I Really Shouldn't Do This

Hey! So, you know, I'm reading THE ILIAD last night, because I'm the biggest egghead going, and Helen says "my dog-face self." And I'm like, "Whoa!" I'm like, "What's going on here?" I'm like, "Be nice to yourself, Helen! What can I do to help?" Also, I vaguely recall reading something about Helen comparing herself to a dog... where could it have been? In Emily Wilson's introduction to her translation of THE ODYSSEY? So I get up this morning and take THE ODYSSEY off the shelf and open to the exact page I was thinking of! Because I'm some kind of miracle man, everyone says so. Anyway, last night, I flipped to THE ILIAD's endnotes to see what "dog-face" was all about. Appended to the explanation was an incidental remark about Athena's usual designation as "owl-eyed." We all knew about that, didn't we? (See also.) So I said to myself, I said, "Hey! Are you going to put THE ILIAD on your famous list of books you've read with owls in them? Which consists of every book you have ever read? Because every book has an owl in it? It's just a fact of science!" And then I was like, "Hey! But that's only an endnote! So far, in the actual part of this translation you've read, Athena's eyes have been 'bright' and 'flashing' but not owl-like. So what's the plan? You're going to put THE ILIAD on your list WITH AN ASTERISK?" Because I was like "That seems crazy! You know Athena is going to be owl-eyed sooner or later! You would be a fool to put an asterisk on THE ILIAD. Why, you'd look like the biggest jerk alive! Nobody puts an asterisk on THE ILIAD, as Patrick Swayze famously said in DIRTY DANCING." So I'm going to go ahead and... look. This could easily cost me my "blogging" license. But I'm going to go ahead and put THE ILIAD on the list, without an asterisk. I know I'm taking a risk here. This is like betting the house on a spin of the roulette wheel! Oh my God! I can't believe how tense I am all the time! I live on the edge! And the taste of fear is delicious.

Strange and Unwitnessed Circumstances

I'm reading the novel DUNE with Kate and Hanna. Sometimes Adam chimes in about DUNE because he read it years ago. He thinks it's funny there's a character named Duncan Idaho. Anyway, today he idly remarked, "Idaho probably means something." I decided to check! And that's when I found out this amazing story I read about on two different general-interest websites so now I'm an expert. It seems as if some guy wandered into a meeting where they were trying to name Idaho. He wasn't even supposed to be there! He pretended to be a delegate from someplace or another. (I am telling this story very loosely. Please do not cite it in any of your accurate historical dissertations.) He was like, "I've got a great name: Idaho! It's a real word and it actually means something cool." And everybody was like, "Whoa! Idaho! I like the sound of it! Who is this guy? I love this guy! Get over here, you!" Then later it turned out the guy was just full of beans. He had totally made up the name Idaho! He said was inspired by a little girl named Ida. But nobody knows for sure. Anyway, you don't believe me? Take a look at the wikipedia page of the guy who claimed to have made up the name Idaho ("click" here). There, now I've looked at three different webpages. What a day! So while I was reading his wikipedia entry I thought, "Holy mackerel! I think I saw a whole movie about this guy starring Vincent Price!" (See above.) But I was wrong. Our guy, George M. Willing, was just a conman pal of the conman played by Vincent Price. I'm not even sure they bothered to make him a character in the movie. Mr. Willing died of "strange and unwitnessed circumstances," the newspapers said.

Probably Good to Know

I guess you are wondering how our annual Halloween film festival ended up this year! Too many devil movies, if you ask me. Let me do the math. Looks like we held steady at 20% devil movies. Doesn't sound like a lot but it feels like a lot for somebody who's scared of the devil. THE DEVIL'S BRIDE was more atmospheric than TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER, which isn't saying much. The devil appeared in THE DEVIL'S BRIDE and he got spooked by some car headlights! So that's good to know. He looked like, "WHOA!" I'd show you a frame of the devil seeming to think "HUH! WHAT!" when he sees the car headlights, but even though it was silly it's still too scary to "post" on the "blog." He had a scary goat head! I don't want to talk about it. Our final Halloween movie this year was Disney's THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD. The last half is a retelling of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," so that's some good Halloween material. The first half is about Mr. Toad's legal problems: not so scary. Unless you consider a bunch of drunk weasels (literal weasels) taking over your ancestral manse scary. But that reminds me! When I went to Disney World as a little kid, there was a ride called "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride." You get in a car and then a train hits you! That's the ride. And you end up in hell. That's how they did it at Disney back then. This, let me stress, was not part of the movie. I looked on the "internet" and found this photo (above) of some of the leering devils that used to mock you at the end of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, after you, the unsuspecting child taking the ride, had apparently been killed by an oncoming train and sent to hell. So there's a vague connection between THE DEVIL'S BRIDE and Mr. Toad after all.

While Not Devoid of Talent

Just read in this book about the Middle Ages: "Wenceslas was commonly regarded as lazy (he was given the nickname 'the Idle'), and while not devoid of talent was nevertheless politically maladroit and, as far as we know, an alcoholic, too." Whoa, medievalist Johannes Fried! No need to get personal.

Zeno Klinker

Before I "post" anything I make it a rule to ask myself: "Will this interest the fewest possible living people?" So today I started watching an Edgar Bergen movie on TCM. Edgar Bergen! A performer so unrelentingly bland he makes you pine for the pyrotechnics of Richard Dix. When Edgar Bergen speaks he sounds like a therapeutic hypnotist. So this movie was called LOOK WHO'S LAUGHING and the answer was "nobody." Ha ha ha, I just did that thing I hate. But when the title popped up the two o's in LOOK became a pair of wacky, rolling eyes, and beneath them the O in WHO'S turned into a hellishly gibbering mouth as muted trumpets in the score went wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah in a disturbing approximation of the laughter that never came. Hey did I mention that Fibber McGee and Molly are in this movie? So you're probably pretty fired up about that. The writing credits were weird. They mentioned who wrote Fibber McGee and Molly's jokes and who wrote Edgar Bergen's jokes. One guy who wrote Edgar Bergen's jokes was named Zeno Klinker, which I thought was either a terrible or perfect name for someone who writes jokes. I should mention that LOOK WHO'S LAUGHING is directed by Allan Dwan, darling of the auteurist set, and good for him. So the movie starts out with Edgar Bergen performing with his famous ventriloquist's dummy Charlie McCarthy. Lucille Ball does a "sexy nurse" bit and the dummy leers at her and makes gross jokes. So it's very clear that within the reality of this movie Charlie McCarthy is a wooden dummy. But suddenly it is announced that Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy are going on vacation together! And that's okay. Maybe he brings his dummy on vacation to practice. But to get to his vacation destination Edgar Bergen pilots a small plane, okay, and he's got one hand up Charlie McCarthy the whole time, and they have conversations! He's up there by himself flying his small plane with his hand up his dummy. I don't like it. Fibber McGee's jokes are terrible. His enemy says something about an "unimpeachable source" and Fibber McGee says "unimpeachable APPLE-source!" It's a pun on applesauce. I don't want to get into it. Then I was like, "I'm going to bed." And I did. I wasn't even tired! It was the middle of the day. Oh yeah and the production design or something was by someone named Van Nest Polglase or something. (Whoa, the same year as LOOK WHO'S LAUGHING he was the art director for CITIZEN KANE.)

Finalist for a Prestigious Award

Hey remember when Doyle from GILMORE GIRLS showed up on MAD MEN? We were all pretty excited that day! Now recently I have seen Doyle from GILMORE GIRLS on JUSTIFIED and GIRLS, too. That's just plain GIRLS, no GILMORE. What is up with Doyle from GILMORE GIRLS? He is everywhere! Give somebody else a chance, Doyle from GILMORE GIRLS. Just kidding, you're doing great. Keep it up! Doyle from GILMORE GIRLS is on all the prestigious shows, and according to imdb he was "a finalist for the prestigious Irene Ryan award," to which at first I replied "Ha ha ha!" because Irene Ryan was Granny on THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, but you know, the more I thought about it (I have not yet "confirmed" this with "internet" "research") Irene Ryan seems like she was the kind of actor who got pigeonholed in one zany TV role but perhaps before that had shown astonishing range, probably onstage. That's my wild guess. I have a very vague memory of being a small child when Irene Ryan was going to be the queen of some parade in Mobile, Alabama (probably a Mardi Gras parade), and we made a trip to that big nearby city to see her. I don't think we saw her. I have a weird feeling I saw a bearded lady and a sword swallower that day. I have the idea that I was like, "Whoa! I'm in over my head!"

Good Wool

Hey that crazy Doris Day movie is on again. Turns out her husband in it runs a wool company. He makes a speech about what "damn good wool" this wool company has. Then when he talks about shaking up the wool business, some indignant wool expert sputters, "Sir, we sell woolens!" Very dramatic stuff. You know, a lot of Doris Day movies are about her being married to jerks and then at the end we're supposed to be happy when she decides to get along with the jerk. I have a feeling that's where this one is heading. But that's not why I summoned you here. I saw most of A STAR IS BORN on TCM the other day, the original version, and now I see why Scorsese put Lionel Stander into NEW YORK, NEW YORK, his STAR IS BORN style movie (though it owes more of a debt to the Vincent Minnelli remake). Lionel Stander (pictured) sure is hardboiled as the studio PR man. I'd say he might be one of the most hardboiled characters I ever saw in a movie. The movie is strange and compelling. It veers tonally from goofy slapstick (a grumpy landlord smashes a light fixture with his head; there's comical fainting and dish-dropping) to screaming, hellish nightmare by the end. Plus you've got that hardboiled Lionel Stander. Some of his dialogue is just great old-fashioned hardboiled cracking wise, like when he runs into Frederic March at the racetrack and March asks him, "What do they do with the actors when you're not around?" and Stander says, "They cut 'em into slices and fry 'em with eggs." There are lots more bitter gems, and you can see the scene on the TCM "web" site by "clicking" here. By the end, though, Stander is so hardboiled it's shocking. Big and depressing spoiler here... Frederic March, an alcoholic, drowns himself. Stander sits at a bar reading about it in the newspaper. He says, "First drink of water he had in years," and "How do you send a telegram of congratulations to the Pacific Ocean?" Whoa! The bartender laughs it up. Unlike the grumpy landlord, there is no comeuppance for Lionel Stander! I kind of wanted to see Janet Gaynor pop up out of nowhere and punch him in the gut. But his cold cynicism was triumphant.

Things About Kings

Whoa! I was just over at Square Books, stumbling around the new release table, and I saw that Peter Ackroyd has already written another book about kings! It is a sequel to his last book about kings. What are you doing to me, Peter Ackroyd? You know I can only take so many books about kings over such-and-such a period of time. On the paperback table I saw this book I keep meaning to tell you about. I've never seen anything but the cover, front and back. It's by some local twins who are also old ladies. On the cover, the old lady twins are dressed up as queens, with crowns and scepters and red capes. One old lady is seated, pulling back her royal cape to reveal that she is wearing sneakers such as a youthful person might don! Her identical sister appears to sneak up behind her, threatening with real malice to bash in her head with her scepter! That is the cover of the book. The back cover claims - and why should I doubt it? - that the olden sisters once bet William Faulkner a prized marble that he could not tell them apart. In conclusion, let's talk about the history book about kings I am reading right now. I forgot about this: I was reading in bed last night about one Count Gondomar (!) who liked the ladies and, as a contemporary wrote, "would cast out his golden Balls to catch them," ha ha! I read that aloud to Dr. Theresa and laughed uproariously like a real jerk. I was purposely misinterpreting "golden Balls" to humorous effect, for which I humbly beg your pardon. Let me further relate that just as I predicted, doublets appear with regularity. A prince's attendant runs up, "rustling and panting in his ruff and doublet."

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up: Dunkel Edition!

Hello, friends, and welcome once again to All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up, the only place on the "internet" that combines entertainment with the entertainment all-stars! Let's get things started with our first juicy tidbit! Okay! Halfway through that newish movie of ON THE ROAD, up pops Peggy from MAD MEN in the thankless role (in the movie, the book, and life itself perhaps) of Galetea Dunkel. When we first see her she's on the phone to Sal Paradise, complaining, "These people are mad! They're mad!" And I wanted Sal to reply, "Would you describe them as... MAD MEN?" But he didn't. (See also.) Bewilderingly, the movie did not include the scene from the novel in which Sal looks through the window of a Buick dealership and sees Jerry Colonna (pictured). Buddy Ebsen is in THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON, by the way. I wonder if he ever sat around on the set of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES bragging about how he was in Fitzgerald's final, unfinished masterpiece. Probably not. He seemed too nice to brag. But hey let's talk about something else. That movie I don't like (though it's rude to say as much) keeps coming on TV all the time. Now I have seen the part where the younger woman gives the older man (who wrote and directed the movie) a "mix tape" of "classical music" and he walks around listening to it and looking at buildings and then writes her letters about it which are quoted from at length in his voice-over narration while she sprawls out dreamily in a moony daze, grinning in a helpless rictus of joy as her shining eyes caress his profound and touching words, such as, "When I listened to the overture you sent, I suddenly realized I had hands... AND LEGS!" And in defiance of Billy Wilder's famous rule, we see exactly what he is narrating as he narrates it: the man who wrote and directed the movie staring at his own hands in childlike wonder as he listens to his "classical music." He also says, "I echo your sentiment about the Beethoven: Whoa." I know what he's doing there. With false modesty he is undercutting his sense of grandeur to seem real cool or something. I do it on this "blog" ALL THE TIME. Wait, this movie I claim to hate just made me realize it's myself I hate most of all. So let's talk about something else! McNeil sent me a 25-minute youtube clip (see also) because Johnny Carson's name appears on a marquee at 5:08, and I understand that! And McNeil understands that I understand that. The marquee is for one of Carson's early hosting gigs, a game show called "Do You Trust Your Wife?" That may bring us back to the oppression under which women like Galetea Dunkel labored, I don't know, sure, let's say it does. It's a MIKE HAMMER TV show, and I was surprised at the opening when Mike Hammer turned toward the camera to reveal that he is played by Darren McGavin, who is far too zany and lovable to play Mike Hammer. In an email, McNeil agreed. "They try to play the whole thing like a comedy it seems to me," he said, making a few more observations on various subjects before concluding, "what a fairy land goes on in my head." Mike Hammer drops his napkin on the floor of a restaurant to get a surreptitious look at a suspect, which is just about broad and cornball enough for the real Mike Hammer to do, but not in the vaudeville style McGavin does it. The suspect closely resembles Wimpy from the Popeye comic strip. He fiddles with his derby and makes funny faces. In conclusion, I guess nothing is good enough for me. That's it for today's All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up! Until next time, keep "reaching" for the "stars"! And go to hell.

Coarsely and Provocatively!

Did you know I quit my job teaching college? This time for reals! Here's the first thing that has made me sad about it: a sentence from THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON. "Immediately she spoke to him coarsely and provocatively and pulled his face down to hers." I would like to tell those kids they can have three adverbs in a sentence if they want. Too late now! I tried to get Elizabeth to read THE SUNDIAL by Shirley Jackson, which is basically the story of her life, but she wouldn't do it because there were too many adverbs on the first page, or so she said! These tragedies must end. Oh well. Not my problem anymore. Next: "he was full of such tender love for her that he held her tight till a stitch tore in her dress." Whoa! All right! That made my heart pop. A few pages later the last tycoon complains, "When I want to know anything I've got to ask some drunken writer." So! I read all this by lantern-light just now during a terrible lightning storm when the power went out. We bought the lantern one night when I thought I might have to scare a fox with a golf club I found in a trash can, so I slept in a tent in the backyard with a bottle of wine, long story.

Whoa, Tony Curtis!

Another one of my birthday presents was a book called AMERICAN PRINCE: A MEMOIR by Tony Curtis. Whoa, Tony Curtis! You can't call yourself a prince in the title of a book you write about yourself! Besides, Prince is the American Prince. Everybody is going to think your book is about Prince, Tony Curtis. Kirk Douglas called his memoir THE RAGMAN'S SON if I am recalling correctly. Get it? His humble beginnings! I know you have been dead for a couple of years, Tony Curtis, so I am sorry to pick on you like this. Hey, you know how I check every index of every book to see if Jerry Lewis is in it, with varying results? I knew before peeking that Jerry would be all over AMERICAN PRINCE. The book came out in 2008 and Tony Curtis was still seething about Jerry flicking cigarette ash on his shoulder just before a take in BOEING, BOEING, as a joke (see also). "I had put together a really beautiful wardrobe in this picture," pouts the late Tony Curtis.

Big Fat Huge Giant

Plucked a big, fat, huge, giant book off the shelf: THE HINDUS: AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY. It's been daring me to read it for years now. So within the first few pages the author quotes Garrison Keillor. And I thought, WHOA. Do I really want to read a gigantic book about Hinduism that quotes Garrison Keillor right off the bat? Nothing against Garrison Keillor! So I kept plugging along listlessly and Chapter Two began "50 million years ago." That tore it! I can't read a book that covers 50 million years worth of material! I'm getting old and I just don't have the time. So I threw it on the table where we keep the cat food, by the back door, because that's also where I pile up the books I take to Off Square Books to trade in for store credit. But you know what? I had a couple glasses of wine and now I feel like I can handle it.

Spaghetti Supergirl

Hey so you are probably desperate for more info on how I started buying old comic books. Well okay if you insist! I was looking through one of the Jerry Lewis comic books that Tom Franklin gave me and I saw an ad for an issue of ACTION COMICS. On the cover, Superman was wearing his Superman suit AND his Clark Kent glasses. WHAT? You heard me. And Supergirl was throwing spaghetti at the Batmobile. For real! And I was like, WHOA. I was like, WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? So this ad, over 40 years old, did its trick. I checked to see whether the place where Tom Franklin buys his old comic books had this particular issue of ACTION COMICS in stock, and friends, they did, and that is how I started buying old comic books and brought shame and ruin to my family.

Big Arboreal Rice Rat

You know I have a book about weeds and a book about seahorses and an "ethnobotanical dictionary" and a waterlogged set of BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS and elsewhere on the "internet" I have written about my love of reference books so it is no surprise to you that I picked up MAMMALS OF THE WORLD: A CHECKLIST and ALABAMA WILDLIFE VOLUME TWO: IMPERILED AQUATIC MOLLUSKS AND FISHES at Off Square Books the other day, but my purchase afforded much amusement for those gathered, including Lisa Howorth, who was moved to take a picture of it (above - see also). Only Melissa Ginsburg, who was there, truly "got" why these books are so interesting, although one other person said (unconvincingly), by way of compensatory sympathy, "I do want to know what's going on with that anteater and that skunk," referring to the cover of MAMMALS OF THE WORLD: A CHECKLIST. MAMMALS OF THE WORLD: A CHECKLIST is a checklist of the mammals of the world. That's all it is! Page after page. No illustrations. Font, font, font, closely packed. There are even little boxes next to the names of the mammals so you can check them off right there in the book when you see them! "And it tells you where to go," Melissa observed. Sure enough, I now know that I might have to go to Peru to see a "big arboreal rice rat." As for the book about imperiled mollusks, I am sorry the mollusks are imperiled but they have great names, presented in all caps and illustrated by beautiful color photographs. Just now I opened the book at random and found ORANGEFOOT PIMPLEBACK and DELICATE SPIKE and PINK MUCKET. (See also.) And oh yeah a while back I thought it would be a great idea if I had some unwieldy facsimile editions of HOLINSHED'S CHRONICLES - from which Shakespeare got a bunch of his ideas - but I could only get hold of volume three and volume six. Still, volume three has the reign of Henry VI in it, so recently, when I was reading about Henry VI elsewhere, I thought: "At last! A use for HOLINSHED'S CHRONICLES! I bet there's some hot stuff in there!" There is not. (See also.) But volume six says that Irish people are "religious, franke, amorous, irefull, sufferable of infinit paines, verie glorious, manie sorcerers, excellent horssemen... Their infants, they of meaner sort, are neither swadled nor lapped in linen, but folded vp starke naked in a blanket till they can go... otemeale and butter they cram togither... they let their cowes bloud, which growne to a gellie, they bake and ouerspread with butter, and so eate it in lumps." Whoa I got carried away typing there.

Scuff Stuff

Hey did you know that the L.A. Times thinks Kelly Hogan's album I LIKE TO KEEP MYSELF IN PAIN is the second most awesome album of the year? At least! They refer to the song I cowrote as an example of "recession blues." Huh. That song has been called so many interesting things, such as an "organ-steeped meditation on the ravages of domestic violence." Whoa! Let's not go crazy. Me, I was just trying to copy "The Grand Tour" by George Jones or "Hello Walls" by Faron Young. There are so many songs in the "scuffed-up furniture inventory" genre!

Foodstuffs!

Welcome once again to "Foodstuffs!" - the only place on the "internet" that discusses food. So Kelly Hogan was recently in our old neighborhood, now my sister's current neighborhood, which was near Kelly Hogan's old neighborhood. Got that straight? Go back and study it until you understand it! Okay. So I asked Hogan whether she had been to the fancy hot dog place that my sister says has just opened up in the old neighborhood. Hogan said no, that the fancy hot dog place is "all slick and gun-metal grey and Logan's Run-looking and it's called HD for haute dog -- whoa. I only ate at Manuel's once (a life-saving perfect patty melt at midnight) and Majestic twice (found three hairs in my grits and I pulled 'em out and ate [the grits] anyway.)" My sister reports that she has not been to the fancy hot dog place either. She has heard you don't get much food for your money. More reports on the fancy hot dog place as they come in! FASCINATING SIDE NOTE: The "blog's" previous mention of LOGAN'S RUN, just like this one, was hot-dog related! (See also.)

How Did I Miss This?

Whoa! How did I miss this? I need to pay more attention to the "internet." From that same "web" site, the espresso machine again, this time with a man (woman?) dressed up as a cat (?). All right, "internet"!

Trouble at the Old Shoe Factory

Saw a little of that show PARENTHOOD again. I am not interested in the subject of parenthood, but luckily PARENTHOOD is not about parenthood. It is about a shoe factory. People keep telling me it is not about a shoe factory, but every time I see part of it, it is about a shoe factory. Tonight a new owner took over the shoe factory! He was a youngster with a skateboard and he said he wanted to make the shoes "radical." That's really what he said! Twice! And all the old people at the shoe factory were like, "Whoa."

McNeil's Movie Korner

Welcome once again to "McNeil's Movie Korner," the place where I cut-and-paste emails from McNeil and call it a "blog." This email came from McNeil today: "Think about the way Ed Crane, in THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, says 'What's the matter, Dave?' as he walks into Big Dave's office the second time just before the ***** scene in which ** ***** *** **** [redacted on account of spoilers - ed.]. Doesn't Ed's monotone voice remind you of Hal's, from 2001? I think Hal even says that line, maybe several times. There's a lot more to talk about regarding that topic, but I've already talked about it in class..." I wrote McNeil back, mentioning "the UFO angle" in both films, to which McNeil responded, "Actually the 'whole UFO angle' (as you so quaintly put it) has more to do with Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence than anything else. Big Dave is abducted by UFOs on a camping trip before the movie begins, and then Ed is visited by UFOs before ** ** ********. The idea of eternal recurrence is first introduced in the film during the opening credits with the shot of the barber's pole...the stripes seem to go up and up, but it's an optical illusion of course - they don't actually 'go' anywhere (or come from anywhere for that matter)." And I was all, "Whoa." I was like, "Back up, Einstein." I was like, "How about saying that in English, Poindexter?" But it did make me think of THE HUDSUCKER PROXY (like THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE a Coen Bros. film) what with the hoop and the clock and the circle of life (which Norville equates with reincarnation, and now think of the great big space baby in 2001, yeah, you know the one I'm talking about).

My Brother's Humorous Caption

"Whoa! Who's that??" is the humorous caption my brother provided for this picture he took at the Michael Jackson memorial.