"Blog"trospective 19: Adventure Time

Remember how I kept bragging about quitting social media? I guess it was a damn lie, because I briefly got on "Tumblr," as I call it, to answer questions about ADVENTURE TIME: FIONNA AND CAKE Season 2 and the Adult Swim special THE ELEPHANT. But not MYSTERY CUDDLERS, which, as you may recall, they chucked down the gaping garbage hole to trash town. Well, all of that is over, by which I mean that everything I have worked on for the past number of years has been released and consumed and here I sit in the cold ashes. So! I thought I would make a catalog (below) of every time (?) I have mentioned ADVENTURE TIME or its various spin-offs on the "blog." That way, the hordes of acolytes I gathered on "Tumblr" can visit this "post" the way they might walk around a famous tomb or other, slightly more interactive landmark. I also encourage them to check out my previous "blog"trospective on THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, thought by many to be the ADVENTURE TIME of the 17th century. And now I give you a series of "hyperlinks" filled with ADVENTURE TIME tidbits and gristly byproduct. Eat up! actual cat sneeze inspires FIONNA AND CAKE---ADVENTURE TIME art show---ADVENTURE TIME artists Natasha Allegri, Kent Osborne, and Seo Kim appear on a panel in Oxford, Mississippi---ADVENTURE TIME clip sponsored by cream to get rid of your age spots---ADVENTURE TIME compared to Balzac---ADVENTURE TIME comic books sold out in New York---ADVENTURE TIME episode named after cat---ADVENTURE TIME features a line that is "classic Frasier"---ADVENTURE TIME joke (in "The More You Moe") based on when my sister visited my brother and me in Atlanta and I made her sit in my apartment and play hangman but my brother took her out to meet David Byrne---ADVENTURE TIME; Lovecraftian influence on---ADVENTURE TIME party at Kent Osborne's house!---ADVENTURE TIME podcast, poor performance on---ADVENTURE TIME wrap party---Allegri, Natasha; gets caviar out of a vending machine---allusion to THE SEARCHERS in ADVENTURE TIME---alternate, worse ending to "Time Sandwich"---Archimedes, Fonzie, Piggy, and Jan discussed in ADVENTURE TIME meeting---art students ask questions about ADVENTURE TIME---at a French restaurant with Pendleton Ward and Megan Abbott---Atkins, Ace; watches "The Box Prince"---before an ADVENTURE TIME meeting, Kent eats his fourth meal of chicken in a row---behind the scenes of writing fan favorite "The Box Prince"---belt worn to Peabody Awards---bent fork in Beverly Hills---Bergman, Ingmar; influence of on ADVENTURE TIME---big panel at Wondercon with Prismo, Flame Princess and more---birthday balloons from the office---book about weeds useful for writing FIONNA AND CAKE---"Bukowski with more stabbing" (assessment of a William Boyle short story during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting)---Burch, Ashly; inspired by PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET when writing the character of Martin Mertens---Burch, Ashly; photo of surrounded by Emmys---cat jumps in lap during ADVENTURE TIME meeting---CAT PERSON by Seo Kim on my recommendation shelf---cat refuses to do tricks during ADVENTURE TIME meeting---cat who looks exactly like Kent Osborne's cat shows up in ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Chuck E. Cheese a proud sponsor of ADVENTURE TIME---cheered up by Pen and Kent during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---coincidental resemblence between Coppola film TWIXT and "Root Beer Guy"---commenters have no idea how damn old I am---Cosmic Owl in context of ancient owl deities---Cosmic Owl spotted in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY---cross-cultural discussion of syrup in the writers' room---dancing to a playlist by Kate Tsang---dangerous ride on ice and snow undertaken during FIONNA AND CAKE meeting---Did Norman Mailer invent the Ice King?---DIRTY GRANDPA (film) brought up during ADVENTURE TIME meeting---DJ Slime is not the same as DJ Plop Drops---DON'T LOOK NOW allusion---during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting, Pen comments on my messy hair---earliest "blog" mention of ADVENTURE TIME---eating at the Smoke House with Adam and Kate---emailing Adam about DC comics character the Spectre---executives won't let Martin eat those little creatures who are helping him out---fate of my favorite bar revealed during ADVENTURE TIME meeting---feeding a fish during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---final visit to the old Cartoon Network building---Finn sounds like a student of Pythagoras---flaunting an Emmy---Ford, Harrison and Martin Sheen; heights of discussed in ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Franzen, Jonathan; knows about my Emmy---Hanuman of Hindu lore somewhat reminiscent of Jake---going to the races with Pen---Grammer, Kelsey; sadly does not voice a giant mushroom---Hanna and I argue over Rory's best boyfriend---HEAVEN'S GATE allusion in ADVENTURE TIME explained---Hernandez, Gilbert; writes a Jerry Lewis reference into an episode, but it does not make it into the final cut---Herpich, Tom and Steve Wolfhard on oatmeal and Twitter---Herpich, Tom; drawing by evocative of Machen---Herpich, Tom; portrait of the author by---hiccups disappear during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---holding a Peabody---home office tidied before Kent arrives for an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Horton, Edward Everett; discussed in FIONNA AND CAKE meeting---I am presented with a machete in honor of my work on ADVENTURE TIME---I forget the title of THE BIG BANG THEORY during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---I get all excited by the first CHEERS reference on ADVENTURE TIME---I see Cher at the hotel where I stay for ADVENTURE TIME meetings---I see Garry Marshall at the hotel where I stay for ADVENTURE TIME meetings---I see Vera Farmiga in the hotel where I stay for ADVENTURE TIME meetings---I try to draw Lady Rainicorn on an apron---idea for an unusual bread pudding prompts thoughts of Cinnamon Bun---I unsuccessfully suggest "Glucupricon" as an ADVENTURE TIME episode title---idea to have Jake punch a mountain vetoed---in the recording booth with Anne Heche---influence of Shmoo on ADVENTURE TIME---INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978 version) influences ADVENTURE TIME---Jake-shaped cheese ball---Jansson, Tove; works of often came up in writers' meetings---Kay Lenz, whose film BREEZY inspired the name of an ADVENTURE TIME character, comes onboard to play another ADVENTURE TIME character!---Kent eats a chicken sandwich during a meeting---Kent's role in a local stageplay inspires an Ooo-style cuss word in ADVENTURE TIME: ELEMENTS---Kid President (?) visits the ADVENTURE TIME writers' room---Kim, Seo; thinks up a snake---King of Ooo hunts his subjects for sport---lack of toilets at Versailles discussed during ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Lawless, Lucy; role on ADVENTURE TIME---Lizard Princess---local record store owner wants me to bring my ADVENTURE TIME Emmy to the store and perform as "DJ Emmy"---maudlin reflections upon the cancellation of ADVENTURE TIME---McHale, Patrick; spills red wine on my nice white shirt---McNeil watches ADVENTURE TIME on Christmas Eve---McNeil's advice on what to do after ADVENTURE TIME cancellation---meeting T-Bone Burnett at the Emmys---memorable summary of "The Great Birdman"---Moynihan, Jesse and Cole Sanchez give me a BREEZY poster---obscurest pop culture reference in ADVENTURE TIME---Muto, Adam; recommends a hat shop---Muto, Adam; uses the Jack Kirby comic OMAC as an example in a meeting---my father, a lifelong machinist, contributes to "We Fixed a Truck"---my job in the ADVENTURE TIME writers' room DUNE book club---office is closed for President's Day, so Kent and I go to see 50 SHADES OF GREY---Olson, Olivia; has to scream a lot for work even though she has a cold---on Twitter before an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Osborne, Kent; caught in a photo with Taylor Swift!---Osborne, Kent; dresses up as Finn---Osborne, Kent; eats from the SAME BAG of Utz cheese balls during writers' meetings FOR YEARS!---Osborne, Kent; gets out his lightsaber---owl wears shirt that says "OWL" on it---OZARK MAGIC AND FOLKLORE (book by Vance Randolph) useful in writing an ADVENTURE TIME episode---pants falling down at the Emmys---passing mention of Spirit Dream Warrior---Pen and I are asked to envision a prequel to Willy Wonka---Pen and Kent visit Faulkner's house---Plastic Man as spiritual forefather of Jake the Dog---Pott, Julia; reveals during a meeting that she was in a Burt Reynolds movie!---practicing saying "Wow" as Root Beer Guy---President's Day means nothing to Hanna K. Nystrom---Princess Bubblegum reads James Joyce to Finn and Jake (failed suggestion)---pyrographical portrait of Marceline by Emily Quinn---quoting Lady Rainicorn's mom---quoting Root Beer Guy---reading a book about magic before an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---rewatch of THE WIRE influences ADVENTURE TIME---Root Beer Guy goes on a sexy vacation---Sanchez, Cole; teaches me the word "subluxation"---Shawn, Wallace; farts on ADVENTURE TIME---signing posters at Wondercon---some background on "Root Beer Guy"---talking about trombones too much in a writers' meeting---tiny beatnik---trying and failing to get LADYHAWKE allusions into ADVENTURE TIME---trying to explain a comic book in a meeting---Tsang, Kate; makes two single cheeseburgers into one double cheeseburger---twice-as-long season is twice as much work---visiting GILMORE GIRLS set with Julia Pott after an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Walch, Hynden; acting abilities of---Ward, Pendleton; draws Kent as "Galactus - Destroyer of Chickens"---Ward, Pendleton; rents a house with Cyclopes (yes, that's the plural of Cyclops) on the wallpaper---Ward, Pendleton; runs over a bottle---Ward, Pendleton; wants us all to dress as English peas to accept Peabody Award---watching ADVENTURE TIME with nephews---watching BARRY LYNDON with Pen---while locked out of my car, I find an ADVENTURE TIME-related coaster in my pocket---William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County mistaken for Ooo---winning an Emmy!---WINTER'S TALE (film) brought up in meeting---WIRE creator David Simon mocks Kent Osborne's difficulty with eating an egg---wolf dream and Dr. Doom discussed in meeting---Wolfhard, Steve and I sit next to Squidward in a bar---Wolfhard, Steve; creates hair apes---Wolfhard, Steve; inspired by Jamie Farr---working on STAKES---working on the Minecraft tie-in---writers' meeting sidetracked by David Lynch clips---writers' room produces DUNE book club---writing a poem in iambic pentameter for "Thanks for the Crabapples, Giuseppe"---writing lessons gleaned from ADVENTURE TIME meetings---Wynn, Ed; voice of inspires Choose Goose---Xayophone, Somvilay; plays Theremin during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Xayophone, Somvilay; wants a pizza with just mint on it. (JAKE THE DOG CHEESE BALL CREDIT: BLAIR HOBBS)

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.

Who?

Hey! Do you want to watch MYSTERY CUDDLERS but you couldn't stay up until 3 AM Central Time like I did? I have good news for you. You can see the whole pilot by "clicking" this "link" to the Adult Swim youtube channel. I watched it on TV just the way people did in olden times. I was sitting through a Dawn dishwashing liquid commercial that came on before it and thinking unironically, "This is nourishing my anticipation!" That is the kind of thing I sit around thinking. Then the middle of the show was interrupted by an ad for generic Viagra. Really, nothing could have made me happier. They (some people at the network) asked us just last week, "Uh, where is the commercial break supposed to go?" and Pen and I were like, "Uh-oh! Hmm! Whoops!" Then Pen thought of a funny place where it could go, which made me laugh when it happened at roughly 3:11 AM Central Time, but now that commercial break is lost forever in the history of broadcast television. Before you "click," I should tell you I play an owl on the show, which I only mention because the casual "blog" observer will think I am obsessed with owls. "And now at last," you will be thinking, "he has become one." But is that guy, the one who seems so interested in owls, the "real" me? This is like when I tried to explain my unicorn pin to Hendrik Hertzberg. It really doesn't matter! What I'm saying is that the owl was 100% Pen's idea, and so was me playing the owl, and by "playing the owl," I mean I sat in our bedroom closet saying "Whooooo?" over and over into a microphone I had borrowed from Ace Atkins. In conclusion, MYSTERY CUDDLERS was inspired in very small part by my novel SWEET BANANAS, which I can say without fear of crass self-promotion because that novel existed only in a limited edition of 365 copies with 365 different covers, which are all off the street, and can only be purchased in alleyways, like in GOODFELLAS, when Robert De Niro is telling Lorraine Bracco, "That's right, keep going, yes, that's it, that dark alleyway just to right, go in there," I paraphrase.

Bogie Bits Back, Baby!

I'm hearing that many of you across the globe are joining hands to sing "I want my Bogie Bits, Bogie Bits, Bogie Bits" to the tune of the immortal Chili's jingle for their succulent baby back ribs. Well, as Lady Rainicorn's mother says in ADVENTURE TIME, "Prayer works" (Season 8, Episode 4). McNeil is still reading that 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart and he vows to sweep up some more bits and dump them in our grateful laps. Why, he even gave me at least three Bronson Bits recently, but I just couldn't find a fluent way to translate them into "blog"ese. Okay, the way I remember it, McNeil approved of two of the cozy hovels where Bronson lived in two Bronson movies he watched, but he felt the filmmakers spent insufficient energy on highlighting whatever kind of carpet Bronson had. Why am I dawdling while you're waiting for the bits? Here, I'll just cut-and-paste McNeil's entire email: "This Bogart bio gets really bogged down for a long time - over 100 pages - with the HUAC stuff. It puts me to sleep. I may have to skip it and move on to the important stuff...like booze and sex." End of email. Speaking of being obsessed (or not, in McNeil's case) with communists!

Watching My Friends Eat My Friends

So I was emailing back and forth with Megan Abbott the other day about that smirky little New York Times review of Miley Cyrus and somehow the silent-movie child actor Baby Peggy came up... well, not somehow... obviously there's a connection between child stars... and we were talking about how they get renamed and stuck with identities they didn't ask for... and that brought up Gig Young, who was not a child star, but named by the studio (if I am recalling correctly) after a role he played in a movie, which is weird. And he came to a terrible end, as you probably know, and I was saying to Megan that I didn't want to "click" on things about tragic child stars or tragic stars in general, which she took as an expression of fear of Baby Peggy specifically, as I did not express myself very clearly... though see this terrifying frame of a terrifying gif Megan sent me of Baby Peggy. (Baby Peggy is still here with us on this mortal plane, by the way - that's my fancy way of saying she's alive! - and not a terrifying sort of person. Nothing terribly tragic there. Well, she was treated terribly as a kid, I think, like most child stars, worked like a mule and plundered for her fortune, but she devoted herself later on to... ah... I'm too tired to talk about Baby Peggy. Look her up yourself.) So Megan and I were emailing about Baby Peggy again today (!) and I was trying to remember why Megan thought I had a deep-seated fear of Baby Peggy, so I searched my email archives and discovered that Megan FIRST emailed me about Baby Peggy EXACTLY THREE YEARS AGO TODAY. This is the kind of coincidence McNeil loves. Oh, so during the whole Miley Cyrus back-and-forth, my twitter friend Jen Vafidis alerted me to the actual song about Miley's deceased fish, which the New York Times reviewer so dismissively mentioned. Was that part of the review dismissive? Ah, I'm too tired to check. But yes. So I watched the video of Miley Cyrus in a unicorn costume singing about her dead fish and it was just great. I know I'm late to this video of Miley Cyrus in a unicorn costume singing about her dead fish. But I'd still like to endorse it. I would say if you don't like it you can probably just go to hell. I emailed it to Megan and she emailed back with praise for the lyric "watching my friends eat my friends," which is just what I was about to email to HER! Another coincidence. It's a good line, right? Like James M. Cain. I think if Jonathan Richman had written this very song, everybody would be all, "Wow, cool." Well, maybe everybody IS all, "Wow, cool." I don't know what goes on. I may even be overestimating the universal love that I imagine Jonathan Richman (rightly) receiving. Maybe I should talk about some Jonathan Richman song and say that if Miley Cyrus wrote it, everybody would be like, "Wow, cool." Maybe I live in backwards land with all the other old men. Megan also made a shrewd point about why Miley Cyrus is able to identify so intensely with a fish that has to live its life in a tank.

The Stump, the Candle and the Pencil Sharpener

Read in this book about the Middle Ages about Francesco Dantini. "Orphaned when still young, he began trading everything that could turn a profit: weapons and spices, cloth and silk." Upon his death in 1410, "he bequeathed his entire estate" to a charitable trust he had founded, called "the poor people's stump." By doing so, he "hoped to avoid punishment in Hell." His charity "still exists today, a miraculous survival," the author calls it. So that's pretty good! I hope he got into Heaven okay. Speaking of the Middle Ages, didn't they believe in unicorns back then? I'll check one of my many reference books about unicorns. Yes, yes, I see in THE LORE OF THE UNICORN that the legendary figure Prester John (in whom a lot of people believed, according to my book about the Middle Ages) was supposed to have plenty of unicorns running around in his kingdom. Oh yeah, and I forgot William Davenant got a job fetching powdered unicorn horn for a duchess way after the Middle Ages, even. So! Rhea sent me this picture of some cupcakes she had made, and as you can see, she placed them decoratively around a golden unicorn. Who wouldn't? But then she had second thoughts! She felt, perhaps, that the makers of this unicorn had improperly given it a horn, when, as you can plainly see, the candle sticking out of its head should have cleverly served in that capacity. The horn is redundant! Or so Rhea feared. And I believe that Rhea is right. Take, for example, this pencil sharpener (below) given to me by Beth Ann Fennelly. Here we have the unsharpened silver pencil properly representing the unicorn's horn. I can only hope that future manufacturers of unicorn novelties will take a lesson from Rhea's tragedy.

Lemon Air

Hey I went out of town again and jotted notes about everything I did, who cares? But the day before I went on my trip I was in the doctor's office - a new doctor. He had CIGAR AFICIONADO in the waiting room. I thought that was a weird magazine for a doctor to have in his waiting room (see also). And the first two letters to the editor in CIGAR AFICIONADO were about some readers' disappointment with CIGAR AFICIONADO's take on the Kennedy assassination! But mostly it was pictures of cigars. Ron Perlman, who does the voice of the Lich on ADVENTURE TIME, was on the cover of CIGAR AFICIONADO. I believe the cover said RON PERLMAN: DREAMING BIG. But he just looked disgruntled about something! After I had looked at all the pictures of cigars I picked up Martha Stewart's magazine, which contained this phrase: "Peanuts take a sinister turn when sprayed with diluted black food coloring." It was a Halloween snack tip which I found fascinating and disturbing. I kept muttering it aloud because I wanted to remember it and didn't have a pen. "Peanuts take a sinister turn when sprayed with diluted black food coloring." I said it a lot, out loud there at the doctor's office. "Peanuts take a sinister turn when sprayed with diluted black food coloring." I started to think (realize?) that "sprayed" and "diluted" are the most awful words in the sentence. It is awful to picture someone "spraying" peanuts with "diluted" black food coloring. Sure, I would have "blogged" about the doctor's office magazines that day, but I was late for an ADVENTURE TIME video conference. So I had to come straight home and jump right into that. Late! Late for a meeting the first time ever. No time for "blogging"! After the meeting I had to take care of a few things and go to bed. Up bright and early for a trip to California for more ADVENTURE TIME doings! Allow me to describe it for you in agonizing detail you won't ever read, as transcribed from my precious little notebook of precious observations. Okay! On the way to the Memphis airport I saw a motel sign advertising "CHITTERLINGS" in the space where they usually say "FREE HBO." Now the first thing I know you're dying to hear is what I read on the airplane. Well, Ace Atkins recently talked Megan Abbott into reading her first novel in the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. Megan said the book had "wit and soulful women" in it. And so I recalled that McNeil had given me a Travis McGee paperback 20 years ago at least... maybe 30 years ago! And there it has sat, neglected, on various shelves, most recently the drugstore spinner in my home office. Like Megan, I never made the leap to Travis McGee. But now I am finally reading that book McNeil gave me so many decades ago. Ha ha, I am just going to keep typing, though we are only on page one of my notes and I am already bored with my own life. This may be my longest "post" ever! Because I am also going to tell you what I ALMOST read on the airplane but didn't: SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser. Dr. Theresa has raved about it for years. And once when we were visiting Laura Lippman, those two bonded over their love of the book. Later on I discovered that Megan loves it too. Now, this is the same trio who finally got me to crack open MILDRED PIERCE, a masterpiece. But Dr. Theresa's paperback of SISTER CARRIE is mutilated with affection and scholarship: folded, cracked, dog-eared, marked-up, annotated copiously by hand... altogether too physically complicated for casual airplane reading. Ha ha I love how boring I am being right now. I had to get up early - well before dawn - to make it to the plane, and fell into a deep slumber on the runway. When I awoke, I asked my seatmate, "Are we there?" I really thought we had landed at LAX. He had to tell me we still hadn't left the ground in Memphis. What shenanigans! Pen and Kent picked me up at the airport in a white 1951 Bentley! This was the only way for them to top their previous luxurious joke of picking me up in a stretch limo. "How are you going to top yourself now?" I asked Pen. "We're not doing this again," he said somberly in a way that made me believe him. Now here is an amazing coincidence you won't care about: Pen and Kent took me straight to a restaurant I had just read about in a magazine in my doctor's office the day before... in a beer lover's magazine called DRAFT. That's right, my doctor had magazines about cigars AND beer in his office. As we waited for our food there was some saucy music playing and Pen said, "I could teach you how to rhumba." And it turns out he wasn't kidding! (Although we didn't rhumba.) Pen used to be a dance instructor, I learned. Pen said, "Old ladies would occasionally proposition you." ("Click" here to read the interview I did with Megan Abbott when we talk about how Billy Wilder used to be a "taxi dancer," likewise popular with the ladies! Though Pen never went the Billy Wilder route and took any old ladies up on it.) For dinner, Leslie Wolfhard and her husband Steve and Kent took me to the soothingly dark Tam O'Shanter, where Walt Disney used to have lunch every day. I found out that Leslie's favorite movie is NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and that she lived in Atlanta during some of the same years Dr. Theresa and I did. So we got to be nostalgic about the Majestic Diner and stuff like that ("click" here for an interview where I get appallingly mawkish about Atlanta). They put horseradish in the deviled eggs at the Tam O'Shanter. Unless I am nuts, I have never before run across that welcome innovation. Everyone else had prime rib, but I went the more healthy route of corned beef and cabbage. Ha ha ha! But really, I ate all my vegetables and ordered some "mixed peas" on the side. And I even left a little corned beef on my plate, in honor of what I knew would have been Dr. Theresa's wishes (ha ha, she would have commanded me to "order fish" - WHAT! Oh well). For I knew that the next night I would be dining at the steakhouse where Bob Hope used to eat ("The Smokehouse") where I always go, I can't help myself. The Tam O'Shanter is where I drank the first of many negronis on this trip. It was all negronis all the time, brother! I am not sure why. I never had one before. But just before I left, I saw Dr. Theresa and Megan throwing them back at the City Grocery Bar and I guess I thought they looked pretty good. (Well, I did have half a beer at the restaurant from the doctor's office beer magazine, and a small glass of Amontillado [just for the Poe associations]- after a negroni - at a fancy dinner [see below - ha ha, you'll never make it!]) After the Tam O'Shanter I called Dr. Theresa and she said they had been filming a commercial next to our house. Here I am in Hollywood and they're filming a commercial at our house in Mississippi, ha ha ha, what a country. The following morning, in the Starbucks where I once saw the guy from Tenacious D who is not Jack Black, I was reading the New York Times and there was a quote from our friend and neighbor Richard Howorth on the front page of the Arts Section. A welcome and unexpected touch of home! Hey, it looks like I really am going to type up all my notes! I usually skip some of them. I went to my first comic book convention, Wondercon in Anaheim, to be on an ADVENTURE TIME panel. Jesse Moynihan explained that it's not really a "comic book convention." He explained what it was, but I can't remember. All I know is I saw Lou Ferrigno sitting in a booth next to the guy who played the "Soup Nazi" on SEINFELD. They were both selling their autographs for cash, which I guess is something I knew went on, way in the back of my mind. I wondered if it was demoralizing for the "Soup Nazi" to sit under a big banner with the word "Nazi" on it all day. I also spotted Sergio Aragones, which was thrilling! He was a big part of my childhood, drawing all those little comics in the margins of MAD magazine. A bunch of us from ADVENTURE TIME sat at a long table and signed hundreds and hundreds of posters for hundreds and hundreds of people (not for money). Some people wanted me to draw them a picture, not realizing I don't draw at all. So I tried a few pitiful Finns and a BMO ("He's just a rectangle!" I encouraged myself) and once, upon request, a Lady Rainicorn (see also!) who turned out looking like a snake who had been through some unimaginable tragedy. Speaking of posters, Cole Sanchez and Jesse bought me a thoughtful and awesome present at Wondercon... an original poster from the 1973 Clint Eastwood movie where a groovy free spirit teaches a craggy old square businessman all about love... BREEZY! They knew of my obsession with it. (You can see a video of the presentation by "clicking" here. And "click" here for a little more about BREEZY.) Then some super serious and professional and brisk and unsmiling security people hustled us through a bunch of SPINAL TAP-style back rooms and passages and freight elevators and corridors to get us to our panel, where there were - I have to believe - thousands of people in attendance! Above you can see the panel members... from left to right that's Kent, Pen, Andy Ristaino, Adam Muto, me, Steve (with Jessica Dicicco, who plays the Flame Princess on the show, standing in front of him), Jesse, and Kumail Nanjiani of TV's SILICON VALLEY, who plays Prismo on ADVENTURE TIME. We took a shuttle back to Burbank and Kent took me to my hotel and we sat in the lobby and I drank a negroni and Kent ordered some wings. "Yeah!" I exclaimed. "I want to see you eat some chicken while I'm here." Because Kent loves chicken, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! What a country. Then I went to the steakhouse where Bob Hope used to eat and ordered a negroni and my usual, the "Steak Sinatra." And one of my tablemates said, "I used to know one of Bob Hope's mistresses." So that was exciting! My fellow diners included Joey Lauren Adams and my friend "The Hollywood Producer" - I honestly can't recall why I originally thought I needed to cloak him in anonymity but I'm going to stick with it. It's a tradition! I will say he has lost 50 pounds and looks like a superstar! Next up, karaoke. Joey wanted me to sing "Stagger Lee" with her. She said I had introduced it to her, in the Lloyd Price version, on a 45 at my house, and she had loved it ever since, so how could I say no to a duet tinged with such tender associations from the good old days when Joey used to live in town? Rash decision! Management, it turns out, has a foam cannon standing by with which to express its displeasure. Joey and I were deluged in torrents of punitive foam for whatever desecration we were perpetrating on the venerable tale of Stagger Lee. And by we, I mean me. I nobly intercepted the majority of the foam, keeping Joey unscathed - except in her heart! It occurs to me that I was perhaps the sole intended recipient of the foam and not "protecting" Joey at all. Terrible revelation! Joey and the H.P. were just trying to recreate the incredible joy of a previous occasion, The Smokehouse followed by karaoke in the same spot... but YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN. We had fun anyway! And the karaoke place made pretty great negronis. But when I got back to my room, my iPod, set to shuffle, was playing "Wrong 'Em Boyo" by the Clash. Out of 20,000 songs. That's the one that quotes liberally from "Stagger Lee." Technology is sentient. And hurtful. The next day I saw my brother and most of my nephews... one of them was off somewhere petting ducklings. While I was hanging out with the others, a picture came (to my brother's phone) of my absent nephew holding a duckling and I had to admit it looked like he had made a solid choice.

That evening, sitting in my hotel lobby waiting for the cab that was to take me to Laraine Newman's house (!) I read my Travis McGee. One of the "soulful women" Megan was talking about said of an evening on the town that she had had "a lovely, lovely time up until I went owly." Went owly! That's one I never heard before. And so I was able to add to my big long list of books with owls in them. Laraine and her husband Chad took me out to an incredible dinner I can't describe and won't forget. Infinite tiny courses. Tapas is a weak word. Brussels sprouts came with "lemon air." I said lemon air! I guess it is an exhalation that someone gently coaxed from a lemon. Not only was I in great company but the service was down-to-earth and accessible amid the weird splendor of the surroundings and the potentially daunting array of dishes. I had sea urchin for the first time, which I think I am right in describing as "the peanut butter of the sea." Then I went back to their place and watched GAME OF THRONES with Laraine Newman! During the sexy parts I was like - silently - "Oh no I am watching sex stuff with Laraine Newman... and her husband... and their dog." The cabbie on the way back to the hotel wanted to compare the natural disasters of California and Mississippi. He said, and I wrote it down, "Compared to tornados, earthquakes are candy. So your window rattles. A tornado, your house gets up and goes to another state." My flight home was the next day! So I went to the bar and ordered a negroni to take up to my room to help me pack. The bartender said, "That's a man's drink! I could never drink that." I was surprised. I really thought it was "a woman's drink." I associated it with Dr. Theresa and Megan. But maybe he was just angling for a tip. Though I could imagine Bob Hope and Nixon knocking back a few negronis in the Oval Office. Dressed for bed and drinking my Final Negroni, I caught sight of myself in one of the full-length mirrors they put cruelly all over hotel rooms and could not help but note my disturbing psychological resemblance to Martin Sheen at the beginning of APOCALYPSE NOW but, you know, fat. Now we're back to the airport! Seated across from me as I waited to board was a guy dipping extremely "fragrant" chewing tobacco and spitting it into a large clear plastic cup. I'm sure it's perfectly legal and happens in airports every day as far as I know. On the plane they tried to give me a "molasses clove cookie." WHAT! First of all, cloves in a cookie? Maybe that is normal and legal too. But the worst offense was trying to substitute a "molasses clove cookie" for a Biscoff, America's greatest airplane cookie. You may be sure I put up a fuss (i.e., asked politely) and got my Biscoff. On the way back home from the airport, I called Mom to let her know I got back okay. She said how much she had loved the ADVENTURE TIME season premiere and I realized I hadn't seen it yet because of traveling. "It had my favorite character," Mom said. I asked her who that was. "I don't know," said Mom. "She's a peach or a potato." Mom meant Tree Trunks, who is an elephant.

Certain Musty Old Letters

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

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

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

Duchess Gig

Reading in this history book about William Davenant, who comes to town in 1622 and buys "a splendid silk suit" with "no means, and possibly no intention" of paying for it. Then he gets a job fetching powdered unicorn horn for a duchess! So that sounds like a good gig. I may have to put this book aside for the "social history of ice" I just picked up at Square Books because I'm writing a short article with ice in it so I have to read a 400-page book about ice.

Long Story

Well now I am glad I pressed on with this book THE HINDUS: AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY by Wendy Doniger. (I'm only on page 78; is that really "pressing on"?) It's lively and conversational, full of playful asides: "I'd love to know what the scholars who came up with these ideas were smoking," she remarks of her predecessors. When she mentions a mythical sage "who had a single antelope horn growing out of his forehead," she explains parenthetically, "(his mother was a white-footed antelope; it's a long story)."

My Life in the Arts

The satellite receiver fizzled out and died so I watched some of EIGHT ON THE LAM on the "streaming video" last night. You remember when Phyllis Diller squirted mustard on some cops, don't you? Well, this time she fed an unsuspecting cop some dog food! Wow! I didn't know Phyllis Diller hated cops so much. Somebody should write an academic paper about it. (Cops were referred to as "fuzz" here, just as in the previous [?] Hope/Diller vehicle BOY, DID I GET A WRONG NUMBER. There was a distasteful and protracted joke in EIGHT ON THE LAM - I sort of couldn't believe what I was seeing - when a baby tries rather forcefully to nurse on Phyllis Diller [!], causing her to exclaim, "Boy, did YOU get a wrong number!" An almost Cronenberg-like, uh, I don't know what I'm talking about.) The dog-food-eating cop, her love interest, was played by Jonathan Winters. EIGHT ON THE LAM is not a fitting tribute to Winters, who died the other day. He never appeared in a film role worthy of his genius. EIGHT ON THE LAM is a "family picture," I guess. There's this one tyke who looks so proud of himself for remembering his lines. He's kind of cute about it so it's hard to begrudge him. He'll say, for example, "Ooh, you said a dirty word!" And then the camera lingers while he kind of smirks because he knows he really delivered the goods. I couldn't help but notice that one of the kids listed in the opening credits was played by "Robert Hope," who must be Bob Hope's son, right? I tried to figure out which one he was. I looked for telltale signs of the famous "Hope nose" to no avail. I suppose this is something I could "google" if I weren't so weary of life all the time. What else? I saw Joe York yesterday. He mentioned reading TREASURE ISLAND on an airplane. SUDDENLY MY PROBLEMS WERE SOLVED BY JOE YORK! Somehow I have never read TREASURE ISLAND and I have been trying to think of something to read on the airplane. I was thinking of picking up VILLETTE again, but I was also resisting that idea. I had such a good time reading JANE EYRE on an airplane, but I feel that VILLETTE might be setting me up for airplane disappointment reminiscent of the second lobster scene in ANNIE HALL. I believe Jimmy once called TREASURE ISLAND his favorite book... did he say Stevenson should have cut the last page? Last paragraph? Or did he love the last paragraph? I can't remember. Gosh, this is boring. I am boring myself typing it. I would like to excuse myself from my own company. So let's liven things up. Remember when Blair Hobbs made Dr. Theresa a Lizzie Borden-themed cheese ball to celebrate her doctorate? Just feast your eyes on this Cheese Jake she made to celebrate the recent visit of the ADVENTURE TIME boys! "I know he doesn't have hair, but I thought he needed some," she said. "Plus, I like chow mein noodles." Late in the evening, she took what was left of Jake and remolded him into a snarling, demonic unicorn. At least that's the way I remember it. Exciting! (Photo by Pendleton Ward.)

Greatest Airplane Cookie

Hey I have not "blogged" at you for a few days and you are probably crying about it. All it usually means is that I have gone on a little trip and that's what it means this time too. I went to Los Angeles to do some of my ADVENTURE TIME work. As usual, I thought about you the whole time and jotted down some little jottings in my precious little notebook for your pleasure and entertainment upon my return, and as a way of making amends for all the wrongs I have done you. I would now like to present you with those very jottings. 1) It has been a long time since I flew Delta Airlines and I had almost forgotten the Biscoff - the world's greatest airplane cookie, which is handed out on Delta flights. I love it so much that I wrote a paean to it on the McSweeney's "web" site many years ago. I guess if you dig around very hard you might be able to find my paean to the Biscoff buried somewhere in those archives, but I won't blame you if you decide there are more important things to do with your life. 2) Reading JANE EYRE on the airplane. Or should I say Eyreplane? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Mr. Rochester threatens to send Jane to work for "Mrs. Dionysius O'Gall of Bitternut Lodge." That sounds like a terrible place to work! Turns out Mr. Rochester is just goofing around anyway. 3) At Cartoon Network I met two nice people named Natasha and Patrick who had just bought a little package of caviar from "the caviar vending machine in the mall"! 4) Joey Lauren Adams and I accidentally stumbled upon the best bar in Los Angeles! I am not going to tell you the name because it is going to be our secret! But I brought a book of matches home with me so if you ever come over you can snoop around for clues, I guess. It was a very dark bar and one of the murals on the walls featured a unicorn - nor was this the final unicorn I encountered in Los Angeles, as you will soon discover. But that's for later! Right now I will tell you that when I ordered a Manhattan with rye, the bartender took a little slice of orange peel and alchemically passed a lit match over it and under it before dropping it in the drink as a final touch. And then I will tell you that as we sipped our drinks in the atmospheric dimness, Joey told me about the time she almost went hunting ghosts with Dan Aykroyd and Dan Aykroyd's brother! They really believe in ghosts and invited her along on one of their missions. Joey jumped at the opportunity! But as the brothers started gathering their equipment and giving her a terrifying list of rules NOT TO VIOLATE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, she started freaking out even though she did not believe in ghosts and therefore, to quote the words of Ray Parker, Jr., was under most circumstances not "afraid of no ghost." So anyway Joey missed her one chance to go ghostbusting with an actual ghostbuster from GHOSTBUSTERS. 5) Talked to my mom on the phone. She had taken my aunt to a movie for her birthday. I was surprised. Mom never goes to the movies! I asked what movie they went to see. "RED DAWN," said Mom, by which she meant the recent remake, of course. "It was awful," said Mom. I guess for this to be really funny or interesting you would have to know my mom and aunt, but you know what? I just don't care about your problems. 6) It was in a Burbank hotel room that I confirmed JANE EYRE does have owls in it, just as I always suspected! "I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls." 7) Speaking of owls, the great M. Emmett Walsh does the voice of The Cosmic Owl, a deity on ADVENTURE TIME. Kent told me that when M. Emmett Walsh came in to record his lines, he handed everybody pictures of himself, along with two-dollar bills! Kent gave me his photo of M. Emmett Walsh, which unfortunately is not quite - though frustratingly close to - wallet-sized. I would love to have a photo of M. Emmett Walsh in my wallet. 8) Speaking of Kent Osborne, his brother Mark - like Kent, a beloved old friend - was in town for one night only and I got to see him! Mark had coincidentally flown in from Paris, where he is living now. Mark is directing a feature film based on THE LITTLE PRINCE, and he was in town to meet with a CERTAIN FAMED ACTOR about being in his movie. No hints! I think it would be okay to hint, but I don't want to take any chances. 9) Party at the home of Pendleton Ward, creator of ADVENTURE TIME. The wallpaper in his kitchen had unicorns and cyclopes on it, and yes, that is the correct spelling of the plural of cyclops. So you would think Pendleton Ward might have unicorns and cyclopes on his kitchen wallpaper but get this! There were already unicorns and cyclopes on the wallpaper WHEN HE MOVED IN. At the bottom of this "post" I will place a photograph taken by Kent Osborne, in which I seem to be gesturing with consternation at the kitchen wallpaper of Pendleton Ward. 10) Saturday morning I went across the street to Starbucks to get coffee and noticed the guy from Tenacious D in line in front of me - not Jack Black, the other guy. Part of me was thinking I could blow his mind by saying, "You were great in CRADLE WILL ROCK." But I said nothing! And that was the best decision of all. Really I was just cracking myself up inside, kind of pretending to believe I could blow his mind by doing that. I could not blow his mind by doing that. 11) When I went to the counter to get my refill, I was staring at the back of a guy in an extremely nice WEIRD SCIENCE jacket, like a crew jacket, with leather and everything. I thought, "I bet he was on the crew of WEIRD SCIENCE!" The barista asked his name so she could tell him when his order was ready and he said, "Todd." So I made a secret vow that when I got home I would look up on imdb what Todds, if any, worked on WEIRD SCIENCE. As I left the Starbucks, I noted that the name "Todd" was fancily stitched on the breast of his WEIRD SCIENCE jacket. Okay, I just looked it up and the only Todd I see is Todd Hoffman, who played one of "The Weenies" in WEIRD SCIENCE but I have not seen WEIRD SCIENCE since it came out and I don't remember what "The Weenies" might be, so I can neither confirm nor deny that I have found the correct Todd. 12) There was a pet store next to the place where I ate breakfast with my brother and my nephews. On the window of the pet store was a poster for a book called HARRIET'S JOURNAL. The cover of the book was a photo of a possum apparently drinking a cup of coffee. I don't know what this book is, but I assume it is the amazing true story of one woman and her unlikely encounter with a possum that changed her life, but I don't know. I went in the pet store and looked around and didn't see the book and left quickly because pet stores bum me out, although the staff of this one seemed particularly attentive and kind to the animals. Photo of the photo of a possum drinking coffee (above) by my brother. 13) I think I met the nicest bank teller in the world, or maybe that's just the way the bank tellers of California are, maybe that's their thing, maybe they're trained for it. I was in the middle of performing a very simple transaction (depositing a check) and he said, "May I offer you a bottle of water?" He is the first - and I am sure, only - bank teller to ever offer me a bottle of water. 14) My brother and nephews and I went to a car wash. It looked like the car wash from the movie CAR WASH. But my brother, who was paying from his spot in the driver's seat and was thus in the perfect position, REFUSED TO ASK! 15) We went to a cool vintage toy shop to which one of my nephews had been wanting to go for a long time. Turned out to be next to The Scarlet Lady Saloon and The Tattle Tale Room. I met a man who was wearing sleigh bells around his neck. He said he had fallen off a roof onto his head at the age of three. He seemed like a nice person who had had some bad luck. 16) I saw Josie from the movie version of JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS doing some holiday shopping (not near The Scarlet Lady Saloon! Somewhere else entirely). I don't think Ace Atkins would mind me telling you that he likes that movie. I have heard him say so in public. We were at dinner once with a large group. And down the table he said, "Jack likes that movie, too. Hey, Jack, didn't you tell me you like that movie, too?" Yet like St. Peter I denied him thrice. 17) It was at this point in my jottings that I realized (and jotted) that if I "posted" everything I had jotted so far, the "post," if "labeled" "correctly," would require more than the maximum amount of "allowed" labels. 18) Dinner with Laraine Newman! She looked like a kid! (And her husband, by his own - accurate! - assessment, looked like Anthony Michael Hall.) But she really looked like a kid. Laraine Newman and I have been pen pals for a while but it was my first time meeting her. When I called Mom to let her know I had made it back to Mississippi okay, I told her about dinner with Laraine Newman and Mom said, "Don't you wish you could go back in time and tell your 12-year-old self that story?" And Mom was right! It is impossible to overstate the impact - the salvation! - of that original season of Saturday Night Live on a 12-year-old boy in rural Alabama. 19) As I sat at the bar waiting for Laraine Newman (!) and drinking a Manhattan, I thought, "Here I am waiting for Laraine Newman! And this time tomorrow I will be grading finals." And then I sighed like Charlie Brown. 20) Speaking of which, I need to thank Dr. Theresa and Bill Boyle for proctoring my finals while I was strutting around Hollywood acting like a big shot. 21) The restaurant, which Laraine had described to me beforehand as a "genuine Rat Pack hangout," had a photo of Frank Sinatra on the men's room door. Over the urinal: a photo of Sinatra and Tony Curtis peeing against a wall. I felt I had to check who was on the door of the women's room. Marilyn Monroe. I love Marilyn, but I was hoping for Shirley MacLaine. 22) The owner of the restaurant came over and told us we were sitting at Dean Martin's old table! He also told us that Dean Martin had driven him to his high school prom. (You can read more about that in an article Laraine Newman wrote. "Click" here. She sent it to me this morning. Laraine's article also contains - spoiler alert! - the unforgettable image of Frank Sinatra shooting bullets into stacks of money.) 23) JANE EYRE: "The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm." 24) "... the moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball..." That's more JANE EYRE. By the way, a glance at the stats tells me our "blog"trospective on the moon is by far the least popular "blog"trospective. What's the matter with you people? Don't you like the moon? 25) I just realized I skipped an entire page of jottings from much earlier. It starts with another JANE EYRE passage, of course, describing an emotional (not literal) landscape: "A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud." 26) First sentence of an L.A. Times article: "Donny and Marie Osmond hit the stage at the Pantages Theater in a cloud of nearly palpable pizazz." I tried to figure out what I found so troubling yet compelling: was it that "nearly palpable" pizazz is no pizazz at all? Was it the idea that pizazz comes in cloud form? 27) Waiting in the lobby for my brother and the boys. The hotel lobby is decorated with actual books, all different books, but in identical, blank white covers. The effect is disorienting for a lover of books. You just have to take them off the shelves and see what they are. I opened one at random to page 329 and read about "a penumbra of unfamiliar shapes obscured in the dim owl-light," whatever that is, and that's how I know THE FINAL CLUB by Geoffrey Wolff is a book with an owl in it. 28) I see on another page that I forgot to tell you about something else! Between The Scarlet Lady Saloon and The Tattle Tale Room (see above) was an aquarium supply store, where my brother and nephews and I saw something called a "glass catfish." It was a real fish, a real transparent fish, and it looked like a fish skeleton swimming around. Goodness, what else important have I neglected to tell you? 29) I read in a magazine at the airport that Dan Aykroyd has webbed toes and I thought, "Did I already know that?" 30) Flying back, I was seated next to the SAME GUY who had been sitting next to me on the way to L.A.! Weird! He flies a lot and says it has never happened to him before. He said he lived in Oxford and I said, "Me too!" He said he teaches at the university and I said, "Me too!" He said he had flown out for business but stayed an extra day so he could visit his brother. ME TOO ON ALL COUNTS! It was starting to feel like the beginning of that Ionesco play, I think it's THE BALD SOPRANO, I might be wrong. Both of us are bad fliers! Both of our wives love Hong Kong action movies! And so on. 31) A dog got on the plane! A German shepherd. He or she (no, he, I heard a guy with him say, "Good boy") just got on the plane and trotted down the aisle like anybody else. Maybe he sat in a seat! I lost track. 32) In the magazine, Albert Brooks talked about Steven Spielberg directing from a young age: "He put his dog in a certain position and made him eat at four o'clock." Why did that simple sentence make me laugh so hard on the airplane? It shares a quality with certain sentences I like by Jerry Lewis. Why do I keep calling it "the magazine"? So irritatingly vague on my part. It's the VANITY FAIR comedy issue and there are tons of good stuff in it. 32) A guy in one of the seats in front of me on the airplane had a particular kind of bald spot that made it look as if the FRONT of someone's head was sticking up just a bit over the headrest, like maybe his head was on backwards. 33) VANITY FAIR: Elaine May used to be a private eye. 34) "Tombstone Blues" came on the iPod and it reminded me of something I haven't thought about in decades: an itinerant evangelist I saw in a church service as a kid. He theorized in great detail that the lyrics to "Tombstone Blues" (of all songs to pick as the centerpiece of your sermon!) formed an elaborate anti-Christian parable. I had never heard of "Tombstone Blues" and in fact it is almost a certainty I had never heard of Bob Dylan. But the lyrics the preacher quoted struck me as awesome and I guess that's when I got interested in Bob Dylan for the first time. Missionary fail!