Witold Gombrowicz Is Like Jim Gaffigan

Time and time again we have established that I am wrong about everything. Here, let me give you a recent example! So, remember when I said I remembered going to Square Books and... wait. Please remind yourself that my brain was zapped by mysterious forces just a couple of years ago. But remember when I said I had seen a version of THE ILIAD blurbed by Emily Wilson but not translated by her? That can't be the case. Because I went to Square Books yesterday and saw with my own eyes Emily Wilson's translation of THE ILIAD, which I had convinced myself did not exist. And why would she blurb an ILIAD when she had a fresh new ILIAD of her own? I said to Mevelyn... wait! Let me tell you about Mevelyn. Mevelyn is from Cuba. She is a great bookseller. Case in point, she has forced me to buy a lot of Alejo Carpentier with her hypnotic powers. She tells a good ghost story. She knows everything about books! You can ask her about the different translations of DON QUIXOTE, for example, and she'll point out all their strengths and weaknesses. I always hope that Mevelyn will be working when I visit Square Books so I can hear a good ghost story or a nightmare she had about Karl Marx. Anyway, I grasped Emily Wilson's translation of THE ILIAD in my wizened paws and I says to Mevelyn, I says, "Hey! Mevelyn! Wasn't there a recent version of THE ILIAD with a blurb by Emily Wilson, but she didn't translate it? I feel like I'm going crazy!" So it sounds familiar to Mevelyn, too! She feels like she saw it recently. So we stand there a long time trying to figure out what the hell we are talking about. We are having one of those folies à deux that people enjoy so much. Anyway! When I got home, I realized what I had seen was a new translation of THE AENEID for which Emily Wilson wrote the introduction. Not a blurb! An introduction! Not THE ILIAD! THE AENEID! The important thing is that I had a coupon, so I was able to get Emily Wilson's translation of THE ILIAD for free, just about. That's the thing! Get yourself a "Constant Reader Number" at Square Books! Then you too will be able to grab an almost-free book once in a while. And so it came to pass that THE ILIAD is my current "nighttime book" and the DIARY of Witold Gombrowicz is my current "daytime book." I have reached the point in the diary where Gombrowicz has begun to attack himself, sotto voce, the way Jim Gaffigan does in his standup act. You know, Jim Gaffigan will tell a joke and then he'll switch to a soft, high-pitched, almost strangled voice, pretending to be an audience member, questioning his own premise. Is that a good description of what Jim Gaffigan does? No? How the hell would you know? Anyway, now Witold Gombrowicz is doing what Jim Gaffigan does... in diary form! It's like when Milhouse said that ALF was back in pog form. Everything is like when Milhouse said ALF was back in pog form.

An Attractive Spine

Well, I certainly have gotten myself into some kind of fix with all these books around here, each one carefully calibrated to fit a different portion of my complicated life. For further details, feel free to "click" the appropriate "hyperlinks" in the "body" of this "post." You know about the old comic books I read in bed at night, and the book I took on my recent visit to my parents, which should be distinguished from the sort of book I take on an airplane (determined mainly by size), although I haven't been on an airplane in some time. But the possibility is always lurking, and I do have a number of books around here that would work on airplane, THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA being my current top contender. No doubt you will remember how I, with unknown metaphysical ramifications, took my book for doctors' waiting rooms on my most recent parental jaunt. That was a mistake, and I'm going to have to think about it seriously, as I have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow. And most of all, you are thinking of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, what I would probably call my "main book." There's some trouble with that! You see, I started our new book club book today, so room for the last bit of JOSEPH will have to be made in some other portion of my packed schedule. By the way, in a book club meeting conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order this morning, we voted to rename ourselves the Million Dollar Book Club. My cofounder, I believe, was still calling it the Doomed Book Club, long after I had stopped. Let me check the minutes of today's meeting in order to quote myself accurately: "I stopped thinking of it as 'Doomed Book Club' years ago, after those slackers peeled off one by one, like dirty rats escaping our beautiful sinking ship!" I don't believe I've ever told you that I keep yet another book by my favorite chair, just in case the TV goes on the blink. Right now it's TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED. But none of this is what I wanted to discuss. So! One kind of book I haven't mentioned yet (in this "post") is my "blood pressure book." This is the one I read for five minutes at a time as I sit up straight and breathe normally before taking my blood pressure. The latest of those is the new (?) one by James Ellroy. I'm not sure it's new. But it was still in hardcover at Square Books, where I was captivated by its attractive, glaring spine. You might be asking how James Ellroy could possibly soothe anyone's blood pressure. I'll tell you. It's something about these rat-a-tat, rhythmic sentence fragments, like a hateful, violent metronome lulling me into a peaceful trance. Just yesterday, I think, there were three short sentences or fragments in a row about owls. Night owls, of course. "Night owl this. Night owl that. Night owl the other." I paraphrase delightfully.

The Owl of Conceit

I called it! When the 2-person book club began reading this biography of Polly Adler by Debby Applegate, I said to myself, "Jack," I said, "If this book has an owl in it at all, it will be a so-called 'night owl.'" And what do you know? Applegate gives us "night owls lingered over a bowl of matzoh ball soup." Right again, Pendarvis! You're a genius. But that's not all. After I put down Polly Adler, I picked up my nightly tonic, an old comic book. Of course you recall how Tom Franklin brought me some old comic books in the hospital, and some more old comic books when I got home, and soon I was buying my own old comic books like a deranged fiend. But what you didn't know is that Tom brought me even more old comics books after that! He's like a golden goose that keeps laying old comic books and I promise never to open him up to see how it works, as in the old fairy tale. That story taught me a lesson! Anyhow, I was reading an old comic book from Tom's most recent delivery, a story about a character of whom, like El Diablo and The Shroud before him, I had never heard. And this lively fellow's name was The Viking Prince. So this here Viking Prince meets a princess, and this here princess says, "I WILL NEVER MARRY THIS -- THIS -- OWL OF CONCEIT!" So I shut my old comic book and lay there thinking my wise thoughts. And I thought and thought, and the thought came to me that the hilarious idea of an owl of conceit reminded me of a book I read at least a few times as a teenager, a book called THE PLATYPUS OF DOOM AND OTHER NIHILISTS, and I lay there trying to remember any of the contents, of which only a salacious detail or two came back to me. I still have my copy! As you can see in the photo above, it resides on the drugstore-style paperback spinner I have right here in my home office where I type these mesmerizing words that appear before your wondering eyes like magic. Okay, now I must move on to a spoiler for one of the stupid word puzzles in the New York Times. I know people are serious about their stupid New York Times word puzzles, so if you get up every morning and do a stupid New York Times word game puzzle (not the crossword) like some kind of glasses-wearing egghead, I advise you to stop reading now. All right! Here we go. Have you stopped reading? Ha ha! You don't exist! And if you did, you wouldn't have read this far anyway. So, one of the producers of a secret project I can't tell you about got me going on this particular stupid New York Times word game puzzle thing. So, you must recall that I spent the night tossing and turning and thinking about the platypus. Not something that comes to mind often! Not to my mind. This morning, I get up and do my stupid New York Times puzzle word game puzzle game puzzle thing. And one of the answers is... TRADEMARKS OF A PLATYPUS. In conclusion, I leafed through my old copy of PLATYPUS OF DOOM and there is a cigarette ad in the middle of it. That's how it used to be! I don't think my grandfather owned a book without a cigarette ad in the middle.

Three Times the Owl

As I often do between book-club books, I picked up Ovid and randomly opened to yet another owl: "three times the owl/ Wailed out his cry to warn her." I don't want to say what the owl was upset about, but it was pretty sick stuff. Let's just say the owl had some good reasons! You're once, twice, three times an owl, and I love you, to paraphrase Lionel Richie. Which reminds me: back when I went to Sunday school, some folksy Christian troubadours came by as a special treat one time, and I was mesmerized by a short-haired young woman in a French-style striped shirt (you know, like Jean Seberg in BREATHLESS, basically, though I had not seen it at the time), who strummed her guitar and sang words about Jesus to that Commodores song, as I still remember: "You're once, twice, three times a Savior." That's what we thought was cool!

Buckle Up

Dipped into WAGNERISM by Alex Ross again. I arrived at this promising sentence: "It was the age of esotericism, occultism, Satanism, Spiritism, Theosophy, Swedenborgism, Mesmerism, Martinism, and Kabbalism." It was at the beginning of a section! When a section starts like that, you just buckle up for a roller coaster ride.

My Slowly Growing Appendix

Hey, you remember how I wrote a book about cigarette lighters then immediately stopped caring about cigarette lighters, but once in a while I see something that really should have gone into my book about cigarette lighters so I add it to a very slowly growing appendix. Well, last night Dr. Theresa and I watched STARGATE, and when an alien kid grows mesmerized by Kurt Russell's cigarette lighter, it speaks to a trope I introduced on page 46, if you want to grab your copy of my cigarette lighter book and pencil it in, because I knew this trope existed, but I didn't provide any examples, because I really couldn't think of any, so I wrote about things that were sort of like it (accurately noting, as does become apparent in STARGATE, "It's always a short leap to the more ominous flare of gunpowder") and now, thanks to watching STARGATE last night, I have an example of the rather gross trope where the white man comes to a "remote" place and blows everybody's mind with his cigarette lighter, goodbye.

Mushrooms

Last night I watched UN FLIC on Ace Atkins's back porch - just look, there I am standing in front of the projector afterward - and I had a pretty good tweet about UN FLIC that I tweeted when I got home but then I realized that nobody wants to read tweets about UN FLIC, so I deleted my great tweet about UN FLIC, and that's when I realized I'd better "blog" about UN FLIC even though I don't "blog" anymore. That's what the "blog" is, I realized: a big old city dump. You don't want to drive out there to the city dump but sometimes there's some unwieldy thing you have to get rid of. So I was supposed to bring something "French" to Ace's, so I found this mushroom recipe in an old French cookbook, and I used about half a bottle of good white wine in these damn mushrooms - pardon my "French" - ha ha! And then they turn out to be these... mushrooms. Just some mushrooms lying there. Just some cold mushrooms lying wearily on a plate. "Serve very cold," the old French cookbook advised. It didn't help. They were just like... mushrooms. You eat one and you're like, "Yep, that's a mushroom." You know, maybe I was too timid with the coriander! "They can't possibly require THIS MUCH coriander!" I yelled. "These old French people were CRAZY!" Well, who's laughing now? The old dead French people, that's who. The only good thing about them (the mushrooms, not the old dead French people) was Dr. Theresa's suggestion that I bring along Bob Hope's cocktail forks for people to spear and eat them with. I also brought Bob Hope's very own personal (former) glass toothpick holder to hold them in! The cocktail forks, I mean. One of my greatest joys of the evening was seeing Bill Boyle's little girl absolutely murdering a strawberry with one of Bob Hope's cocktail forks. (In case some of you don't know why I have Bob Hope's cocktail forks, I bought them at an auction.) Well, anyway,

I didn't understand UN FLIC. Like, Richard Crenna spent a lot of time combing his hair! Like, I think I got up to pee and came back and Richard Crenna was still combing his hair. That's what my great deleted tweet was about. I can't remember the exact wording of my great deleted tweet, but it was something like, "Critics the world over agree that UN FLIC is the film in which Richard Crenna spends the most time combing his hair." So you can see why I deleted it. It's too specific for the high-pressure world of the on-the-go twitter user of today! This "blogger" I found ("click" here) has a more positive spin on that scene (pictured), which I will now quote: "Once we're inside the train, Melville's sure touch returns... The scene goes on for several minutes, during which we see Crenna carefully adjust his coiffure not once but twice... the meticulous preparations are mesmerizing." The fact that I was just all, "Boy, he is sure is combing his hair a lot!" is my own problem. As Bill Boyle pointed out, the long shot of the adorable little helicopter flying over the tiny train made UN FLIC look briefly like a Wes Anderson movie.

Graham Ogden

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

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

Li'l Henry James

I read in the New York Times the other day about some autobiographical writings by Henry James, in which James (I'll paraphrase and misremember freely now) recalled being a kid, tossing and turning in bed at night, wondering what secrets might be found in HOT CORN, a scandalous book his father wouldn't let him read. So I ordered a first edition of HOT CORN. There were print-on-demand versions available, but I've had very bad luck with those. I've read the first 49 pages of HOT CORN and maybe Henry James wasn't missing much. There's a good deal of padding. In fact, Chapter Two seems strangely similar to Chapter One. But what about the hot corn, you ask? There's plenty! "Katy, the Hot Corn girl... Hot corn! here's your nice hot corn - smoking hot... 'Hot corn, hot corn!' now pealing in the midnight air... what shall be my title? What better could I have than HOT CORN... the poor little girl that sits shivering by the path, crying hot corn... Take care, little hot corn girl, or you will be run over... She is nothing but a hot corn girl... And a pale-faced little girl sits upon the steps of the Bank of the Republic, adding to that constant cry, 'Hot corn! Hot corn!'... 'Hot corn, here's your nice hot corn!'... Do you think when I get a little bigger, the old woman is going to keep me in the street all day and half the night, peddling peanuts and selling hot corn?... Her children are in the street, filling the night air with an appealing cry, 'Hot corn, hot corn, who'll buy my nice hot corn?'... it is the hot corn girl... Julia is no older, and but little bigger, and she has often stopped in her walk to eat hot corn... they had begged, and stole, and peddled hot corn and pea-nuts together... Here's your nice Hot Corn, smoking hot, smoking hot, just from the pot!... This chapter was published under the simple title 'Hot Corn'... Here they live - barely live - in holes almost as hot as the hot corn... Hot corn! Hot corn! here's your nice hot corn... I discovered the owner of the hot corn cry... 'Some corn, sir,' lisped the little sufferer... 'give me some corn, you little wolf's whelp'... 'please buy some corn, sir'... Oh dear! now there goes a man, and I did not cry hot corn, what shall I do?... I dashed the corn in the gutter... I almost involuntarily cried, 'hot corn,' as I saw the hot spirit of that grain, under the guises of 'pure gin' - 'old rum' - 'pale brandy' - 'pure port'... crying 'Hot corn' to gain a penny for the purchase of a drink of the fiery dragon... from some side street, came up the cry of 'Hot corn! - hot corn!'... like a lost spirit on the midnight air - 'Hot corn, hot corn! - here's your nice hot corn - smoking hot - hot - hot - hot corn.'... send delicate little girls at midnight through the streets, crying 'Hot corn'... 'Hot corn,' then, be the watchword... the little girl whose wailing cry has been the inciting cause of this present dish of 'Hot Corn - smoking hot!'" That's just the first two chapters and I'm sure I've missed some of the hot corn. Retyping it I do fall under the spell... it's not subtle ("Hot corn, hot corn! - here's your nice hot corn - smoking hot - hot - hot - hot corn" stands out). One does begin to worry about the hot corn girls. I wonder whether HOT CORN influenced my friend Eugene's book JENNIE THE WATERCRESS GIRL, for which I'm searching around the house now (Eugene a "pure port" lover, coincidentally), though I'm sure Eugene was tapping into a whole subgenre with which I'm unfamiliar... there's Stephen Crane's MAGGIE (a favorite of Bill Taft's), which must be related, maybe even (wild speculation) inspired by the subtitle characters of HOT CORN ("Little Katy, Madalina the Rag-Picker's Daughter, Wild Maggie, &c")... and of course Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl" (which appears in my cigarette lighter book). Now I also have the urge to finally read Upton Sinclair's book-length anti-alcohol sermon THE CUP OF FURY, which Hogan testified made her crave a cold martini.

Hypno Eyes

Well, we're smack in the middle of our 8-part Marceline arc on ADVENTURE TIME. I hope you're enjoying it! I am. I mean, it's really good! Layered. We layered it up for you. The second half commences tonight, featuring a star turn from Paul Williams. Last night we saw episodes three and four. I was there while the actors were recording episode three. Olivia Olson, who plays Marceline, was getting a cold! PLUS she had a singing audition the next day. But the part required her (as you may have seen) to give a blood-curdling scream when the Vampire King bites her neck. And she had to shout and growl and such, on top of doing the scream over and over at the top of her lungs. Not good for the human voice! But she did it. She committed! She didn't hold back. I just made the same statement three times in a row; that's called "style." Part four had this character "The Empress." (Paul Williams plays "The Hierophant" - all the vampires are named after tarot cards. Which reminds me: I have a friend who works on iZombie, and on that show last night, the main character made a little speech about the tarot card "The Empress." RIGHT AFTER THE EMPRESS APPEARED ON ADVENTURE TIME. Coincidence? Yes, entirely. Rebecca Romijn plays our Empress, which, as I've mentioned repeatedly in various formats, including life itself, means that we've got a real Brian De Palma thing going on, what with Paul Williams in there too.) I like The Empress! She has this snake that lives coiled around her neck and sometimes it slithers up, over her head, and pulls up her turban with its fangs, revealing her hypno eyes, and that's how she gets you. So watch out! Here we see her as sketched by Seo, who co-boarded and co-wrote part four with Somvilay. In the ADVENTURE TIME meeting today I'm going to ask who came up with that snake. Great snake.

Like Animals

Don't be like me! I missed Marcella and Her Lovers at the Lamar Lounge last night and heard nothing but great things about the performance, which apparently ended with Jon Langford and Barry Mills on washboards and a mesmerized Chris Lopez - an instant Marcella and Her Lovers convert - on cowbell and Dr. Theresa on tambourine! Meanwhile, I came home early from City Grocery Bar (that's Langford and Megan Abbott - those two overheard discussing the work of Arthur Machen - and me and Hogan and Bill Boyle, oh, and Julie Mills peeking from the corner!) and fell asleep on the couch and when Dr. Theresa came home she fell asleep in the living room too (the very living room where, surreally and wonderfully, Langford and Hogan had been having band practice earlier in the day) and we slept in the living room. Like animals! So don't miss the rest of these wonderful events that Dr. Theresa and her department are throwing this week. Beginning today! I mean, yesterday. That's why I got up so early to tell you.

I Finally Turn Into Larry King

You know, I have never warmed up to Van Johnson. Wow, what a lead-off sentence, ha ha, now the transformation is complete: I have turned into Larry King. But it's true. I don't like Van Johnson in any movie except DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE. It comes on TCM a lot. Whenever it's on I have to watch a few scenes at least. Last night I saw the scene with the nightclub hypnotist Pat Collins. I guess she was a real-life famous nightclub hypnotist. She was wearing these glasses. I think they were these glasses. This is a publicity photo, I guess, but she seems to be wearing her own stage finery in DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE. Have you seen it? It's pretty good! Van Johnson is okay as a loud, insecure, cheerful, cornfed car dealer who's obsessed with his mother. Better than okay! I have to give him that. But I hate him in everything else. I just can't watch him. He gives me the creeps. Screw you, the late Van Johnson!

Entranced Cowherd

Also still reading this book about the Middle Ages. Just ran across Christine de Saint Trond, a cowherd who would "whirl herself to unconsciousness like a dervish." In her "trancelike state" she'd "clamber up into the rafters of churches and climb towers and trees, flirting with death. She also tried to replicate the torments of sinners in Hell by putting herself in ovens, plunging into boiling water, having herself lashed to mill wheels and hanged on gallows, and lying in open graves." Just another one of the fun loving characters from the Middle Ages!

No Sun Partisan He

Our friend Mark Baker was in town to install some rare old photographs of Atlanta's Cabbagetown neighborhood over at the Powerhouse. Why did he do that? I am happy to tell you! The Isom Center, the Southern Foodways Alliance, and others are hosting a Cabbagetown retrospective at 7 PM on March 19. You should attend! Among the other treats will be live performances from Bill Taft and Caroline Young, who will read her poetry about that place. There will be a rare screening of BENJAMIN SMOKE, Jem Cohen's lauded documentary about Bill's old band. Also: food! We walked up with Mr. Baker last night to see Jonathan Richman perform in the intimate setting of Proud Larry's. Many familiar faces in the crowd: Dent May is visiting from his new home in Los Angeles. Jimmy came up from New Orleans for the show. Mary Miller! Bill Boyle! A respectable crowd, but small enough that you could get to know every face in it. Jonathan Richman just walked in off the street and through the front door with his guitar case, stepped onto the stage and started playing with zero fuss. His stone-faced drummer hopped up from the bar and joined him. He sang a song thanking the sun for allowing us to grow peas and corn. Then, as if to prove he's not strictly a sun worshipper, he reminded us that sometimes (I think I have this right) "we want to paddle our own canoe into the sinister darkness." He sang a song about it. "He's a mesmerist!" said Dr. Theresa, trying to describe Jonathan Richman's crazy dance moves after the show. "It's like he's looking THROUGH us!" Will McIntosh reportedly whispered to Dr. Theresa during the performance. Jonathan Richman bridged each song with fancy guitar licks so that there were no pauses, no places to clap. We clapped anyway, when we could.

Love, Kids, Love

Hey! That's a commercial from the old TV show I used to make. Here are some TRIVIA FACTS! 1) And I can't believe I never said this before (or did I?), but when we were shooting this, some kids chased another kid up a tree and my buddy Barry came out and said to those meaner kids, "Love, kids, love!" And those kids immediately understood what Barry was saying and let the other kid down the tree. (Or maybe they were just under the thrall of Barry's mesmerizing delivery.) That's one reason I love Barry so much! And I still say this a lot: "Love, kids, love!" 2) This footage was shot in large part by future Oscar nominee Mark Osborne! 3) I think some of the 8mm footage was shot by the future makers of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." I don't know. 4) Fred Armisen was here! He is famous now! But during this shoot he was just lurking in the background and you never see him. Back then he was just some sour guy. (Why did I say "sour"? That was gratuitous! Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe he had stuff on his mind. Maybe my memory fails me.) 5) That's Chris Lopez from the Rock*A*Teens who is knocking down that piñata with his guitar. 5) That kid being held aloft is Ward McCarthy's kid! She is going to college now. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

Heliocentric Worlds

Brian sent me a tweet in which someone talks (appreciatively!) about "the moment a dud Jerry Lewis bit passes the three-minute mark." The tweeter praised such moments as transgressive. I understand what he's getting at, and he's right, but the more Jerry I watch, the less I can think of those bits (which seldom last three minutes, though they may seem much longer) as "duds." My attitude toward Jerry Lewis is kaleidoscopic! I didn't even mind the sock puppet bit in THE ERRAND BOY last time I watched it. Of course, sometimes Jerry does milk a dud - Milk Duds! - on purpose. He WANTS you to be uncomfortable during Stanley's terrible stand-up act in THE PATSY, or when Kelp and the Dean sit in fraught silence. I've grown to enjoy how he draws things out. The other day I was actually narrating such a moment from CRACKING UP to Pen and Kent, featuring Jerry's compulsion to stretch a gag past its natural life by narrating his own misfortune. I remember a couple of years ago when I got obsessed with listening to a Sun Ra album called "Heliocentric Worlds" over and over. It starts up with some bells jingling and then a noise like a cord being plugged into an amp or a needle dropping roughly on an LP, but after you've listened to that record about ten times in a row, you know when the bass clarinet is going to squeak or whatever, and when the muted trumpet is going to start echoing, you're familiar with the terrain, and what seemed like a jumble turns out to be a path full of friendly landmarks - that electronic burp, which may have been an accident to begin with, becomes a welcoming beacon. What Sun Ra said about peach pie applies here, and I'll repeat it in case you're not up to "clicking" on "links": "if you keep eating peach pie every day, [sooner or later] it's going to taste like something else." And I can swear I "blogged" about this once, but didn't David Lynch famously drink a chocolate milkshake from the same restaurant every day for the same reason? Hey! This is way off the subject, but while I was looking for a frame of my current favorite scene from CRACKING UP (Jerry is a hideous gangster - man, he loves dressing up as hideous gangsters! His grotesque mug shot was the running gag McNeil and I appreciated the most in our recent viewing of THE BIG MOUTH - who becomes mesmerized by the security camera, so that the bank robbery turns into a song-and-dance number; note that carpet, subject of a McNeil theory) I ran across an interesting Jonathan Rosenbaum essay in which he attributes current American disdain for Lewis to (among other things) classism: "regardless of how many rooms his Bel-Air mansion had, Lewis’s nouveau riche manner, like that of Elvis, kept his persona firmly within the realm of the working-class." (See also.) Please "click" on Mr. Rosenbaum's essay, he's so much smarter than me (though I did beat him, I think, in comparing Jerry to Edgar Allan Poe).

The Existence of Robert Walden

Hey but I know you remember last year's Halloween Film Festival when a movie called THE VAMPIRE nearly destroyed us. It wasn't even about a legit vampire. It was about a guy who took pills made of bats! And it wasn't very good. And it was called THE VAMPIRE. So WHERE WAS THE VAMPIRE? It took the wind out of our sails. We didn't think we could go on! Why am I forcing myself to relive this? Well, this year's Halloween Film Festival, by contrast, has been going pretty great! BUT. Then there was this thing we watched called AUDREY ROSE. I guess it started out okay, with an eerily dreamy car crash. But then in the middle it turned into MIRACLE ON 34th STREET. Remember that? That's the movie where there's a trial that hinges on proving that Santa Claus exists. That's not a horror movie! And in the middle of AUDREY ROSE it suddenly turns into a courtroom drama about the existence of the immortal soul! HUH? And how it travels from body to body. And therefore you can't really be convicted of kidnapping somebody if she happens to have your dead kid's soul living inside her. WHAT! And everybody in the courtroom sits around nodding gravely like, "Hmm, makes a lot of sense when you think about it, I guess we should let this guy kidnap whoever he wants." MIRACLE ON 34th STREET handles this kind of implausible legal whimsy quietly and even believably. Here your jaw just drops. And you also realize that now you are watching a flimsy courtroom drama with a million holes in it instead of a horror movie. The defense lawyer arguing in favor of the human soul (!) is played by Robert Walden, the existence of whom the "blog" has proven before. And saintly soft-spoken spiritual weirdo kidnapper Anthony Hopkins sits there having long documentary-style flashbacks (I think) to religious rituals in India, where, throughout the movie, he has been sort of humbly yet obnoxiously bragging about living for a while and it made him so great and quietly humble and everything (it was at this point that Dr. Theresa realized we had been suckered into watching some kind of proselytizing religious movie for our Halloween Film Festival), and the movie suddenly cuts from the stock footage of India to the star of our movie, a little girl, inexplicably marching in a circle with some other little girls around a giant snowman in a schoolyard in New York or wherever the hell they are.

I mean a GIANT snowman! I'm not sure I can get across how big this snowman is, I mean, this is a towering snowman. (This "blog" "post" I found on the "internet" - "click" here - rightly compares it to THE WICKER MAN, which went through my mind too. [I should also include a "link" to this more appreciative though still skeptical analysis of the film.]) Then they put a crown on the giant snowman and set it on fire. Here you can see the girl being hypnotized by the flames because of her crazy soul and all. It made me think of the "burning the witch" segment in Fellini's AMARCORD (pictured), which I believe (if I recall correctly)

symbolizes the same thing the snowman seems to symbolize in AUDREY ROSE: the end of winter's tyranny. And then that made me think of the awesome beginning of Fellini's CASANOVA (below).

Which probably has something to do with fecundity, and so might be related to the coming of spring, I have no idea what I'm talking about, isn't that what's going on in THE WICKER MAN too, somebody help me, I just want to take my mind off of AUDREY ROSE. Then Fellini's CASANOVA made me think of THE LAST TYCOON, the movie version of THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON, which kind of nicely captures the scene from the novel of the intoxicating vision of the girls floating on the big head through the backlot after an earthquake. That's an intoxicating vision it would be almost impossible to ruin.

But THE LAST TYCOON misses so much about the novel. Would you like me to tell you what? OKAY! For example, in the movie, whiz-kid studio exec Robert De Niro explains to a huffy "literary writer" exactly what a movie story is, and that's fine, but De Niro squirms and darts around and leaps about and gesticulates so much while he does it! Really laying it on thick. Whereas in the book, his character (Monroe Stahr) makes the exact same speech, but oh so still and simply... it's better. It's spellbinding! In the novel. A real centerpiece. And there's another big problem with THE LAST TYCOON, which I generally like. But let's not get into that. I do remember reading in Tony Curtis's autobiography about how handsome and fit he was in THE LAST TYCOON and it made Ray Milland and Robert Mitchum so jealous because Tony Curtis was walking around being such a fine hot specimen of manhood, according to Tony Curtis. I find it hard to imagine Mitchum giving a crap. BUT I'M GETTING OFF TRACK. Maybe I'm just avoiding AUDREY ROSE. A long time ago the "blog" used to tally up all the guys we saw in movies with cigarette holders, I can't remember why. Anyway we stopped that nonsense. But the prosecuting attorney in AUDREY ROSE, who hates reincarnation, is played by the stalwart John Hillerman (pictured), and he sits in judge's chambers puffing away on a cigarette through a cigarette holder. The man was born to use a cigarette holder.

I'll say that for him. The movie has a chance to redeem itself (maybe) at the end, when Anthony Hopkins tosses a chair through a two-way mirror (don't ask), a kind of neat effect that perfectly sets up (for reasons we shan't go into) a cathartic solution to all the troubled kid's terrible problems. (Robert Wise, who directed AUDREY ROSE, also co-directed CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, a much superior horror movie that's not quite a horror movie about parents who don't understand what their child is going through. But he didn't luck out twice with the child actors, I'll tell you that! Though I hate to cast aspersions upon a child actor. So we won't get into that.) BUT! And here is a BIG SPOILER. Instead of fulfilling the perfectly set-up catharsis that was right there in the filmmakers' hands, the kid just flat-out lies down and dies. The kid dies! Boom. She's dead. They killed the kid. No more kid. The kid's just lying there dead. No catharsis for you! And then there's a long solemn epistolary voice-over from her mother (!) about how that all worked out pretty well because her kid's ashes were sent to India (with her creepily beatific stalker Anthony Hopkins!) so maybe the whole reincarnation thing will go better next time. That's looking on the old bright side, I guess.

Auditory Hallucinations

Hogan and I had lunch at the Oxford Canteen and Paul Williams showed up! He remembered us. Hogan and I had just been talking about our favorite (well, my favorite, I'm not sure it's Kelly's favorite, though she certainly likes it a lot) verse of Williams's composition "The Rainbow Connection": "Have you been half asleep/ And have you heard voices?/ I've heard them calling my name" it begins. We related it to our own auditory hallucinations and had quite a nice discussion about going mad. That was before Paul Williams showed up. So anyway! On the Thacker Mountain radio program that night (tonight!), he performed "The Rainbow Connection"! Slade, who plays stand-up bass with the house band, confided to me that it has a really tricky key change to G-flat. But they pulled it off with aplomb! BUT! Paul Williams neglected to sing the verse about hearing disembodied voices. So here's the thing! He knows Hogan is a musician, and when she was getting her book signed by him, he asked, "Did you notice?" Meaning did she notice he had skipped a verse. And she said yes. And he said, "I owe you a verse." SO! Who could follow Paul Williams singing "Rainbow Connection"? Our local punk rocker (I guess you'd call him) Tyler Keith came out with nothing but his guitar and fearlessly sang an awesome song that was a scene-by-scene recap of THE OUTSIDERS (pictured). And thus did he successfully follow Paul Williams! At the end of the show, the house band surprised Paul Williams by playing another of his compositions: the finale from BUGSY MALONE. I was proud to see two former students of mine, Dent May and Will McIntosh, leading on guest vocals. A chorus of adorable local children joined them! And then Paul Williams, good sport that he is, got up and joined in, too. That was really something. I mean, it was nuts. As the final chorus was repeated over and over, with more and more joyous cacophony, reminding us that "you're going to be remembered for the things you say and do" - Tyler Keith came back out and hopped into the mix - I don't think I'm lying when I say some kind of spiritual trance was enacted upon the crowd! I feel pretty good. Hey, as I was typing these words, McNeil arrived for a visit.

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

Weird French Governess Strikes Again

Every book has an owl in it, but seldom have I been less surprised to find an owl in a book than when I found one in UNCLE SILAS by Sheridan Le Fanu. As you well might imagine, it is the narrator's weird French governess who is compared to an owl: "She looked steadily in my face and very wickedly. I gazed at her with dazzled eyes - I suppose as the feathered prey do at the owl that glares on them by night."