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!

Light Money Rats

Hey I am about to write a really long "post," a "post" so long that it will require many, many labels at the bottom, too many labels, yes, I am preparing to zoom past the "blog's" maximum labeling capacity, so I would like to apologize to the following labels that I am pretty sure are not going to be squeezed in at the end of the next "post":

"Blog" Mail "Bag": All Squirrel Edition!

Did you know that John T. Edge is in Kazakhstan? Well, neither did I! But today's "Blog" Mail "Bag" reveals all! Blair Hobbs sends along this photo snapped by John T. of a weird Kazakhstan squirrel. Actually, it is a NORMAL Kazakhstan squirrel! Our squirrels of Mississippi would appear strange to the people of Kazakhstan! THINK ABOUT IT! And guess what? By complete coincidence, in the same batch of email, Lee Durkee sent me a "link" to a conspiracy theorist who claims to see a squirrel-like creature in the most recent photos from the surface of Mars. A Martian squirrel "THEY" don't want you to know about! I do not present you with the "link" here because it comes from the forbidden part of the "internet," that "bourn from which no traveler returns" oh ha ha ha oh gee but I hate myself gee whiz. I did send the "link" directly to McNeil, naturally, and he claimed to see more squirrels than the conspiracy theorist did. That's not true. He said there were lots of other "rocks that look like squirrels" in the picture. So he was really saying that all the conspiracy theorist had spied was a dumb old squirrel-shaped rock. But it's a better story if McNeil believes that Mars is crawling with squirrels. PS THE LAST TIME WE MENTIONED MARS ON THE "BLOG" IS ALSO THE LAST TIME WE MENTIONED SQUIRRELS ON THE "BLOG." "CLICK" HERE IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME! FOOLS! DO SOMETHING BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!

Mismatched Animal Trend

Not long ago in the New York Times we found out that Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn acting together were like "a giraffe attempting to mate with a hedgehog." Today there is a review in the New York Times of a biography that is "like watching a moose try to describe a leopard." I detect a trend! I am going to keep an eye on it for you, don't you worry, don't you worry yourself about it at all, I am on the case, please just go about your daily business, I am keeping an eye on everything!

A Washy Draught Indeed

"Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition." I like everything Jane Eyre says! Especially "deglutition"! Speaking of bitterness, here I am sitting under a sign that says BITTER, yes, I am always sitting under a sign that says BITTER. In this case I am flanked by Bill Boyle and Ace Atkins, and hey, look, I have explained this over and over: now that I am off facebook, here is where you will find the vomitous dregs of my facebookian self-regard. I can't even feel sorry for it. I have no feelings left! Lest anyone misinterpret the conjunction of title and photo, never would I suggest that the City Grocery Bar sells washy draughts if I am understanding any of those words correctly, which almost certainly I am not.

Nice Try

"Lord Ingram... seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of blood or vigour of brain." Ha ha ha! Jane Eyre calls 'em like she sees 'em! I guess that's why I love her! What else can I tell you? The novel - like the John Wayne movie EL DORADO and at least one translation of THE IDIOT - contains the word "charivari." I still haven't come across the expected owl, though "the widest-winged condor on the Andes" makes a metaphorical appearance. Nice try, but not good enough, Jayne Eyre! Also, it's getting pretty crazy now. Still not WUTHERING HEIGHTS crazy, but kind of crazy. SPOILER! If you are my sister, don't read this next part. One dude says, "She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart," and he ain't kidding! Pictured, the climactic scene from JANE EYRE. Not really! It's from the live-action Disney film CONDORMAN. My deepest apologies to Jane Eyre and everyone else, everybody in the world.

Brink

I like Jane Eyre's reflection on her relationship with Mr. Rochester: "I knew the pleasure of vexing him and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far: beyond the verge of provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked well to try my skill."

Professional Bob Balaban Lookalike

I just accidentally read a short story from my first book and it was okay! My first book is the only one of my books I really like. You should get that one if you want one. But if you don't read any of them you will be just fine and continue to live a productive life. So no pressure! Anyway, one of the characters in the story was a professional Bob Balaban lookalike, and I thought, ha ha ha. As Lee Durkee and I were discussing the other day, you really forget what's in your books after you finish writing them. And Tom Franklin said something similar last time I saw him. So I was pleasantly surprised when I thought, ha ha ha. The story has my favorite last sentence I have written: "I was just thinking about that monkey."

Pantalooned Fops!

As has been pointed out here before, that Margalit Fox can really throw down an obituary. Today we have "pantalooned fops and gin-soaked playwrights" in the first sentence! Can it be a coincidence that this obituary has a "large snowy owl" in it?

Skull Time

Lots of skull-shaped items were up for sale on the Gem Shopping Network at four this morning.

Thanks

First I want to thank Lee Durkee, a real trouper. He spoke to my noon class yesterday and then he had to stick around with me for three hours before speaking to my four o'clock class. Above and beyond! We occupied ourselves in various ways. We had Arnold Palmers at Ajax, for example, and sipped them very, very, very slowly as the minutes ticked by. The young woman with all the parking tickets was working and refused to let us pay! So thanks to her too. I also took Lee to the mysterious part of the library and revealed unto him its glories. I guess my favorite thing he said was to my four o'clock class, when he suddenly - and truthfully! - declared, "GREEN ACRES was magic realism." I didn't have the heart to tell him that, like Craig Ferguson, not one of those kids has any idea what GREEN ACRES is. Tragically! (On the other hand, the New York Times doesn't understand GREEN ACRES any better than my students do, as I have most forcefully demonstrated here.) I am pretty sure I mumbled something about magic realism to the students at some point earlier this semester, at least. This morning Lee sent me a video of John Dee's magic mirror. "Click" here to see it. And look, I must thank Sarah, who made this doll (pictured above) for me. I have lost all contact with Sarah since leaving facebook, so if anyone who knows Sarah sees this, tell her I said thanks! It was handed to me by a third party, the doll was, just the other day, gratis, out of nowhere, without warning. The way I remember it, I was at a reading by Melissa Ginsburg and Ann Fisher-Wirth at the Powerhouse, some months ago, and Sarah was there and asked me what my spirit animal was and I said probably orangutan and here you see the happy result. I have something else Sarah made, a candy-striped pole festooned with plush red squids, for which I paid cold cash money after spying it displayed as part of her undergraduate senior Honors thesis project. And you know, I like to brandish it. I was at a Christmas party last year where all the kids (and none of the adults) were wearing devil hats, so I wheedled my way into a spare devil hat, only, in the most Freudian way possible, the horns on my devil hat refused to stand up, which should have taught me a lesson about hubris or something, but sometimes I like to put on the drooping devil hat and brandish the squid stick (as I call it, no, in my mind I capitalize it, The Squid Stick) and feel like some kind of wizard, I guess (see John Dee, above). Photo below by Blair Hobbs.

Philanthropy of a Millionaire

Hey remember the "secret doomed project" I promised to tell you about sometime? Well, I went to New York City to interview Jerry Lewis. Jerry Lewis called me at home to set it up! But I wasn't home so I had to CALL HIM BACK. I have a scrap of paper RIGHT HERE upon which Dr. Theresa wrote down Jerry Lewis's HOME PHONE NUMBER. I have not abused it! I have only used it once. So I went to New York. But then, on the night before our interview, Mr. Lewis collapsed just prior to going onstage to present an award to Tom Cruise. He was rushed to the hospital! So the interview was called off and I wrote an article about almost interviewing Jerry Lewis instead. The published article was illustrated by none other than Tony Millionaire! He drew me sitting under an enormous portrait of Jerry Lewis, looking worried, my precious little notebook on the bar beside me. A masterpiece! Who knew that I would turn out to be the most popular male model of the early 21st century? Mr. Millionaire very kindly sent me the original drawing in the mail and I just took a picture of it with my picture-taking camera that takes pictures and here it is. So soon enough Jerry was fine and our interview was relocated to Nashville, where Jerry's musical version of THE NUTTY PROFESSOR was in previews. But then Marvin Hamlisch, the composer of the show's music, passed away, and things were thrown into turmoil once again so now I have almost interviewed Jerry Lewis twice and I have talked to him on the phone twice yet I feel so empty inside.

Justin Bieber's Owl Tattoo

I feel I need to tell you I just read in the New York Times that Justin Bieber has an owl tattoo.

A Boiled Owl

And now I would like to say a few feverishly anticipated words about THE IRON PETTICOAT. Aw, it wasn't so bad! Or maybe that's the whiskey talking. Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn started drinking whiskey early in the movie and I am highly suggestible. First Robert Osborne came on and introduced it. He said that nobody has seen this movie in 40 years, because when the rights reverted to Bob Hope, he locked it up tight. I guess Bob was ashamed of it! Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay, but Bob decided to have his gag writers punch it up Bob Hope style, which made Ben Hecht furious. There was lots of trouble. But I must say that anything I laughed at in the movie bore the distinct mark of having been added by Bob Hope's gag writers. The movie starts with a score that indicates we are about to watch the curtain rise on a turbulent opera. It's heavy! Like Wagner trying to evoke a stormy seascape or something. Katharine Hepburn's Russian accent is somewhere between German and Dracula, with some French thrown in and something else... Spanish? She rolls her r's really expansively. But the minute Bob comes onscreen the energy and pep are palpable. He just breezes in and starts tossing off one-liners, walking in that supremely graceful way of his. He's so relaxed that during a scene with his commanding officer he just swivels back and forth on a chair casually, like a little kid, like he's thinking of something else. I was proud to notice an actual Russian (I think), a guy I recognized - decades younger here! - from Woody Allen's own Russian epic, LOVE AND DEATH. He plays a martial arts expert in THE IRON PETTICOAT. This Russian (I guess) and Bob have a funny fight scene, during which Bob unforgivably breaks character to make a Bing Crosby joke. So that's another Woody Allen/Bob Hope connection, which we collect here. The politics of the film is standard Cold War stuff, except that a porcine anti-communist senator from Alabama is portrayed as a dumb boob. Very early in the movie, Katharine Hepburn is said to be "as sore as a boiled owl," an expression I have heard before, maybe in other old movies, but I still don't get it, not really, a boiled owl, sore, why? What's that? In conclusion, what's the big deal? Who cares? Who cares about anything? Goodbye forever.

Huh

Hey what if I told you I was thinking about not doing the "Blog" Advent Calendar this year? You would probably be like, "Huh?"

Levels

Speaking of owls, I should mention that the most recent episode of ADVENTURE TIME featured an owl wearing a t-shirt that said OWL on it - so many levels! Many of my students are ADVENTURE TIME fans, and after class the other day a couple of them were saying that the episode in question made them think of "Children of the Corn," which we read earlier this semester, yes, that's right, we read "Children of the Corn" earlier this semester, shut up, leave me alone, you can't fire me, I quit.

Twitter

If I were really back on twitter I would tell you that right now I am eating a salad and watching a special Valentine's Day episode of WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU.

Spoony

I was delighted while reading JANE EYRE to discover that Mr. Rochester refers to himself as a "spoony" - a word with which I was previously unacquainted: "I began the process of ruining myself in the received style, like any other spoony... I had - as I deserved to have - the fate of all other spoonies." Still, I cannot help but recall what Philip Marlowe's friend Terry Lennox said about the gimlet: that it "beats the martini hollow." And likewise I must say that so far - so far! - WUTHERING HEIGHTS certainly beats JANE EYRE hollow. Not that it's a competition! (See also.)

Cat Twins!

Hey look a week or so ago during one of my "video conferences" with the good folks at ADVENTURE TIME one of our cats jumped in my lap so naturally I had to pick up the cat and show the cat to the people in Los Angeles so they could see the cat and besides this is the cat who looks exactly like Kent Osborne's cat! So you can see why I had to show everybody the cat because everybody needed to see the cat. Cat! Photo by Kent Osborne.

Solitary Ways

Hey I am reading JANE EYRE now. Hey there are no owls in it yet. But there is "a North-of-England spirit, called a 'Gytrash'; which, in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted solitary ways." (See also.)

McNeil's Movie Korner

Welcome once again to "McNeil's Movie Korner"! Emailed McNeil to tell him the seldom-seen THE IRON PETTICOAT is coming on TCM tomorrow night. He replied that he doesn't have access to TCM right now, and has been reduced to watching EIGHT ON THE LAM on the "streaming video" they have nowadays. "I love it when Bob slips on the banana peel!" McNeil reports of the latter film. "Bob also has a 25 year old love interest! And, not coincidentally, the film is a Bob Hope Enterprise," he concludes. You know, I seem to recall that when Kelly Hogan was sick a couple of months ago, she watched EIGHT ON THE LAM to help her feel better. I'll try to confirm and get back to you with the tantalizing results of my in-depth investigation! Why am I so excited about THE IRON PETTICOAT? Dave Kehr, who is usually so pro-Bob, had nothing nice to say about it. He said that watching Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope act together was like watching "a giraffe attempting to mate with a hedgehog." Hey, maybe that's why I'm excited! So long from "McNeil's Movie Korner."

Orange Velvet Head

In today's New York Times we find "stabs of sapphire, bags of rubies... the orange velvet head of a bear decapitated, poor thing."

Real Dead Owl

"... down fell a brown horned owl about the size and heft of a decapitated head..." So RIDES OF THE MIDWAY has a real for sure owl in it.

Sky Rabbit

"... I thought it was an owl trapped in there making all these spooked-out noises just like a ghost..." Rereading RIDES OF THE MIDWAY by Lee Durkee for my scary story class. And even though "it wasn't an owl at all" I am going to call RIDES OF THE MIDWAY a book with an owl in it, and put it on our big list of books with owls in them. Anyway, out at the fair a hypnotist makes a woman swoop "low over the stage... scour[ing] the earth for mice and rabbits." Now that doesn't mean she's an owl - it's not specified - but I'm saying she's an owl, because that's what owls do, they scour the earth. Hey did I ever tell you about the time Barry B. was driving all the way to New York City from Atlanta without stopping and we saw a rabbit fall out of the sky? Dr. Theresa and Caroline, who were dozing in the back of the van, didn't believe us. They said things like, "Oh sure, and I just saw a pig hitchhiking. He was standing on his hind legs and wearing a tie." But we know the truth. Hey as long as I've got you here why don't I tell you about a book WITHOUT an owl in it? Oh who am I kidding, it's five volumes, I'm sure there's an owl in it somewhere. Last night I was thumbing through THE ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR BALLADS collected by Francis James Child and I came across one called "Child Owlet" and an owlet is a baby owl, right? Right? But it's just some guy's name, this guy's name is Child Owlet, and not even I can count him as an owl. He's torn apart by horses for a crime he didn't commit, if you must know.

Fine Art Dude

How often have I tried to express to Dr. Theresa the mesmerizing quality of the people who try to sell you jewelry on television. But she had to come across an example of TV salesmanship on her own to truly understand the value of this unappreciated form of entertainment. She saw this dude selling "fine art." He was a fat guy in a brown suit and whenever he sat down he spread his legs really far apart. (Nothing against fat guys! I am a fat guy myself!) Dr. Theresa called me in and we watched the fat guy sell fine art together. The fine art salesman smacked his gum loudly (Nicorette, convincingly theorized Dr. Theresa) as he sold his fine art, and drank Mountain Dew. His Mountain Dew cans were littered among the fine art he was selling. I have presented here an actual example of the actual work that was up for grabs. He kept up a patter of non sequiturs, but they weren't charming like Tracey's from the Gem Shopping Network. This guy seemed volatile. He kept returning to his problems with someone called Jennifer. He said, for example, that she had the mark of the devil on her scalp! Scalp, he said. Jennifer turned out to be his wife. He said something about "bigfoot pulling a gun." Disappointingly, "Bigfoot" turned out to be the nickname of a guy on the crew. He said, "Don't stab yourself, Chappell." (His name was Chappell and he constantly referred to himself in the third person.) He said, "Don't stab yourself, Chappell, or they'll know you're crazy. I'm not crazy!"

Censorious Pink Zag

I didn't tell you about how Elizabeth saw "people wearing pink and red and black together. zig zaggy stripes" at the racetrack because it sounded censorious and sometimes I like to walk around in my black velvet jacket and pink shirt like some kind of big shot but I confessed and she says it's okay but she probably just feels sorry for me.

Tiny and Cutely

Elizabeth spent Thanksgiving at the racetrack, natch. Her horse came in second and Elizabeth got interviewed by the local news. She files this report: "lots of horrible hats made with hot glue guns and old gum... the jockeys were so tiny and cutely dressed."

The Channel That Shows Grape Ape

Spent Thanksgiving the usual way - took a pain pill and watched a little GRAPE APE on the channel that shows GRAPE APE. (See also.) The pain pill didn't help. I mean, it helped the pain but it didn't help Grape Ape. You remember Grape Ape. He had an okay vocabulary but mostly just said his own name a lot for no reason, as seen here. But I bet you didn't remember that his friend was an anthropomorphic dog (see also) who I believe was intended to come off as some kind of hipster. They just drove around aimlessly. So really it was like ON THE ROAD or the Bill Bixby version of the Hulk. And everybody they met was a regular human, yes, that hipster dog was the only human-size talking dog around. He talked like maybe he hung around in jazz clubs or something. I bet he was lonely. On the other channel was Kenneth Branagh's strenuous attempt at a musical comedy but Grape Ape was probably worse though when you think of the relative effort that went into them maybe it's a draw. Hey it's none of my beeswax really we're all just trying to have a good time.

The Oral Surgeon's Memory

Somebody pulled two of my teeth today! Fortunately, he was a qualified professional. As he put me under, he was telling me a memory of being a kid in a Vicksburg, Mississippi, hotel room where B.B. King was watching an episode of WONDER WOMAN on TV. "So it must have been the 70s," he said. Sounds like a hallucination, but I confirmed it when I woke up with two teeth missing. Just in time for Thanksgiving. Now I am eating mashed sweet potatoes and thinking about what I learned.

Hackman's Eggs

But the main thing I want to say about FRENCH CONNECTION II is that Gene Hackman was eating hardboiled eggs at the bar (or were they pickled? they didn't look pickled) and I was thinking hardboiled eggs should make a comeback as bar food or maybe they never went away I have no idea but when I was watching Gene Hackman all I was thinking was boy I wish I were at a bar eating hardboiled eggs like Gene Hackman.

Back in Shape

Okay now I am going to tell you some more things Dr. Theresa said while watching Gene Hackman in FRENCH CONNECTION II. When he was chasing on foot after a streetcar, she said, "He's back in shape!" Because earlier in the movie the bad guys - spoiler alert, but you can't possibly care, can you? - kidnapped him and hooked him on the dope (see Dr. Theresa's previous comment, "Oh, they're shooting him full of junk") and he had to get over his love of the dope and get back in shape and get his groove back. Then at the end of the movie she said, "That's the 1970s for ya!"

The Goods

And now I would like to tell you some of the things Dr. Theresa said while we were watching FRENCH CONNECTION II just now. She said, "I hope nothing happens to the well-meaning bartender" and "Oh, they're shooting him full of junk." And when an old lady stole a strung-out Gene Hackman's watch, she said, "Granny's got the goods" and when a French cop tore up a doctor's report she said, "This never happened, see?" And later she said, "You're toast, granny." I said one thing. There was a bad guy who looked like the Mentalist from the TV show THE MENTALIST, and when he crashed through the windshield of a truck I said, "So much for the Mentalist." What else? Well, Dr. Theresa broke a casserole dish and cut her fingers and there was blood everywhere like a horror movie.

I Also Like the Ghostly Nubs

"Why did the toasted marshmallow taste like fish?" This koan, arguably in iambic pentameter, from a restaurant review by Pete Wells, is my favorite sentence in today's New York Times. Wells's review ("click" here) contains many other piquant phrases, such as "ghostly nubs."

William Henry Harrison

Hey it was warm on Friday and I went out in short sleeves then later in the evening it was cooler and I never put on a jacket and I got sick - not McNeil sick, but pretty sick. Is that how getting sick works? Isn't that what happened to William Henry Harrison? Look it up! But at 2 or 3 in the morning, not yet knowing I was sick, I found myself awake and I turned on TCM and something called BURN, WITCH, BURN was coming on and I heard Dr. Theresa stirring around so I said, "Get up! There's something called BURN, WITCH, BURN coming on!" So Dr. Theresa said, "Pause it!" Dr. Theresa said, "What if I make coffee and eggs and tortillas and we watch BURN, WITCH, BURN? We can sleep all day tomorrow if we want!" All of that sounded like the best idea ever. BURN, WITCH, BURN is all about college professors using witchcraft to get tenure! I think there were some sly allusions to Shirley Jackson. And then a giant stone eagle comes to life and chases a dude down the halls of academia. But afterwards I was exhausted. That's not what coffee is supposed to do! Turns out I was sick with a virus all weekend and even had to miss class on Monday and gee I always give my students such a hard time when they don't drag themselves to class and I guess I should have learned a valuable lesson about what a jerk I am but I didn't, no, I'm still a jerk.

How Kitty Got Her Brains Back

I am happy to say that somewhere between the denouement of THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ, in which the pink brains of the Glass Cat are removed, and GLINDA OF OZ, which L. Frank Baum wrote on his deathbed, the Glass Cat apparently gets her pink brains back. Now, if wikipedia is telling me true, there are seven OZ books between THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ and GLINDA OF OZ, so that means I have to read just seven more OZ books at the MOST to find out how and why the Glass Cat got back her pink brains, unless Baum just forgot, he was on his deathbed after all, so am I, a man almost 50 years of age, going to read seven more OZ books anyway? I can't say I won't.

The Jottery

Hey I just opened up my precious little notebook that contains all my precious little jottings and I saw a partial quotation I must have liked, and indeed do like: "achievement unblemished by reward." - N.J. But I don't remember writing it down or who N.J. is! I'll investigate. Maybe. If I'm not too tired. Right above it, I have printed as a question, "We're all going to die one day?" Yeah, I don't know where I was or what I was doing when I jotted that. Jotting!

Not Surprisingly, Nixon

Would you be interested and thrilled if I told you that I thought of another connection between Norman Mailer and Nixon? No? Who cares? The way I remembered it, Godard asked Nixon to play King Lear before he asked Norman Mailer. Turns out I have no idea what I'm talking about. But when I looked it up in the Godard bio I have, I found out that Godard DID offer Nixon half a million dollars to appear in one scene with Mailer. "Not surprisingly, Nixon did not respond," writes Richard Brody. I also learned that Lee Marvin agreed to play King Lear and then backed out. Lee Marvin as King Lear! I know you don't care but I am going to sit here and think about it. Well, what if I told you that there are several disorienting references to "Romney" in Mailer's book, only he's talking about Romney's dad? Still nothing? Okay. Well, I guess I have been going around for decades with a knowing air, misleadingly asking people, "Hey, did you know Godard offered Nixon the part of King Lear?" Hey, GLINDA OF OZ is weird. There's "a shelf of books that were written in blood" - shades of Lovecraft! - and Dorothy has lines of dialogue like, "No, I'd rather die quickly." (!)

Uttering Dismal Grunts

All right! More on the pig from GLINDA OF OZ: "Just then a pig came running into the room, uttering dismal grunts. It was made of solid gold, with joints at the bends of the legs and in the neck and jaws. The Golden Pig's eyes were rubies, and its teeth were polished ivory." All right that's my kind of pig all right. Except for the ivory, ivory's not cool man.

Misty Soubrette Reappraisal

Hey speaking of Nixon wasn't I just speaking of Nixon? I happened to grab up Norman Mailer's nonfiction book MIAMI AND THE SIEGE OF CHICAGO and I just got to the part where Mailer spies Nixon's daughters: "Tricia, gentle, bemused, a misty look to her face... Julie... healthy, genial, a perfect soubrette for a family comedy on television... a man who could produce daughters like that could not be all bad. The remote possibility of some reappraisal of Richard Nixon was now forced to enter the works." Loyal "blog" readers will of course immediately recall their loyal "blog" reading from early 2007 and the controversial words of one James Whorton, Jr.

Four Cans of Brains

Here is my favorite statement so far in GLINDA OF OZ: "My poor wife had four cans of brains and became a remarkable witch, but alas! that was before those terrible enemies, the Skeezers, transformed her into a Golden Pig."

Frightful Music Gentlemen

In the book I was telling you about, Thomas Adès has some interesting things to say about Franck, a composer to whom I have never given a second thought, or a first thought. Adès calls Franck's only symphony "a very pregnant piece. It's wildly unfashionable now." Naturally I turned to the reliably stilted yet poignant schadenfreude of those kooky old volumes: MILTON CROSS' ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC. I was not disappointed! "Midway in his rehearsal [the conductor, Colonne] stopped the orchestra and turned to the composer to ask, 'Does it please you?' Franck replied that he was very pleased indeed. Colonne then turned back to the orchestra men and added, 'It's all frightful music, gentlemen, but we'll go on anyway.'" And: "Most of those who knew him regarded him as a quaint man who always wore an overcoat too large for him, over trousers that were invariably too short." The encyclopedia tells of how Franck worked on a piece for ten years then invited all the greatest members of the musical establishment of Paris to hear him play it and only two people showed up. "His first major public success as a composer did not come until he was sixty-eight years old (the last year of his life)." On the other hand, Debussy is quoted on the subject of Franck's soul, which he proclaimed "so good that neither contradictory circumstances nor the wickedness of others could ever make him feel bitter."

Famous Fish Pix

Hey yeah but look here, Pendleton Ward, creator of ADVENTURE TIME, drew me again, this time with the fish that Rachel and SKIN MAG the human literary magazine gave me when they moved to Mexico to express their love, only guess what, they moved to China instead! That's what somebody told me at City Grocery Bar the other night. I have lost touch with them completely and cannot tell them about this artistic sketch of their former pet. I am always spending long portions of valuable professional video-conferencing time talking about the fish, yes, that's right, I am doing some work for ADVENTURE TIME, why was I trying to keep that a secret? Maybe I kind of thought it was supposed to be a secret. Don't ask me. Anyway, it can't be a secret, can it? With this picture of the fish and me out there? I could and should and will take this opportunity to make sure you understand that Pendleton Ward is NOT the "Mr. Ward" to whom I often refer on the "blog." I have never met Pendleton Ward in actual person. My old friend, the "blog's" "Mr. Ward," has the FIRST name Ward, not the last name Ward. I don't even recall why I started to call my friend Ward "Mr. Ward" on the "blog." Was it to protect his identity? That was stupid.

Jazz Ghost

You know what Frank Kermode said about Shakespeare: "To be able to devote one’s life to art without forgetting that art is frivolous is a tremendous achievement of personal character." And what about when John Ashbery said that poetry is good because of its impracticality? Plus how can we forget the Maine antiques dealer who said, "I think I’m more and more attracted to things that aren’t worth anything"? Let me add a composer I really like, Thomas Adès, who says in a book of interviews, "I have to make gratuitous things... which the philosophers can't explain." He says a lot of other aphoristic things, too! He's very aphoristic. I'd tell you more except I am teaching this book to my grad students next semester and I want to leave some surprises for them. Well, he says some things about Mahler I don't agree with at all, but he does praise Mahler when Mahler "embraces and celebrates the futility of his life and his music." I can get behind that! And then he says (still about Mahler) "good for him. Grand failures are preferable to sneaky successes, aren't they?" And that makes me think of something I have said on the "blog." I can't tell you more! We're reading DRACULA and WUTHERING HEIGHTS in my grad class too. And GLINDA OF OZ, which I haven't yet read, but I'm getting behind Laura Lippman's interpretation, so I am sure it will be a success. I was going to make them read THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ but the ending depressed me too much. (Spoilers here, nearly a century old, but still.) The Glass Cat with awesome brains like pink marbles is forced to exchange them for transparent brains. She becomes "humble" - ugh! - and boring, which in the world of the book is supposed to be a good thing. We all know it's not so. Well, I mean it's good to be humble, of course, but you don't have to be boring about it, and DO try to stop people from switching out your brains on a whim if at all possible. I am quite disturbed, also, by the political system of Oz. Magic is outlawed! You might think my ideas to be conservative. Am I against government regulation? Well, I guess so in this case! Only a certain few government-licensed employees of the state are allowed to practice magic in Oz. If magic spells are the guns of Oz, then Ozma has repealed the second amendment. On the other hand, if you think of magic as free speech (that's probably more like it - I guess!), then I am a true liberal, and Ozma is a censor. The Patchwork Girl never did become "terrifyingly amoral" in my opinion, as Lippman promised. The closest she came was saying that she would gladly "kill a dozen useless butterflies" to help her friend. That was scary! But I guess "punk rock" is the best definition of her in my book. Finally, I should tell you that our annual Halloween film festival ended with a movie called TORMENTED, all about a jazz pianist practicing for Carnegie Hall (!) who accidentally (sort of, not really) lets his girlfriend ("Wow! Look at that brassiere!" exclaimed Dr. Theresa) fall off a lighthouse and then she's dead and a ghost! I particularly loved the scheming beatnik in TORMENTED and kept wondering where I had seen him before. Turns out that many years later he was the bartender ghost in THE SHINING! I learned that from imdb.

Jack Jones Won't Let Us

"Will it ever be different that you and I will stop dreaming those big visions that keep us so human?" That's the beginning of some nutty liner notes on a Jack Jones LP I bought at The End of All Music a few weeks ago. Also: "Then, her knees that are too fat as they jump out of a mini skirt and the bulge of tummy that hangs over his swimming shorts don't mean a thing... That's what the Jones boy is saying, and he says it so it will run around in your ears if you hear it in the Go-Go that never stops being a sound pit or at a cocktail party where some creep is serenading you and over in the corner Sir John Galahad is arguing the propulsion strength of dry fuel and he won't look at you and your eyes have burnt a hole through his beguiling head... you want to climb those mountains and hills and find the stars and hold the hands, and kiss the lips, and light the cigarettes and have those babies... Just silly humans like you and me with big hearts and dreamy dreams. We will not stop: Jack Jones won't let us." Now, first of all, isn't it kind of ominous that Jack Jones won't let us stop? And next I will tell you that the liner notes turn out to be authored and signed by Father Norman J. O'Connor, and here I add a parenthetical exclamation point: (!).

Gargoyle Hugs

When we were walking up the dark path to Faulkner's house the other night, something made a noise behind a tree and then it popped out to scare us and it was none other than Bill Griffith, the man who runs Faulkner's house. He's a big horror movie fan - he used to watch them regularly with Barry Hannah, the gorier the better - and he told us he had just seen EQUINOX and liked it. So naturally it shot right to the top of our Halloween film festival list. We watched it, and I don't want to tell you anything about it! I want you to watch it for yourself. Even the dvd menu screen had too many spoilers for my taste. So just close your eyes and get a friend or loved one to select "Play Movie" for you! We also watched DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE and a 1972 made-for-TV movie called GARGOYLES, all about a young woman in various halter tops and her sometimes shirtless dad, who fight reptilian winged demons. In one scene, two of the "gargoyles" hug! And then, as they break their embrace (pictured) and one gargoyle moves away, the other gargoyle swats the first gargoyle affectionately on the rump! Dr. Theresa and I had to rewind that scene to make sure we really saw it and yes we really did, we really truly did. I realize that we started the whole festival this year with two other made-for-TV movies from 1972. Why were TV movies so weird in 1972? I am going to blame Nixon. Nothing we have seen so far during the annual Halloween film festival is nearly as scary as this creature named Jack Pumpkinhead I came across while reading THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ. First of all, he lives in a giant pumpkin, even though his own head is a pumpkin, which would be like us living in a giant human head (see also)! He serves pumpkin pie to his guests, so that's horrific. And his head is constantly rotting! So he is always out in the pumpkin patch, carving a new head for himself. Oh dear Lord.

Best Stuffing

It is almost as if L. Frank Baum heard my objections to his narrow view of ragtime FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. He has a character say, "I've just composed a tune called 'The Speckled Alligator.' It's in patch-time, which is much superior to rag-time." He plays it on a harmonica and Baum editorializes: "It wasn't a very bad tune, nor a very good one." I like it when the Glass Cat disdainfully draws a distinction between herself and "the meat cats." If you are in college and starting a band, may I respectfully suggest that you name yourselves "The Meat Cats"? The Scarecrow falls hard for the Patchwork Girl and says she has "the best stuffing there is going," which struck me as a pretty hardboiled turn of phrase, so is it any wonder that Laura Lippman got me to read THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ? She also recommended THE OTHER, the other [THE OTHER, the other, ha! - ed.] thing I'm reading now, so really Laura Lippman is dictating all my reading, rather like Ozma, who appears to be the benevolent dictator of Oz if I am understanding the situation correctly and yes, I have some serious reservations about the political system of Oz.

Oatmeal Cat

"... and playfully they would tease her, Ada Katerina, be for us a bee, a flower, an owl." Gee sometimes I get so weary when I contemplate my lot in life: to be the man who keeps a big long list of every book with an owl in it, even though my careful cataloguing does serve to substantiate my magnificent literary theory that every book has an owl in it. But oh gee it is such lonely work. It's at times like these that I say to myself, "Come on, Pendarvis! The people are counting on you!" So THE OTHER by Thomas Tryon is a book with an owl in it. And a few pages after that there's something about an old lady feeding oatmeal to her cat.

Tell the World!

Dr. Theresa accidentally happened to catch a few moments of the apparently awful NBC remake of THE MUNSTERS that came on tonight, and boy was she sorry. She called me into the room to rewind it and show me a few minutes that particularly offended her. A little boy irrevocably zipped up in a bright yellow sleeping bag was trying to hop away from a beast who swatted him against a tree in a magnificent explosion of feathers. This, of course, is the most memorable moment in John Frankenheimer's mutant bear movie PROPHECY. It wasn't a homage, argued Dr. Theresa, because it was so obscure. It was a rip-off. "It wasn't THEIR brilliance," she said. She also said, "Tell the world!" Then we watched RED LIGHTS, our second Halloween film festival movie this year to feature Sigourney Weaver. "Hey," I said, "she was in GHOSTBUSTERS [not part of the Halloween film festival - ed.] and now she's PLAYING a ghost-buster. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Get it?" That's what I said. To which Dr. Theresa responded something like, "Yeah." It also starred the creepy guy from RED EYE. And, purely objectively, it was the movie in our festival that (so far) made us say "Aaaaah!" out loud the most, though it wasn't really an "Aaaaah!" kind of movie.

I Ate It

You know I'm a "teacher" and I have "office hours" at Square Books but today Richard Howorth spotted me and forcibly moved my "office hours" to City Grocery Bar for martinis. Well first we asked for gibsons but it turns out I ate all the cocktail onions last night. Who should show up but Chris Offutt, who wrote this week's episode of TREME? We talked about unicorns. Then John Currence came by and put a small cast-iron skillet in front of me and in that skillet was something to eat on a bed of collards and I ate it and it was good and John said, "That's fried cockscomb." (See also.)

I Hate Dignity

You know I'm reading THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ and I haven't yet found the terrifying amorality I was promised in the title character, although she is a tad anarchic, as evidenced by this illustration and her accompanying slogan (see also; I'd call her "punk rock" if the text didn't define ragtime as a "jerky jumble of sounds" - I'm kind of surprised that Baum missed the opportunity to have her love ragtime since she's made of rags; instead she calls it "extremely bad"). Her hair, I suppose, I find somewhat terrifying in each illustration, particularly here, the way the sparse strings dance and wave about, and the two visible teeth are unsettling, and the dreaded button eyes, natch, but I have to say so far I get where she's coming from, man. Like Frankenstein's monster - like all of us! - the Patchwork Girl didn't ask to be born.

Neon Monkey Dreams

You know I would never want to see a monkey riding a dog, though I love reading about monkeys riding dogs and writing about monkeys riding dogs. I'm a complicated person! (See also.) I am happy to say that my old buddies Anya and Elizabeth have an essay up ("click" here) on therumpus.net and it contains this quotation: "I was born in 1962. All my life it was my dream to own a monkey" and these sentences: "Three sheepdogs run out. On their backs bounce tiny monkeys in neon, fringed riding vests."

Afflictions of McNeil

Gee I didn't want to scare you but last time I talked to McNeil he was abed with pneumonia! He's better now, though the tone of today's email was despairing: "I ate lunch at Target." Hey remember when McNeil had the swine flu? And what about that big bruise on his arm? He's so delicate and frail! Or maybe, just maybe, he's the toughest of us all.

You Can See 'Em Work

"So they opened the door and entered the house, where a little light-brown donkey, dressed in a blue apron and a blue cap, was engaged in dusting the furniture with a blue cloth. On a shelf over the window sat a great blue owl with a blue sunbonnet on her head, blinking her big round eyes at the visitors." It should come as no surprise that THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ is a book with an owl in it. But I guess my favorite character is the Glass Cat, a cat made of glass, with these pink marbles, I suppose, in her glass head, and she's really proud of them because they're her brains, and she works this phrase into every conversation: "Have you noticed my pink brains? You can see 'em work."

Latest News From Oz

Today Ace Atkins and I were talking about William Bendix and Ace said, "What happened to William Bendix? Did he come to a tragic end?" We didn't know. But we parted agreeing that he seemed like the kind of guy who might have come to a tragic end. Here he is in an illustration for the American Meat Institute (not to be confused with the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council), proclaiming William Bendix "on the air for MEAT." What else happened today? Heard from Megan Abbott. She has been keeping an eye on all this Oz stuff on the "blog." Turns out she and her brother read all the OZ books "100 times." Megan elaborates: "my dad bought us an enormous roll of paper from the hardware (?) store and we drew a map of Oz, based on all the books, that covered the whole floor of my bedroom and included illustrations made with those fat markers that smelled like fruit. I'd kill for that map now! I wanted to walk right into it. Then we wrote the publisher and asked for more written by L. Frank Baum and not the 'other authors.' My parents, who helped us mail the letter, apparently didn't feel obliged to tell us he'd been dead for 60 years."

Ultimately Defeated by a Chicken

I just got an email from Laura Lippman about an OZ villain who turns people "into tschotchkes and is ultimately defeated by a chicken."