megan snapped this shot of a sofa in the Ladies' Room:

29. Megan's nightcap conversation at the 21 Club! She said that she's a direct descendant of Mary, Queen of Scots! Probably the least surprising news I've ever heard. Then she said, "You know, Frances Farmer never got a lobotomy." I'm pretty sure that came out of nowhere. "After she went on a binge," said Megan, "she said to the arresting officer, 'Hasn't anyone ever broken your heart?'" Then Megan asked us rhetorically, "Doesn't that just kill you?" And it did! It killed us.

What's Wrong With Eggs and Toast

You recall how I hadn't read any Robert B. Parker books about his detective Spenser, so Ace Atkins loaned me a few... well, now I have read those AND one of Ace's books about Spenser. Today I read about Spenser eating eggs and rye toast in a diner. Then he says he should have ordered the hash instead. So! Today, also, I had lunch with John Brandon, who was in town to read from his new book. And we both ironically (?) had eggs and toast. Then, while I was waiting for John Brandon's reading, I sat in the City Grocery Bar, sipping on a Pacifico and reading the first two stories from his new collection. In the second of those, a young man rejects his mother's offer of eggs and rye toast! In other words, I read TWO DIFFERENT BOOKS BY TWO DIFFERENT AUTHORS TODAY IN WHICH THE CHARACTERS WERE UNSATISFIED BY EGGS AND RYE TOAST! I was sad because I got to the bar at 4:02 and 4:02 used to be the time when Megan and I would meet when she lived here, but I was all alone, reading a book in a bar like a real dope, even though the book was a good one. Before his reading I told John that his second story put me in mind of Salinger somehow, and John's response was an expression of benign puzzlement. I left John's reading early (it was a long one, a doubleheader) and went back to City Grocery Bar, where I ran into none other than the aforementioned Ace Atkins. We were talking about Chandler when who should walk up but Tim Youd, the artist who is typing THE SOUND AND THE FURY at Rowan Oak right now! So I introduced him to Ace and they had a good conversation about Chandler. I can't remember what else happened, I guess that was it, no, something else probably happened.

Brown Spots

Let's have a little roundup of everything that is exciting on the "internet" today! ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY has a clip of an upcoming ADVENTURE TIME episode featuring guest-star Peter Serafinowicz. I even wrote a song for Peter Serafinowicz to sing! That song does not appear in the clip. But I think it appears in the episode! Before you watch the clip you have to watch an ad: Jennifer Aniston hawking some kind of cream that erases your telltale brown aging spots. A natural sponsor for ADVENTURE TIME! Elsewhere on the "internet": a love letter to Megan Abbott, courtesy of the SLATE magazine. I found out about the article at last night's Good Idea Club meeting, where it was paraphrased succinctly as "Megan Abbott is the greatest genius ever," and we all agreed! We toasted on it! The reviewer is so flustered by Megan Abbott's powerful writing that he trots out Yakov Smirnoff and MATRIX references in a kitchen-sink attempt to express the totality of his appreciation - and he is charmingly embarrassed by the hopeless nature of his own efforts. A fitting tribute to Megan Abbott, whose work destroys all those who come in contact with it! In a good way! Later this month I will sit down with Megan Abbott at Square Books and talk to her in a public forum about her incredible new novel THE FEVER. Stay tuned! I feel in my heart I should illustrate this "post" with a photo of Yakov Smirnoff.

Diablo

Well, Megan Abbott is getting ready to hightail it back to New York City, from whence she came. During her brief time here as writer-in-residence, there have been several "movie nights," not all of them chronicled by your humble chronicler - indeed, not all of them attended by him. The first featured Hal Needham's HOOPER, starring Burt Reynolds and Sally Field. For our very last "movie night" we decided to do something different: Hal Needham's SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, starring Burt Reynolds and Sally Field. "I'm trying to see whose pants are tighter," Megan remarked of our two leads. When Jerry Reed's character said, "I got to get some go-go juice and put some groceries down my neck," it reminded me of something Dean Moriarty might say, leading me to a brief and instantly concluded reflection on the relationship between beatnik and CB radio culture. Ace brought over Coors beer (an important factor in the plot, as I am sure you recall) and "diablo sandwiches," one of which Jackie Gleason orders at a pivotal point in the movie. Now, according to Ace, no one knows what a diablo sandwich really is. Ace has scoured the "internet" and found it to be full of lies, grandiose claims, and errors on the subject. He even telephoned the original restaurant from the movie - the "Old Hickory House" (as Dr. Theresa recalled last night, she used to go there for biscuits and gravy with her dad) - and confirmed that they had never sold anything called a "diablo sandwich." Ace therefore reconstructed the diablo sandwich through a careful study of the frames in which Jackie Gleason terrifyingly devours his "diablo sandwich." There is a picture that Megan took of Dr. Theresa and Ace and Bill and me standing in her kitchen over the fixings for our diablo sandwiches but I can't use it here... it is too depressing, emphasizing as it does Megan's absence from the frame (there's another one of Ace and Megan toasting with cans of Coors, but that hasn't hit my inbox yet). So instead I will find a photo of Hank Worden, whom I noticed in a SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT cameo for the first time last night. Cameo! It was a blip. Less than two seconds, I'd guess. I want to say it was a tribute to a certain scene in RED RIVER, substituting horn-blasting semis for rearing horses, though I don't know whether I'm making up that scene in my head, and now that I think of it, I don't know that Hank Worden was in RED RIVER. I do know that he was in everything from THE SEARCHERS to TWIN PEAKS (which is why he is talking to David Lynch in that photo). Interestingly (?) - how I abuse that word! - his appearance in TWIN PEAKS combines his dialogue from THE SEARCHERS with the thumbs-up gesture he flashes in SMOKEY IN THE BANDIT (doesn't he?). I have given you so much to think about.

10,000 Pieces of Toast

Watched THE NAKED CITY just now on TCM. It was great! Here's how the omniscient offscreen narrator describes people reading about a murder victim in their morning papers: "Yesterday Jean Baxter was just another pretty girl. Today she's the marmalade on ten thousand pieces of toast."

Foodstuffs!

Welcome once again to our regular feature "Foodstuffs!" - the only place on the "internet" where you can read about food! Whoops, it has been about two years since the last "Foodstuffs!", sorry. So I keep listening to this sea chantey over and over, all about a happy cod fisherman. Here (pictured) is the very fellow who sings it! It sounds as if the refrain is "this is a snakesman's life at sea," but I looked up "snakesman" and that seems to be a little skinny burglar who can fit into tight places the better to rob you... like chimneys? I don't know, I wasn't paying attention. The "internet" tells me this guy is singing "smacksman," not "snakesman." Sure sounds like "snakesman." I don't know what a "smacksman" is, except that it seems less interesting than a "snakesman." In one startling part of the ballad, our friend describes how the townspeople enjoy gathering "to see us get our fish on deck/ and crack their skulls with a little short stick." Take your entertainment where you can get it! I suppose you are disappointed because this was not a continuation of our recent discussion of Melba toast. WRONG! I looked up toast in my OXFORD COMPANION TO FOOD, and the author is practically fainting from how stoked he is to come from England, which has the greatest toast traditions, according to his swooning rhapsodies on the subject. He does mention that the romantic creation tale of Melba toast is thought by toast scholars to be "appealing but questionable." I ask you, is there any real truth in life? I guess not! The article is sprinkled - I should say "spread," ha ha! - with irresistible sentences like, "Meat toppings for toast became fashionable during the 16th century." Now, this has nothing to do with food, but we're all here so what the hell: This Norman Mailer bio wastes no time - page 11! - in saying Mailer's father looked owlish, making it a book with an owl in it. Yes, that counts! "Click" here and here if you don't believe me. Ha, I know you won't "click." You never do! It's what makes our relationship so volatile and passionate. I've never felt closer to you.

A Conversation About Melba Toast

Saw Lyn at Off Square Books, where she was running an event last night. Somehow we got to talking about melba toast. And I said, "I think I saw something about how melba toast was invented. I'll send you the link." And then we both burst into laughter, because I had just said, with grave sincerity and no intention, the most boring thing that had ever been said. And I was wrong, anyway. I was thinking of this recipe for melba toast I once featured on the "blog" - if anything, MORE boring than the story of how melba toast first came to be. Ace and Angela were there. Ace said anxiously, "Did you get the picture I sent you of my cat sitting in a box?" I confirmed as much. Ace had watched the episode of ADVENTURE TIME which features lots of cats walking around with turned-over cardboard boxes on them. By coincidence, Ace's cat had been sitting around all day - that very day! - in a cardboard box! That's her above. She is a descendant of Hemingway's famous six-toed cats. "Click" here to read about the time I found out what a hennin is while working on the cat episode of ADVENTURE TIME. "Click" here to read about Hemingway's six-toed cats. "Click" here to read about the time I dropped a French fry on the floor in 2008.

McNeil's Movie Korner

Welcome once again to "McNeil's Movie Korner," the only place on the "internet" to read about movies you don't care anything about. NEWS FLASH! I emailed McNeil after his recent visit to say we should watch CANCEL MY RESERVATION - Bob Hope's final role as a leading man - next time we get together. McNeil replied: "I don't think I've seen it since it was on the NBC movie of the week way back in the 70s. I can still see Bob holding up a jungle-print bra (a la Mrs. Robinson). I think he's climbing out of a cave? And then it burns? Am I dreaming? Am I having an astral projection?" Friends, I went ahead and watched CANCEL MY RESERVATION, and I can tell you that McNeil was only partially dreaming. Eva Marie Saint and Bob Hope are trapped in a cave, and Bob uses Eva Marie Saint's animal-print bra to fashion a makeshift bow, which he uses to shoot a makeshift flaming arrow out of a hole, attracting the attention of Keenan Wynn and Ralph Bellamy, who are flying over in a helicopter... but WHY, you ask, did I watch CANCEL MY RESERVATION without McNeil? Because McNeil went on: "Maybe it's best to save it up until just before I die, that way I have something to look forward to... like, 'Oh boy, I can't wait til I'm almost dead so I can watch CANCEL MY RESERVATION.' A movie which is appropriate for 'deathbed viewing,' and probably not only because of the title. Is deathbed one word? Why did I put that phrase in quotes? I can't believe I'm still typing..." (A sentiment I have often expressed on the "blog" - a sensation, in fact, that I am experiencing RIGHT NOW. And yet there is no end in sight.) NEWS FLASH! The opening credits of CANCEL MY RESERVATION include "With Anne Archer as Crazy." That's right! Anne Archer's character's name is "Crazy." She's a free-spirited young woman of today! (And only a year later Clint Eastwood directed a movie about a free-spirited young woman named... BREEZY.) As "Crazy" explains her name to Eva Marie Saint, "I pinned it on myself. Until we come together inside, we're all a little crazy." Wise words, "Crazy"! I believe Eva Marie Saint even remarks as much, as she and "Crazy" have some real talk about "women's lib" over coffee and toast. A lot of the movie is played really straight... the talks about "women's lib" and relationships, the murder plot... I noticed in the credits that CANCEL MY RESERVATION is based on a novel by Louis L'Amour - which probably doesn't deserve one of these (!) but there it is anyway. In one of my many books by Bob Hope, I read, "I had planned to produce it with another actor as star, but the deal didn't go through. Then Tom Sarnoff of NBC said, 'Why don't you do BROKEN GUN yourself?' Why not? The script was rewritten, and we shot most of the picture in Carefree, Arizona." That (the rewrite) explains a lot. As straight as it's played, you can feel the anxious presence of Bob Hope's gag writers like invisible creatures from another world, occasionally breaking through the membrane of existence Lovecraft style. In one distasteful instance, Bob obviously took the fellas aside and said, "Hey, there should be a gag where I try to give this kid mouth-to-mouth" (talking about Anne Archer) and they gritted their teeth and buckled down and put it in there, though it's absolutely unnecessary, which made me think of of what McNeil said about Hope's love interest in EIGHT ON THE LAM, and the general information about Hope's "love life" that has been funneled to me over the years by Megan Abbott. Another intrusion into the "reality" of CANCEL MY RESERVATION occurs when Bob imagines being hung in front of a jeering mob that includes Bing Crosby, Johnny Carson, John Wayne and Flip Wilson in cameo appearances. Immediately I thought of two other Hope movies that revolve around Hope being executed or nearly executed: by electric chair in MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE and guillotine in CASANOVA'S BIG NIGHT. And there must be more. Is there a scholarly paper to written about Bob Hope's recurring nightmare of public execution? No. Though it occurs to me this may be another motif that Woody Allen picked up from Hope... God help me, I just keep typing, don't I? CANCEL MY RESERVATION is one of those late films of which Dave Kehr remarked, "There’s none of the fearful, anti-hippie humor that had come to dominate his television specials; instead, he seems to be doing his best to keep up, adapting the point of view of a concerned, confused but not wholly unsympathetic parent." From the same article: "Funny they are not, but these last efforts are unexpectedly moving. Hope does his unflappably professional best to pick his way through a cultural landscape that had irreversibly shifted beneath his feet." And that's the word I kept thinking, too, as I watched Hope work here: "professional." NEWS FLASH! McNeil watched GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN on TCM yesterday. He reports: "The director of GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN does the same thing Jerry Lewis does in THE LADIES MAN! Gidget tells a woman on a plane a story that happened only 12 minutes earlier in the movie, and the director replays the scene for the audience to relive (with Gidget providing v/o) - just in case we forgot." I recall that Kent Osborne and I once watched the beginning of THE LADIES MAN together, and the odd editorial choice described by McNeil marked a point of no return for Kent. Here's how Chris Fujiwara puts it in his great Jerry monograph: "Lewis unfolds redundancy for its own sake, as redundancy... The repetition discloses nothing new but only confirms the obsessive nature of Herbert's relation to the scene (and, in a wider sense, the obsessional character that all narrative possesses for Lewis)." Okay! (See also. "See also"? Ha ha ha! Pendarvis, you're a riot! I know nobody's reading this. See also.)

McNeil's Movie Korner

Welcome once again to McNeil's Movie Korner! McNeil got what he thought was a pretty quick rejection for a short story, so he combed through his old emails, looking for a half-remembered rejection of stunning swiftness ("click" here to read about that one). But he came across something else during his search: "In the process of looking for the record for quickest rejection, I ran across an old email exchange in which we were discussing the film Avanti. On May 8th, 2007 I stated that Avanti was not a good movie. I believe I put not in all caps like this: NOT. I was wrong. I saw it last summer (or fall, I can't remember), and it is a very good movie. I wanted that on the record. Please correct the record." McNeil, a man of honor! Not afraid to look deep within himself! Speaking of old emails, I received one from McNeil back in early March about the film BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: "Pretty good. John Garfield was good in it. Sorta petered out at the end with the mushymushykissykissy." This has been McNeil's Movie Korner.

13!

Hey you know whenever I am having a video conference with the guys from ADVENTURE TIME and one of my cats jumps on my lap Kent will take a photo of it and I will have to show it to you! Kent says this cat (Pan by name) looks like one of the aliens from ATTACK THE BLOCK. So then later today I had class with my grad students at City Grocery Bar. We were discussing the last half of the Charles Schulz bio we read and someone (McKay by name) noted that TODAY is the thirteenth anniversary of Charles Schulz's death on FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH 2013! We raised a glass to "Sparky."

"Blog"trospective 10: Gelatin

So I just read three books with Jell-O in them: so what? It would be dumb to make a "blog"trospective called "Books with Jell-O in Them" just because our big, lush "blog"trospective about books with owls in them is so enormously popular and all anyone ever talks about ever all the time. Once I read three books in a row with Pernod in them, and that went nowhere. But by opening up the field a little, there may be enough material here for a true "blog"trospective worthy of ranking alongside the rest of them, which nobody cares about. For example, my WEBSTER'S NEW TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, UNABRIDGED, SECOND EDITION from 1974 lists "jellies made with gelatine" (they add the extra e 'cuz they're fancy!) as the second-greatest definition of "gelatin." So anyway, enjoy this "blog"trospective about gelatin and shut up. agarita bush; fruits of make jelly---attracts bigfoot---bags of arrive---Canadian sitcom inspires forum on---Castuera, Ako; talking about jellyfish with---certainty of the jelly factory, the---color of rubies in the setting sun, the---congealing veins, my---contributes to Dr. Theresa's love of toast---cow's blood as---cruddy bloud---Currence, John, takes a culinary blowtorch to some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches---dandy in aspic, a---drinking wine from Jell-O glasses---elves made of---EnerGel---enough for 10,000 pieces of toast---fails to redeem book---Farmer's Daughter Salty Dog Marmalade---fig preserves---freed from---ham hock and red pepper jelly on toast---Hope, Bob; rewards mistress with the gift of jam---in GIDGET---in Martha Washington cake---in PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT---in two Philip Roth novels---in works of Lucia Berlin---jam on pancakes---jellied ginger ale cubes---jellyfish in the works of Virginia Woolf and Thomas Mann---jelly-like substances in the works of Osamu Dazai and Walt Whitman---Kerouac uses "jello" as a verb---Lord Grimthorpe's last words invoke---Lucky Charms marshmallows contain gelatin made with pork---Martin, Dean; relationship of song stylings to---McNeil receives a free lemon jelly donut---Mickey Mouse stares at his reflection in some Jell-O---Mrs. Abington's better than Mrs. Thrale's---oils up your joints---picking up Jell-O cubes with fingers---plovers' eggs set like large opals in aspic jelly---poisoned---possibly immortal jellyfish---proponent of aspic given a diamond by the Tsar---puts one in mind of a character name from ANIMAL HOUSE---quivering in a spoon---red pepper jelly---robot standing in aspic---salamander eggs resemble---some varieties of might possibly on occasion be classified as "sweetmeats"---SpongeBob gets jelly from jellyfish---tartness of---tearful separation from---terrible flying bags of---used as a metaphor by George Kennedy---water the color of "lime jello"---Welles, Orson; has eyes like side-orders of---woman made of, a.