Hey!

As I'm sure you saw coming, the latest Million Dollar Book Club selection is the DIARY of Witold Gombrowicz. "Hey!" I hear you objecting. "Hey! Hey there! Listen to me! Hey! Isn't, by your own admission, the purlieu, if you will, of the Million Dollar Book Club the so-called 'celebrity tell-all'? And, if so, how do you figure Witold Gombrowicz fits in? How do you figure THAT, my good sir?" That's a great question, and I'm not going to answer it. I will say that the solution of the puzzle resides in the fact that I have no money. It stems from that. I can elaborate no further at this time. "Hey!" There you go again. "Hey! Isn't it 'ironic,' if that is the right word, for a member of the so-called 'Million Dollar Book Club' to have no money?" Well, maybe. Do you know what that reminds me of for some reason? Now, this is gettiing far afield, speaking of purlieus, of what I wanted to tell you about the diary of Witold Gombrowicz. But you know what? A distinct advantage of being broke and unemployed is how much time you have to ramble incoherently about whatever you want. So, as I was saying, your question somehow puts me in mind of... well, to explain it, we have to go back in time to when I was in the hospital and Tom Franklin brought me a bunch of old comic books to cheer me up. And after that, I was buying old comic books for myself, at least for a little while, and there was one comic book from my youth that it took me some time to track down, because I couldn't recall the name of it, nor of the characters within it. But I kept seeing flashes of the cover in my mind. And at last I figured out that I was thinking of something called "The Green Team," some adventurers who were "boy millionaires," just to show you how the insidious, curdled influence of the loathsome Richie Rich wormed its way even into the halls of the noble DC Comics corporation. And, the way I remembered it, there was one "boy millionaire" who kind of got into the club under the wire, on a technicality. So that's what I was reminded of. But the thing I wanted to tell you about the diary (or DIARY) of Witold Gombrowicz is that within it... and this is a first! Hold onto your hats!... within it, old Witold is reading the diary of Franz Kafka... itself a former Million Dollar Book Club selection! You heard right. For the first time, the subject of a Million Dollar Book Club selection is reading a different Million Dollar Book Club selection! I don't have to explain the cosmic repercussions to you, do I? Because I have time.

Green Means Go

Hey! You know how THE ELEPHANT, a special I worked on with Kent Osborne, Rebecca Sugar, Ian Jones-Quartey, Patrick McHale, Pendleton Ward, and many others, will premiere on Adult Swim December 19? Pretty soon! And how the next day, on HBO Max, assuming it still exists, there will be a "Behind the Elephant" special ABOUT the special? A special about a special. What will they think of next? But guess what? Whatever you guessed, you were wrong. Because if you watch THE ELEPHANT on December 19 on an old-timey TV set like an ancient caveman, you'll see Frowny 'n' Smiley! Yes, stop pinching yourselves, THAT Frowny 'n' Smiley, famous for being a thing no one remembers from back when I was on twitter. Only now they're in TV form! Like when Milhouse said ALF was in pog form. I got the green light to spread the word. I call it a show, but I'm lying. Frowny 'n' Smiley episodes are 15 seconds long. So I don't think you can comfortably call that a show. But it's something! And you're going to love it. LOVE IT! Let Frowny 'n' Smiley worm their way into your shriveled up hearts, you monsters! Learn to feel again!

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.

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

Welcome to the newest recurring "blog" feature since... I don't know when. Since before the TV blew up and I quit "blogging" because I was so dispirited by the blowing up of the TV set? That's right, you're just in time for "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits"! Was McNeilileaks our last recurring feature? It was very topical whenever that was... you know, the leaks era of history. When we'd cram "leaks" together with some word to make some other word. Most recurring "blog" features justly wither on the vine, like "Bookmarkin'! with Jack Pendarvis" and the unlamented "Today's Weather." But we here at the "blog" believe that "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" has a dandy future indeed. In part, that's because McNeil, "inspired," I guess we'll call it, by the Million Dollar Book Club, is reading a 700-page celebrity bio of his own choosing. Because I am all tied up with all the various books to which I have committed myself, some of which I haven't even told you about, and find myself unable to join him in the endeavor (in fact, the bio is one I never read, and finally sold to Off Square Books during a long period of unemployment) McNeil has promised to pass along juicy morsels about the life of Humphrey Bogart as he absorbs them into his mighty brain. And he has given me permission to pass them on to you! Before we get started, I should say that I'm nervous about starting a recurring feature right now. It could be a lot of typing for nothing! Let me explain. The other day, a big old water pipe exploded - much like the TV of yore - under our house (the TV was not under our house) and some guys from the water company came by and dug up our yard. One of them took his shovel and severed a cable "linking" us to the "internet," much like the plow cuts the worm in William Blake's famous aphorism. Anyway, this same guy with the wayward shovel "fixed" the problem, but now the "internet" quits working at random times and AT&T, the worst company in the world, makes it nearly impossible to ask a human to come out to the house and look at what's going on. They just don't care! So all these carefully chosen words may vanish as I type them into the abyss. All right! That being said, we're already three bogie bits behind. Let's get started! BOGIE BIT 1: McNeil summarizes Bogart in his prep school days: "perennially bored, few friends, never cracked a book, oddly naive and vulnerable." BOGIE BIT 2: "During the depression, Bogart and his then wife had to move to some shabby apartment along the East River. One of their neighbors was a comedy writer who used to place his meal in a bag, shake it up, and then dump it out on a plate before eating it. No reason given why." As you may well imagine, the latter detail provided some grist for the usual hilarious email antics of McNeil and myself, as I fancifully pictured the comedy writer placing bread, ham, and cheese in the bag and shaking it up and presto, out comes a ham sandwich! Oh, what fun. McNeil replied that he was imagining mashed potatoes and gravy in a bag. Then he remarked, memorably, "Everything was a salad to this guy." I think that's a direct McNeil quotation, though I admit I am not double-checking. BOGIE BIT 3: Young Bogart used to sit in an arcade and play chess against all comers for a dollar a game! I might be forgetting something, but I believe those are all your bogie bits for the moment. Goodbye for now from all of us at "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits."

The Tinder of Our Wishes

Hey remember when my book about cigarette lighters came out? Me neither! But for a while there I would see something and think, "Oh, I should have put that in my cigarette lighter book. If only I had known!" But after a while you stop thinking that because you'd go mad. Mad, I say! But I just read AGNES GREY. To my surprise there were no owls in it, because those Brontë sisters are usually reliable purveyors of literary owls. The closest we get are some rooks who fly away as the sun sets: "For a moment, such birds as soared above the rest might still receive the lustre on their wings, which imparted to their sable plumage the hue and brilliance of deep red gold; at last, that too departed. Twilight came stealing on..." And I was like, "Oh, boy! Here come the owls." But there were no owls. Here's what Anne Brontë DID have: something I would have stuck somewhere in my cigarette lighter book, had I read it in time... "the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which vanish immediately, unless they chance to fall upon the tinder of our wishes." I also enjoyed (this is unrelated) her elaborate conceit on the subject of a lonely glowworm. Anne Brontë is in great sympathy with nature. The same cannot be said for Arnold Schwarzenegger, I fear. We watched most of ERASER last night. You know, Dr. Theresa and I saw it in the theater when it came out, and I associate it with the very earliest years of our marriage. I did not recall the part in which Arnold is being pursued through a zoo by some bad guys, so he shoots out the glass on a tank full of alligators, and the alligators immediately begin eating the bad guys. "Don't they feed these alligators?" I wondered. Actually, what I wondered was "Don't they feed these crocodiles?" But I decided later that they were supposed to be alligators, for reasons that will soon become clear. So after the alligators eat the bad guys, one of them gets after Arnold, so he shoots it in the head. Hey, these alligators just helped him out! And isn't he responsible for them now? Doesn't he realize their terrible irony? But no, he just says, "You're luggage." That's what he says after he shoots the alligator. I found it unnecessary! First of all, the alligator is already dead. Second of all, even if the alligator was alive, it wouldn't be able to understand what you were saying. Third of all, why are you gloating? Even if forced into a situation in which she was required to kill an alligator (there is some arguable precedent in AGNES GREY), Anne Brontë never would have gloated about it! Fourth of all, why are you staying and making wisecracks to a dead alligator when there are more bad guys coming? In any case, his remark was in extremely bad taste. I decided they were meant to be alligators because I believe shoes and belts and boots and suitcases are traditionally made from alligator hide, not crocodile hide. I don't know the difference. I must sadly conclude by noting that Arnold Schwarzenegger appears in my cigarette lighter book more than once, poor Anne Brontë (as noted) not at all.

Strange Incentive

I keep waking up in the wee hours just when some FRIENDS reruns are coming on. 1. Season nine credits are really baby-centric, or was that just for the one episode? Anyway, how did that baby get in the credits so much? Have some respect for the series regulars, newborn baby. You haven't put in the work! 2. Chandler's voice is way higher-pitched in season seven. I think science will back me up on this. 3. Dr. Theresa and I took a vote and decided unanimously that TIME AFTER TIME would be acceptable as part of our Halloween festival, but then we watched it and I just don't know if I agree with myself. That's not the point! The point is, during the FRIENDS reruns last night I saw a Lunchables commercial in which Malcolm McDowell (star of TIME AFTER TIME) pretends to be a teenager to get some of the teenagers' sweet, sweet Lunchables. They've turned Malcolm McDowell into the Lucky Charms leprechaun! The slogan is "More for you, less for Malcolm," a strange incentive for eating Lunchables. I'm also upset by the implication that teenagers should rudely call Mr. McDowell by his first name. 4. I can't remember where I saw this commercial for French vodka. I've seen it numerous times. At the end, some guys cheerfully raise a glass in tribute to the guy who invented the French vodka and he glances over his shoulder at them with an expression that says, "Keep your opinion to yourselves, worms."

Urruhh!

Well, let's see. Errol Flynn has stolen some diamonds and now he is on a ship with a hookworm expert named Dr. Gerrit H. Koets who looks "like a blond, amiable orangutan in a mink coat." Dr. Koets "fancie[s] himself a Lothario without equal" and likes to stand on deck baring his "entire torso" which is "covered with dense blond hair... Perhaps obeying some atavistic impulse, he started pounding his enormous chest with his hairy fists. He hollered, 'Gorillas do this before they mate! Urruhh!'" Oh yeah, and "His huge flabby belly undulated uneasily with each breath." We really get to know a lot about the body of Dr. Gerrit H. Koets, hookworm expert. But that's not the important part! See, what I'm trying to tell you is that Dr. Koets wears "big owl-like glasses," which makes MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS by Errol Flynn a book with an owl in it, like every other book, because every book has an owl in it and I'm the guy who tells you every time he reads a book with an owl in it, which is every time I read a book, because it always has an owl in it. Owl in it.

Please Don't Feed the Platypus

Just received the new Doomed Book Club selection, MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS by Errol Flynn. The epigraph is three Bible verses about being wicked! So right away you know you're in for a good time. Ace is way ahead of the rest of us on this one. Yesterday he tweeted that Errol Flynn is running a coconut farm - is that what he tweeted? - in the section Ace is reading now. As Ace said would happen, a young Errol Flynn accidentally kills two platypuses by feeding them tadpoles! They are supposed to only eat worms! That's what Errol Flynn says. And his dad is a famous biologist, so I believe him. Poor Flynn gets shipped off to boarding school. "The assistant headmaster was a wonderful old gentleman aged about sixty, with the picturesque name of Sir Worthbottom Smith, a down-at-heels English aristocrat, a man with a withered arm..." But Flynn gets shuffled from school to school, always stirring up a ruckus. Now he's in trouble for sneaking out of the window at night so he can canoodle with Elsie, the maid. Before such tales of youth there's a prologue that takes place during the ruination of Errol Flynn's career. It promises much getting drunk on yachts, like the Richard Burton diaries and the Johnny Carson biography before it. Flynn learns that he is completely broke: "I went to '21' that day for lunch... when you are down and out, go to the best spots." A friend shows up and Flynn insists on buying lunch: "When flat, put on the old front - you know." Yes, Errol Flynn! I do know! "I started with a couple of Jack Roses beforehand. I worked up in my usual style to grouse freshly flown from Scotland..." Errol Flynn!

"Blog" Advent Calendar for Dec. 25, 2011

Well, well, well. Looks like it's that time again. If you have not been keeping up with the "blog" advent calendar, here's what we've had so far. 1. Silkworm information. 2. Scientifically accurate fabric brain art. 3. Singing impressionist for hire. 4. Bumper car brochure. 5. Well, it was supposed to be a frog lying in a martini glass. 6. Donny Osmond collector plate. 7. Pictures of Clara Schumann. 8. Snoopy and Woodstock wind-up toys. 9. The Ruby Stain Museum. 10. Underwood Deviled Ham logo. 11. Recipe for Melba toast. 12. Salutations of Courtesy: When a Gentleman Takes Off His Hat. 13. "Tunnels and Secret Passages" 14. "Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine" 15. The "Sugarbaker House" from the television smash hit DESIGNING WOMEN. 16. Cowboy Lasso.com 17. A complicated diagram. 18. Hobby of Jack Kerouac's boyhood. 19. "Wake Up Your Liver Bile" 20. Something called "Mr. Blobby - Christmas in Blobbyland" 21. A souvenir horseshoe with the name Fred welded to it. 22. Joke shop. 23. "A Map of the Tongue" 24. Heckelphone information. All right! Now all I need to do is find you one last seasonal surprise... and here it is.

Ken Russell Died

I don't like to mention it when someone dies but Ken Russell died and I guess I should mention it because he made a movie called LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, a personal "fave" of Dr. Theresa's and mine. I associate it with our old dating days. So long, Ken Russell, you crazy old weirdo! You're all right.

Doppelganger!

Should I tell you about a Drew Barrymore movie called DOPPELGANGER? I probably should not. I know I am always giving you "spoiler alerts" and ha ha ha, isn't that cute? But to properly tell you about DOPPELGANGER I would be obliged to use nothing but spoilers all the time, real ones that will ruin the movie for you. Okay, I am going to do it! So don't read this! So Drew Barrymore is being followed around by a doppelganger, or as I like to call it, a doppelgänger. There is a cat in the movie, so right away you know something bad is going to happen to the cat. That's the one thing I can't stand about movies like this! Any time there is a cat, you are like, "Oh well. Too bad for that cat." And then you have to close your eyes during the dramatic scene when they come around a corner and discover that something bad has happened to the cat. DOPPELGANGER makes it over an hour before something bad happens to the cat, long enough for you to think, "Hey! Maybe that cat is going to be okay." But your thought on the matter would be incorrect. There is a kind of Scooby Doo ending in which we find out there is a logical explanation for all the mumbo jumbo that has been going on. It's what I might also call a Brian De Palma ending, in that the "logical explanation" is like a crazy parody of logical explanations in movies, and there are lots of rubber masks involved, bringing it back to Scooby Doo. BUT THAT'S NOT REALLY THE ENDING! After the "logical explanation" ending - I am serious, DON'T READ THIS! - Drew Barrymore suddenly turns into what seems at first like a worm! Or maybe it's the monster from the movie THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE. May I emphasize that this comes out of nowhere? The "worm" is really a kind of cocoon, out of which pop two extremely tall skeleton-like creatures. Stay with me! One of the tall, gooey skeletons (with whiskers or tentacles or something dangling from its chin) slaps the other one down onto the couch, and the latter skeleton creature just lies on the couch for the remainder of the scene. Skeleton creature #1 proceeds to take care of business! She swats the bad guy through a stained glass window. He flies through the air and is impaled on an iron fence, of course. I had to tell somebody. There had been a lot of green light and red light and blue light in the movie which made me think somebody was going for a Mario Bava sort of feeling, and when the bad guy landed on the fence I took that as confirmation. There is also a creepy music box. And to conclude, I present you with the almost touching detail that when people in this movie are afraid the doppelganger is going to get them, they most often choose to defend themselves with a baseball bat! Like a baseball bat is any match for a dopplelganger. (Pictured: Drew Barrymore's boyfriend's wisecracking sassy best friend finds a knife in a bunch of green light in DOPPELGANGER.)

Let's Get Annotated!

Every year, as you well know, the "blog" advent calendar brings fun and enlightenment to young and old alike. The fuel it runs on is surprise, so it would ruin the "blog" advent calendar to explain anything about it until it is complete in its glory and has been enjoyed by one and all in the spirit of anticipation, wonder, and universal good cheer. But sometimes there are one or two items that might be enhanced with footnotes after the fact, and such is the case once again this year. Here are this year's "blog" advent calendar annotations, helpfully numbered according to their original placement on this year's "blog" advent calendar: 10. So Mary Worth was stalked in her eponymous comic strip and they made a coffee mug representing her encounter with her stalker. Okay! I found this one the night before I "posted" it, and here is the weird thing: when I found it, the mug cost $13.99. But THE VERY NEXT MORNING, when I "posted" it, the price had mysteriously gone up to $14.99! AND THAT'S NOT ALL! After I "posted" it, when I visited other "web" sites with advertising sidebars, OFTEN the Mary Worth stalker mug would be featured, probably thanks to "cookies" or some other innocent sounding, horrible "internet" thing I don't understand. Mary Worth's stalker was stalking me around the "internet"! In one case, the mug was advertised for the price of $19.99! I have no idea what this means, except that computers are spying on us, but we knew that. 11. This man has lots of ideas, including one I thought was mine! In my novel AWESOME, the title character - a giant who invents things - wants to construct a highway with grooves like LP grooves in it, and to have cars fitted with special tires that would play the music embedded in the highway, the way a phonograph needle plays a record. I thought I made it up! But I was shocked and sort of depressed to discover that this guy had already thought of it. He writes: "Carve computer-generated ripples in the surface of a main highway, and when vehicles pass over the surface, mysterious voices whisper, and distant music plays... Little sub-threshold voices which say 'Buy popcorn.'" His version requires no special tires. BUT GET THIS! He suffered a letdown too, because he in turn discovered that ROADS LIKE THIS ALREADY EXIST IN REAL LIFE! So I guess we are both suckers for thinking we are so great and everything. 21. You don't know who Charley Weaver is. Why should you? He was a folksy character created by the actor Clifford Arquette (grandfather to Patricia and Rosanna Arquette). Arquette (in character as Charley Weaver) was on HOLLYWOOD SQUARES with Paul Lynde. I want to say he sat on the bottom row, at the end, but I can't swear to it. The little automated Charley Weaver toy is great. In addition to making and drinking its little cocktail, and its nose turning red through special lighting effects, Mr. Ward says that smoke originally came out of its ears. Puzzling, though: the Charley Weaver persona did not involve Foster Brooks-like drunkenness as far as I can recall... certainly Charley Weaver would have never imbibed anything requiring the use of a cocktail shaker - more like a Mason jar. So the toy is weird in that regard. Let me also say that there is one of these behind the counter at the Ajax Diner, inert, and often have I stared at it and wondered about its function - a coin bank? - as I drank sweet tea and ate pot roast and butter beans at the bar. Now I know! 22. I didn't realize until my brother-in-law David sent me the video that the Lambton worm was such a big deal. I knew the song from the Ken Russell movie LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, but if I thought about it at all, I stupidly and incuriously figured it was a fake folk song they made up to suit the needs of the plot. But man, there are so many versions on youtube! One guy sings it with his shirt off and possibly his pants off for all I know. The brother-in-law visited for Christmas. He walked into Square Books on Christmas Eve and by fate walked straight to a book about dragons containing a chapter on the Lambton worm. Have you ever noticed that whenever you start thinking about the Lambton worm he turns up everywhere? So I guess the Lambton worm is very popular and I never knew it. (I started this "post" last night but then I got too tired to explain who Charley Weaver was. It seemed soul crushing. Life is hard!) Pictured, Charley Weaver and LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM. See if you can figure out which is which!

"Blog" Advent Calendar For Dec. 25, 2010

As you will no doubt recall, this is the special day when all of our "blog" advent calendar goodies are revealed in their entirety, yes, in a wonderful parade of delights for you to savor and enjoy. And after that, the very last "blog" advent calendar entry of the year is presented, to universal acclaim and wonderment, so here we go: 1. The Doctor's Secret Baby. 2. Astrolabes! 3. from 1916, THE ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER magazine. 4. The Boswell Sisters sing a song. 5. "The Universe of Bagpipes" 6. glittery pine cones 7. Pat Sajak's ears are bleeding. 8. a fairy tale from the Isle of Man. 9. a video of "Baby I Love You" sung by Aretha Franklin. 10. Mary Worth has a stalker and now they have put him on a coffee mug! 11. A guy with tons of ideas. 12. a player piano plays "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" 13. an institution for the academic study of cravats 14. From Disney, a cartoon about dancing skeletons 15. history of a one-man band and one-man bands in general 16. 19th-century lighthouse keepers 17. contrabass serpent photo gallery 18. an enormous collection of old menus 19. two guys playing crumhorns in a stairwell 20. in a factory making golf balls by hand 21. Battery operated "Charlie Weaver" novelty item 22. folk song of the famous Lambton worm 23. through the decades with ventriloquist Dick Bruno and his little friend Joe Flip 24. Patent for a yo-yo. And finally, your final excitement of the year may be experienced by "clicking" here. Happy holidays!

The Book Harvest

It's official! The __________ Book Club has grown by one member: Scott Phillips, who wrote the novel THE ICE HARVEST, which was made into a film starring "blog" fave Oliver Platt (pictured). I wanted to call this "post" "The Platt Harvest" but couldn't think of a real justification for doing so. Speaking of titles, in the intro to our book club selection, THE JOKER IS WILD: THE STORY OF JOE E. LEWIS, we learn that Joe E. Lewis lobbied for the title THE WORMS ARE WAITING AND LAUGHING. So we know he wasn't great at titles, that's one thing we know about Joe E. Lewis. But I can say no more! The book club convenes after all members have read exactly 1/2 of the book, and it wouldn't be fair for me to start giving my two cents before everyone else.

Danny Kaye Excessively Tough on Inchworms?

No one can deny that that Danny Kaye song (see previous "post") has a great melody but does it strike anyone else that the lyrics are kind of unnecessarily censorious?

An Otherwise Delicious Peach

There was some hubbub yesterday and we all got caught up in a frenzy and I am afraid a couple of important news items were shuffled to the bottom of the stack. Number one: Megan Abbott is coming to town today to read from her new book and everyone who lives in the town should go see and hear her. Also, Verdell encountered an inchworm in an otherwise delicious peach!

Breaking News

The other day Verdell was eating the best peach of her life and there was an inchworm in it and she almost ate the inchworm!

Let's Hear It For Periodicals

I have an hour to kill between the classes I "teach." I like to kill it in the library. Periodicals are great! Today I perused the JOURNAL OF SEDIMENTARY RESEARCH, THE PAN-PACIFIC ENTOMOLOGIST, the BULLETIN OF THE MARYLAND HERPETOLOGICAL SOCIETY, and THE HERPETOLOGICAL JOURNAL. The cover of the latter showed a close-up of a couple of snakes' heads looking loving and cozy and cuddled up. They appeared to be smiling! I do not, as a rule, find snakes "cute." But for these snakes I make an exception! Kudos to the photographer for THE HERPETOLOGICAL JOURNAL. From the inside cover I learned that these snakes were "Slow-worms," or, in science talk, "Anguis fragilis." This made me worry about the snakes! Their name contains hints of anguish and fragility! And their happy smiles and friendly snuggling attained a certain pathos in retrospect! So I went upstairs to the third floor and gazed at Faulkner's Nobel prize, which is up there in a glass case, and on the other side of the case rests his medal from the French Legion of Honor (a decoration Faulkner shares with Jerry Lewis). It's fun to go to the library! And because it is Halloween, I will mention that in the meticulously curated sidebar of Maud Newton, I found a "link" to this "post" about haunted libraries. POSTSCRIPT: I have learned from the "internet" that "Slow-worms" are not snakes at all, but (Halloweenishly appropriate) "legless lizards." So I guess I still don't think snakes are "cute," but apparently "legless lizards" are. And now I am even more worried about their tender well-being in this cruel world. POST-POSTSCRIPT: I couldn't find a "Google Image" of the cover with the smiling legless lizards, but these scientific periodicals (above) should tide you over.