McNeil Month by Month

This is the day we come together as a nation to celebrate McNeil. Please note that during periods of low "blogging," McNeil's activities were monitored by lesser means, resulting in a lack of available "hyperlinks." Such entries are marked with an asterisk, though it hardly seems necessary. But those are the rules! September 2006: McNeil contends that he does not enjoy the "Little Dot" comic book. October 2006: McNeil furnishes a memorable quotation. November 2006: McNeil recalls playing Aerosmith on a jukebox. December 2006: First appearance of "McNeil's Movie Korner." January 2007: McNeil's system for winning at craps. February 2007: McNeil doesn't see what's so hard about reading a newspaper and eating a sandwich at the same time. March 2007: McNeil and I are talking about Bob Denver when HE SUDDENLY APPEARS ON TELEVISION! April 2007: Wild turkeys roam McNeil's neighborhood. May 2007: McNeil gets in touch with an Australian reporter regarding a historical chimp. June 2007: First McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival announced. July 2007: Medicine changes McNeil's taste buds. August 2007: McNeil's trees not producing apples. September 2007: McNeil pinpoints a problem with the "blog." October 2007: McNeil presents a video entitled "Jerry's pre-defecation chills." November 2007: McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy. December 2007: What is McNeil's favorite movie? January 2008: McNeil explains why the wind blows. February 2008: McNeil admires the paintings of Gerhard Richter. March 2008: McNeil comes up with an idea for a Lifetime TV movie. April 2008: McNeil's shirt. May 2008: McNeil's apple tree doing better (see August 2007). June 2008: McNeil is troubled by a man who wants to make clouds in the shape of logos. July 2008: McNeil's apples are doing great. August 2008: McNeil refuses to acknowledge that Goofy wears a hat no matter what I say. September 2008: McNeil's grocery store is permanently out of his favorite margarine. October 2008: McNeil on the space elevator. November 2008: McNeil comes across an incomplete episode guide to HELLO, LARRY. December 2008: McNeil thinks the human hand should have more fingers. January 2009: McNeil discovers that gin and raisins cure arthritis. February 2009: McNeil gets a big bruise on his arm. March 2009: McNeil wants a job on a cruise ship. April 2009: McNeil attempts to rescue a wayward balloon. May 2009: McNeil visits the Frogtown Fair. June 2009: McNeil dreams he is watching an endless production number from LI'L ABNER. July 2009: McNeil sends text messages from his cell phone while watching a Frank Sinatra movie. August 2009: McNeil disagrees philosophically with a comic book cover that shows a mad scientist putting a gorilla's brain in a superhero's body. September 2009: McNeil resembles famed boxing trainer Freddie Roach. October 2009: McNeil wears a surgical mask. November 2009: McNeil reports that a bird broke the large hadron collider by dropping a bread crumb on it. December 2009: McNeil advises me to like the universe or lump it. January 2010: McNeil eats soup. February 2010: McNeil tells of the hidden civilizations living deep beneath the surface of the earth. March 2010: McNeil recalls a carpet of his youth. April 2010: McNeil starts wearing a necktie. May 2010: McNeil's DNA sample fails to yield results. June 2010: McNeil thinks up some improvements for the movie 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. July 2010: McNeil reads to me from I, THE JURY. August 2010: McNeil finds a hair in his crab cake. September 2010: McNeil has a cold. October 2010: McNeil sends a nine-minute clip of a nice old man speaking at a UFO banquet. November 2010: McNeil sits in his car and looks at pictures of Jennifer Jones. December 2010: McNeil fears a ball of fire in the sky. January 2011: McNeil watches DYNASTY. February 2011: McNeil sees clouds that look like guys on horseback. March 2011: McNeil composes a "still life" photograph. April 2011: McNeil is upset when I interrupt his viewing of MATCH GAME. May 2011: McNeil pines for some old curtains. June 2011: McNeil eats Lucky Charms brand breakfast cereal. July 2011: McNeil investigates the history of the Phar-Mor drugstore chain. August 2011: McNeil compares Dean Moriarty to Dean Martin. September 2011: McNeil learns a lesson about pork and beans. October 2011: McNeil finds an article describing Robert Mitchum as "Bing Crosby supersaturated with barbiturates." November 2011: McNeil did nothing in November. December 2011: McNeil discovers scientists creating rainbows in a laboratory. January 2012: McNeil impersonates Paul Lynde. February 2012: McNeil dreams of matches. March 2012: McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy (see November 2007, above) used to chart the influence of Jerry Lewis on Carson McCullers. April 2012: McNeil disturbed by the art in his hotel room. May 2012: McNeil considers grave robbing. June 2012: McNeil's idea for "music television." July 2012: McNeil holds his negative feelings in check out of respect when the man who invented electric football dies. August 2012: McNeil reads me an old obituary of Charlie Callas over the phone. September 2012: McNeil concerned about T.J. Hooker's big meaty hands. October 2012: McNeil eats lunch at Target. November 2012: McNeil loves it when Bob Hope slips on a banana peel. December 2012: McNeil sees rocks that look like squirrels. January 2013: McNeil looks at an old, faded photo of a dog gazing into a Bath and Tile Emporium. February 2013: McNeil watches a video in which a hooded figure talks about "our criminal overlords." March 2013: McNeil wakes up at 6:40 in the evening, momentarily thinks it is 6:40 in the morning. April 2013: McNeil sees a singer who looks just like Bill Clinton. May 2013: McNeil is ashamed of himself for not realizing that Ida Lupino directed some episodes of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. June 2013: McNeil mails a cashew tree. July 2013: McNeil watches GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN. August 2013: McNeil recalls being rosy-cheeked. September 2013: A fairyland goes on in McNeil's head. October 2013: McNeil recalls tucking in his t-shirt. November 2013: The cover of a book McNeil buys says it is about Jerry Lewis, but on the inside the book is about Willie Stargell! December 2013: McNeil wants to visit an orgone box factory. January 2014: McNeil did nothing in January. February 2014: McNeil wonders whether Tom Franklin puts his hair in curlers. March 2014: McNeil takes a nap in the car. April 2014: The subject of McNeil pops up in an interview. May 2014: McNeil's emails on the "hollow earth" recalled (see February 2010, above). June 2014: McNeil looks forward to getting drunk and making insensitive remarks as I lie on my deathbed. July 2014: McNeil watches Jim and Henny Backus play themselves in DON'T MAKE WAVES. August 2014: McNeil tells about Robert Mitchum's hangover cure. September 2014: McNeil exaggerates the fate of some owls. October 2014: McNeil is incensed that a candy apple costs eight dollars at the airport. November 2014: McNeil's heart overflows with joy. December 2014: McNeil continues his 7-year chimp investigation (see May 2007, above). January 2015: McNeil listens to a conspiracy theorist who says Jimmy Carter was replaced by a series of robots. February 2015: McNeil recalls doing a report about matches in the eighth grade. March 2015: McNeil takes to bed with the flu! April 2015: McNeil and I establish an amazing psychic link. May 2015: McNeil bitterly recalls the time he brought a John Wayne movie to my apartment and we never watched it. June 2015: McNeil dreams about a bearded Dean Martin. July 2015: McNeil has a disappointing encounter with the Grand Canyon. August 2015: McNeil sees a squirrel holding a stick. September 2015: McNeil is saddened by the news of Dean Jones's death. October 2015: McNeil watches STARFLIGHT: THE PLANE THAT COULDN'T LAND. November 2015: McNeil sends video of Joe Namath making and eating a sandwich. December 2015: A coincidence of the type McNeil especially loves. January 2016: McNeil is in a grocery store and they start playing "I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea" over the speakers! February 2016: McNeil watches Don Rickles eat in a bathroom. March 2016: McNeil is duly thrilled when Megan Abbott goes to see CRACKING UP on the big screen. April 2016: McNeil swallows a gnat. May 2016: McNeil recalls the details of a screenplay we wrote in our twenties. June 2016: Destruction comes to McNeil's apple tree! July 2016: McNeil spots Dabney Coleman in an I DREAM OF JEANNIE rerun. August 2016: McNeil points out that Dean Martin had granddaughters named Pepper, Montana, and Rio. September 2016: McNeil is called a "filthy troglodyte." October 2016: McNeil advises me on what to do now that ADVENTURE TIME has been canceled. "I say take it easy for a while... just pretend to write when Theresa's around and then sleep or watch movies when she leaves. Oh hell, you know how to work it," writes McNeil.* November 2016: McNeil sees an owl while walking his dog at midnight. December 2016: McNeil finds an Airbnb listing by "eccentric millionaires" for a treehouse featuring "whimsical taxidermy."* January 2017: McNeil notices that there are lots of ants in his writing.* February 2017: McNeil roots for the guy who stole a bucket full of gold flakes.* March 2017: McNeil reads an article suggesting that all the gold on Earth came from the collision of dead stars and says, "Let's go get us some of this!" seemingly suggesting a trip to outer space.* April 2017: McNeil recalls that he was washing dishes in 2015 when the thought of Gene Gene the Dancing Machine came into his head. Then he discovered that Gene Gene the Dancing Machine had just died!* May 2017: McNeil watches ISLAND IN THE SKY with his dog.* June 2017: McNeil is happy to see a movie with rotary phones and "people looking up stuff in a filing cabinet for a change."* July 2017: McNeil begins alerting me to weather situations in my area like he's my mother.* August 2017: McNeil connects heavenly signs and portents with the death of Jerry Lewis. September 2017: A critique by McNeil inspires a choice of airplane reading material. October 2017: McNeil cruelly but fairly shuts down my scheme of crossbreeding an apple with a lemon. November 2017: "Death knows my weak spot!" McNeil exclaims.* December 2017: McNeil leafs through CARIBOU TRAVELER. January 2018: McNeil catches a cold and stays in bed watching old game shows, writing from his sickbed: "Bobby Van looks so healthy...but would be dead only 5 years later... GATHER YE ROSEBUDS!"* February 2018: McNeil gives me a good idea about how to win a coupla sawbucks from likely suckers. March 2018: McNeil's complaint about sleeping: "I dream way too much."* April 2018: McNeil watches a movie in which Dean Martin claims to "make a hell of an owl stew."* May 2018: I ask McNeil what lightning is for (see January 2008) and he explains it to me.* June 2018: McNeil's mom stumbles on an old book about the comical dog Marmaduke from McNeil's younger days and is excited to deliver it to him.* July 2018: While walking his dog, McNeil sees a bone fall out of the sky. August 2018: Having made it to season five, McNeil, though a stalwart fan, watches what he considers to be the worst episode of BEWITCHED so far.* September 2018: McNeil finds one page of a history skit we did in ninth grade. October 2018: McNeil emails a still from the silent movie BILLY WHISKERS, the subject of an innocuous, decades-long inside joke. Using me as an intermediary, he also consults Ace Atkins about the little-known film version of DARKER THAN AMBER... set in Florida but filmed, as Ace explains, mostly in Germany!* November 2018: McNeil asks me whether Jack Lemmon was left handed. I don't know.* December 2018: McNeil tells me about deluxe reissues of two Paul McCartney albums I've never heard of.* January 2019: McNeil says he only ever bought one cassette tape in his life. (It was Bruce Springsteen's "The River.")* February 2019: McNeil watches IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD and finds it difficult to believe a hardware store would close that long for lunch.* March 2019: McNeil tells me about a used car dealer in his town who secretly dealt drugs and would use his commercials to let people know a shipment had come in. If this guy's dog was on the hood of his car in the commercial, he was ready to deal some drugs!* April 2019: McNeil is thinking about the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.* May 2019: McNeil follows up on an email from 2015.* June 2019: Working on a secret project with McNeil. It never comes to fruition. July 2019: McNeil sees a guy in a parking lot trying unsuccessfully to fit a rolled-up rug in his car.* August 2019: McNeil cuts down his apple tree. September 2019: McNeil remarks that Brendan Gleeson should play Donald Trump... a prophecy that came true!* October 2019: McNeil is at the dentist's office, where the muted cartoon on the television provides the caption "frightened quacking."* November 2019: McNeil is shirt shopping when he realizes that the age of some of his old shirts makes it likely that any new shirt he buys might be the last shirt he will ever need.* December 2019: McNeil watches the old Frosty the Snowman cartoon and is disappointed that Frosty lets himself get trapped in the hothouse again.* January 2020: There's a new vending machine at McNeil's workplace. It dispenses "gloves, knee pads, safety vests - even socks."* February 2020: A comic book cover McNeil likes. March 2020: McNeil ponders inventing "powdered meat." April 2020: McNeil misremembers an idea we discussed in 2005. May 2020: Something McNeil and I noticed in 2014 comes up. June 2020: McNeil gets seven shots of novacaine.* July 2020: McNeil begins noticing obelisks. August 2020: McNeil goes fishing with Dean Martin in the realm of dreams. September 2020: McNeil finds an article that his grandmother clipped from a newspaper... on the back is an intriguing but incomplete item about murder among circus performers.* October 2020: McNeil tells me about a fusion reactor in France.* November 2020: McNeil has a dream about "the best chocolate milkshakes in the world."* December 2020: McNeil reminisces about fence posts. January 2021: McNeil's fascination with obelisks continues to inspire. February 2021: McNeil's decade-old observation about gin and raisins confirmed by the New York Times. March 2021: McNeil has an idea for a toilet that plays commercials.* April 2021: There's a photo of Jerry Lewis hanging in the breakroom where McNeil works, and he had nothing to do with it!* May 2021: McNeil watches a live feed of a stork's nest. He's pretty sure they're storks.* June 2021: Ernest Borgnine's personality is assessed at "a million watts." McNeil rates him 11 watts at most. July 2021: McNeil watches half of CHANGE OF HABIT and it's not as bad as he remembered.* August 2021: McNeil is envious that the fictional character Travis McGee gets to live on a boat.* September 2021: A guy at work asks McNeil if he has change for a quarter, because he's going to "drop a dime" on McNeil.* October 2021: McNeil and I coincidentally have doctor's appointments ON THE SAME DAY!!!!!!* November 2021: McNeil asks if I remember a song our high school band played at pep ralleys. It goes like this, according to McNeil (direct quotation to follow): "bom, bom, bom, bom-bom....bom, bom, bom, bom-bom....bom, bom, bom, bom-bom.....bom-bom-bom."* December 2021: McNeil dreams about Carol Channing... and within the dream, CAROL CHANNING HERSELF HAS A DREAM!* January 2022: McNeil and I correspond about a place where Eleanor Roosevelt used to live. February 2022: McNeil and I discuss a possible plot for something in which some crooks ask for a $250,000 payoff in quarters.* March 2022: McNeil is concerned about the sexual activities of some birds.* April 2022: Someone in McNeil's breakroom at work is listening to a recording of Jerry Clower, which upsets McNeil.* May 2022: McNeil covets a glowing orb. June 2022: McNeil and I debate whether the Falcon or Thin Man movies qualify as "serials."* July 2022: McNeil visits Albany, NY!* August 2022: I am given reason to recall the time McNeil swallowed a gnat (see the entry for April 2016, above). September 2022: McNeil finds a half-smoked pack of cigarettes that belonged to his grandfather. October 2022: McNeil is thinking about Leo Gorcey and abandoned motels.* November 2022: McNeil worries about 10 billion years that are unaccounted for. December 2022: I email McNeil about Frasier. January 2023: McNeil emails me about Dean Martin. February 2023: McNeil's irresistible influence. March 2023: McNeil's word is as good as gold. April 2023: McNeil's interest in the ubiquity of the Globe Illustrated Shakespeare. May 2023: McNeil has an idea about how a dog could win at blackjack.* (Why I didn't "blog" about this is a complete mystery.) June 2023: I recall that McNeil may or may not have once told me that glass is nothing but a slow-moving liquid. Anyway, it sounds like McNeil. July 2023: McNeil reports on a silver alien ball and a guy rubbing his feet on the silver alien ball. August 2023: McNeil sees some curtains he likes in an obituary. September 2023: McNeil finally remembers the title of a book upon which he presented a book report in middle school. October 2023: 40th anniversary of McNeil recording a Bob Hope double feature. November 2023: McNeil and I get into a disagreement about plums (not to be confused with the soup dispute of October 2023).* December 2023: A misunderstanding about Phyllis Diller, later happily resolved (see March 2024 below). January 2024: McNeil drives his family crazy by repeatedly singing "Eleanor Rigby" with customized lyrics featuring himself as the hero.* February 2024: McNeil finds the actual, tangible, physical volume of science-fiction upon which he precociously composed a book report some several decades earlier (for further details, see September 2023 above). March 2024: Misunderstanding about Phyllis Diller (see December 2023 above) resolved and put to rest. April 2024: McNeil reveals the details of his grandfather's shocking criminal activities. May 2024: McNeil's miraculous Canadian belt. June 2024: McNeil is worried about a giant catapult. July 2024: I am chastened by the stinging memory of McNeil's justified scorn (see October 2017, above). August 2024: McNeil boldly declares that Lena Horne should have played Dooley Wilson's role in CASABLANCA. September 2024: McNeil watches some Charles Bronson movies. October 2024: A McNeil discovery continues to reverberate, with life-altering consequences for the "blog." November 2024: I tell McNeil about my dream where a guy we knew in high school dressed a duck in human clothes and the duck didn't like it. December 2024: McNeil accuses me of eating pink Sno-Balls five days a week in eighth grade when, in fact, they were strawberry Zingers. January 2025: McNeil wonders whether Hank Williams went "to too many luaus." February 2025: McNeil explains the sleeping habits of dogs. March 2025: McNeil reads the Bible. April 2025: McNeil sees a commercial where a guy sprays deodorant down the back of his pants. May 2025: Photo unearthed of a young McNeil sporting white socks. June 2025: McNeil recalls buying a book by Albert Einstein because he thought it would make him look smart. July 2025: McNeil reads THE BRASS CUPCAKE. August 2025: McNeil can't bear to listen to Jack Palance read from his novel [actually a love story in blank verse? - ed.]. September 2025: McNeil relates the tale of William Faulkner's magical piano. October 2025: McNeil recalls reenacting a wine commercial starring Orson Welles for his cousins, who had never seen it.* That's it for now! Be sure to come back next year!

People Eating Grapes

"Every movie I watch lately, people are eating grapes." That's what I would be blasting out on social media right now, had I not quit social media like the biggest hero you've ever known. These aren't new movies. Just any movie. Any decade, any nation. In at least four movies I watched recently, people were eating grapes right off the stem. Never once did I see someone bother to wash the grapes. Robert Redford buys some grapes, takes them home and eats them out of the paper bag like an animal. Lots of grapes wrapped in paper, for that matter. Why? Why so many grapes? Where are the grapes coming from? What are the grapes trying to tell me?

Warped Innards

Well, McNeil has written to alert me to an article in today's New York Times, all about how they tuned the piano at William Faulkner's house so now people are going to be busting down the door to get in over there. I was sad to note that they didn't cite the "blog" on the time I went to Faulkner's house with Neko Case, and Howe Gelb played Faulkner's piano in its pre-repaired state, coaxing from its warped innards ghostly melodies without the so-called benefit of western intonation. No sir, Mr. Howe Gelb leaned into the brokenness of that sad piano! But nobody listens to me. McNeil is excited because Faulkner's piano is a Chickering. "We have a Chickering," writes McNeil. And I know what you're all thinking: "McNeil has a piano???!!!???"

Frivolity When the Earth Is Swallowed Up

This is where I tell you about my trip to Burbank. 1. On the flight out, my seatmate had a sweet dog companion seemingly smuggled under his hoodie. I don't know about dogs. I believe this one was a boxer. But I just don't know. I can't swear to it in a court of law! The dog had one blue eye and one brown eye. It would arise from the neck hole of the hoodie and look at me with a nice expression. Sometimes, due to the angle of its owner, it looked like a human with a dog's head! When the guy got up to go to the restroom, he stuffed the dog into a duffel bag. The dog was fine. 2. Layover at the Salt Lake City airport! This story just gets better and better, doesn't it? So, a booming voice on the public address system repeatedly gave out the first, middle, and last name of a guy who had walked out on his check at an airport restaurant. It was an old-school public shaming... Cotton Mather style! I realize that by mentioning Cotton Mather, I may have confused you geographically. I don't know enough about Brigham Young to know whether he would have made an appropriate replacement in my already shaky allusion. 3. Okay, on the next airplane, a guy across the aisle was scrolling through pictures on his phone and narrating to his friend: "This is a salad bar... that's another salad bar..." Ha ha, anyway, I thought that was funny. They were looking at photos of salad bars! It's a crazy world! 4. BURBANK! Kent was in town, too, and we were both staying in the same hotel. As we rode back to the hotel from Dan Tana's, Kent spied a DeLorean pulling into traffic behind us. He was pretty stoked, I don't mind telling you! He kept saying, "It's a DeLorean! Look, it's a DeLorean! It's right behind us. The DeLorean is right behind us!" But I don't know why, I never turned around to look at the DeLorean. It was just like when Kent begged me to watch Mark McGwire break a home run record and I coldly refused. We'll never know what's wrong with me. 5. On one menu, I briefly misread "scallion" as "sea lion." 6. Kate Tsang and I spent a good part of one afternoon just wandering around in the impossibly vast Warner Brothers prop department. People were working, loading props on carts to be taken to various sets. We just stayed out of their way. No one hassled us. In fact, one man cheerfully asked if we needed anything. We said we were just looking. Then we ended up in some odd corners, such as a section containing many kinds of animals who had been subjected to taxidermy. I have never enjoyed the thought of taxidermy. But here's Kate. She notices that some of the animals are falling apart. She dates them for me to the time "when Theodore Roosevelt was shooting animals" because they were stuffed with straw... a discontinued practice, Kate gave me to understand. I was standing there thinking, like, "Wow, Kate sure knows a lot about taxidermy!" Which reminds me of something: 7. I ran into Steve Wolfhard completely unexpectedly! Somehow we got to talking about the movie THE SEA HAWK and I mentioned how much I enjoyed the monkey's performance in that film. Steve said the monkey made him sad. I got it! I feel the same way about taxidermy. I said, "Were you thinking about the monkey's home life?" And Steve said... I think I have this right... "I was thinking, 'That could have been me!'" Trying to show Steve that I was on his side about being sad concerning monkeys, I said I didn't like it when monkeys were made to ride dogs. Steve said, "Maybe the monkey likes it. Maybe he likes going fast." 8. Oh! Before I get back to the prop department, I should say that when I arrived at the gate into Warner Brothers, I was greeted by a young, groovy guard, not an irascible old guard of the type the movies have trained me to expect. So, when Kate and I entered the parking garage over near the prop department, an irascible old guard really didn't want to let us in. At last, he asked us for identification, and that's when I discovered MY DRIVER'S LICENSE WAS MISSING! I bet you didn't know you were in for thrills like this. Anyhow, it turned out the groovy young guard forgot to include it when he handed me back everything I had taken out of my pockets for him. And I didn't notice! So I'm not blaming the hipsters of today for falling down on the job! BUT! If that hardboiled old-school guard hadn't been so stereotypically irascible, I might never have been allowed to leave Burbank! I might be sitting in a small room at the Burbank airport right now! So, thank you, hateful old guard. 9. Well, I can't really describe how satisfying it was to wander around the prop department with Kate. I don't know - though I suspect there's a Warholian element - why it is so wonderful to look at, just for example, a wall full of rotary phones arranged by color, or a shelf of hundreds of miniature Statues of Liberty, or boxes and boxes of beauty products from the 40s and 50s, or the long row of toilets, of which (the toilets) I sent a photo to just one person: Ace Atkins. Kate and I stayed in the prop department so long that they were closing up. We didn't know it. We just kept trying to get out and finding nothing but locked doors. We could have been trapped forever! Who was going to help us? Not the irascible guard! He would probably think we were getting what we deserved. Then we found a different kind of door: a door that was not locked. 10. Kate and I walked a few short steps from the Warner Brothers lot to the Smoke House, where we dined with one Adam Muto. Now that I can't eat steak anymore because of wanting to stay alive, I was excited to order the chicken pot pie. You know the one! The one that Pen and I saw once! The one as big around as a manhole cover! But friends, I am here to inform you they have taken it off the menu. The server told me that one time... just one time... they had put it back on the menu for a special occasion. But that time is gone forever. We live in new times now. He was very nice, and couldn't have known he was breaking my heart. 11. Reading Seneca's NATURAL QUESTIONS while taking my blood pressure in my hotel room, I laughed when he observed, "Frivolity when the earth is swallowed up shows a lack of serious-mindedness." He was angry at Ovid for beautifully describing an apocalyptic flood but then adding the image of wolves and sheep and lions swimming around in it. "Come on, Ovid! Get real! As if!" Such seemed to be the contents of Seneca's objections. 12. Quinn took me to a place that featured on its menu something called a "Good Ass Salad." Such language! Is that how you get your kicks? Forcing someone's great-grandmother to say the words "good ass salad"? This great-grandmother I'm imagining can't silently point at the item on the menu with her quaking, palsied finger! Thoughts along these lines led me to confess to Quinn that I have been saying "ass" on the "blog" a lot lately. Quinn said, "Oh, Jack, Bart Simpson could say 'ass' in the 90s." She might not have said "Oh, Jack." 13. It was raining the morning I left for home. Kate had said just a day or two before, "It never rains here." But there it was, falling from the sky, the tears of the gods as I like to call it. At a stoplight on the way to the airport, I saw a driver sticking his hand out the window, eager to discover for himself what this thing they call a raindrop must feel like. His beaming grin indicated that he was pleased with the result!

Hand Selling

Well, Dr. Theresa wanted a book about murderers for her birthday, so I was like, "Okay!" And then I impersonated the famous "shrugging emoji." To be clear, it wasn't just any book on the subject, it was a particular one that she had heard Richard Howorth and Megan Abbott talking up back when I did that Q&A with Megan at Square Books. That's what they call "hand selling" in the book business! So we went to Square Books and I got her the book and then she was driving the car and I was sitting in the passenger seat with whatever look I usually have on my face, and I said something like, "This is what you wanted for your birthday!" And, spurred by my ever-curious childlike wonder, I opened it up completely at random to "They call it the OWL. The Olympic-Wallowa Lineament. Nobody knows what it is." Well! That would have seemed extra creepy to me (especially nobody knowing what it is and the owl jumping out at me in all caps like that) if birthday magic had not preemptively counterbalanced it. I was given cause to recall another OWL - an acronym, that is, standing for something else entirely - from a manuscript I read in June [correction: June of 2024 (!) - ed.] but cannot address here until December. I hope you can hold out!

The Bouillon Incident

So Dr. Theresa and I were driving back from Memphis in one of those cars with that there satellite radio in it. And we tuned into an old-time radio drama starring Orson Welles, in which he kept talking about "meat juice," and, in fact, the title of the episode was "Meat Juice." I can tell you don't believe me! So "click" here and check out the title of episode 26! Well, after a bit, we began to get tired of hearing Orson Welles say "meat juice," as hard as that may be to believe. So we tried out different radio stations, and we were singing along, often inserting the phrase "meat juice" into a well-timed pause. Then we landed on an episode of American Top 40 from 1975 (presumably a different episode than the one we listened to in 2012 under remarkably similar circumstances), and old Casey Kasem spun "Third Rate Romance," a rather sleazy tune from my childhood. What filth my parents allowed me to listen to! Not recalling all the words, I bellowed over one verse the nonsensical imagery, "He was sittin' on a meat juice throne" and Dr. Theresa jumped in to provide the next line, "He was completely covered in foam." And now you can see why our 30th wedding anniversary is coming up pretty soon. You know what? I was going to save this photo (above) for that occasion, but now suddenly seems like the right time to show you Dr. Theresa (pre-doctorate) pointing at a hot dog in 1998. You may be wondering how I can date the photo with such startling accuracy! Well, I'll tell you. Kent Osborne took that photo at a professional baseball game at what was then called Turner Field. I don't know, maybe it's still called Turner Field! [It's not. - ed.] The president of TBS let us have his seats, so they were probably pretty good. I can't remember why he did that. To get us off his back? Once I ran into him in the grocery store and I was holding some bouillon cubes and all I could think to say to him was, "Bouillon cubes," as I waved my bouillon cubes in the air at him. He always had a mild and cheerful demeanor, but he made me nervous! I know it was 1998 (the hot dog photo, not the bouillon incident) because that's the year, so the "internet" tells me, that (in a different baseball game) Mark McGwire broke a big home run record, and it was on the very same visit from Kent that he watched Mark McGwire break that record on the TV at Manuel's Tavern, begging me (Kent was) to turn around and face the TV and enjoy the spectacle with him, but I kept my back turned to Mark McGwire for jerk-like reasons that now elude me. Anyhow, the "internet" says that (the Mark McGwire thing, not the bouillon incident) happened on September 8, 1998, and today is September 7, 2025! What a world. I don't like it.

Form, Craft, and Influence

Hey! Remember when I was reading a translation of THE ODYSSEY by Emily Wilson? Well, I liked it so much that I thought I'd see what else she had done. And she had written a biography of Seneca! So I'm reading it. All right. You have remembered one thing. Now I need you to remember another thing. Ready? Okay! So, remember when, for some reason, I was "teaching" some graduate students in a course called "Form, Craft, and Influence," ha ha!? (Ha ha was not part of the title of the class.) Naturally, we were reading the Nick Tosches biography of Dean Martin. (Dean was the influence, not Nick Tosches, God love him anyway. But I think Nick Tosches is a bad influence unless you are actually Nick Tosches. I could say the same for Cormac McCarthy now that I am beginning to recall some of the gore-drenched prolixity I was forced to run through my eyeballs when I "taught" a couple of his excitable young imitators.) But remember how one of the students said, regarding Dean Martin, something like, "Why are we reading about this guy? He's just a jerk!" And remember how I just sat there with a dopey look on my face because... I mean... who entrusted me with a classroom, anyway? (I think it was Barry Hannah!) Well, I was thinking about that guy (the student, not Barry) as I read Emily Wilson's biography of Seneca. I was like, gee, I wonder what that guy would think about Seneca! Because Seneca has done a couple of things so far that would make Dean Martin blush. Like helping an emperor murder his mother. Yes, I think that would make Dean Martin blush.

Cookie Man

If I'm reading the "blog" correctly - and really, who cares? - the last time I enjoyed a TV commercial was 2011 ("click" here for all the details you're craving). TV commercials! As I have mentioned many times, Dr. Theresa and I are the last two people who will watch "broadcast television" from time to time, like we're living in Colonial Williamsburg! The advertisers have a very special set of people in mind. All the commercials are about being afraid you'll fall down in the bathtub... or medicine to take if yet another medicine you take makes your mouth twitch almost imperceptibly, causing your loved ones to scorn and abuse you... or, as McNeil has correctly observed, deodorant you can proudly and openly spray on your butt... or... and here we reach the topic under consideration... life insurance. So, in the commercial I'm thinking about, there's a guy who picks up a cookie. He almost bites it, but then his wife tells him someone died, causing him to take the cookie away from his mouth. Then, every time he almost bites the cookie, she says something else that makes him take the cookie away from his mouth. This happens four or five times. He never puts the cookie in his mouth! I won't say I enjoy the commercial, but I have to admit that I'm riveted every time I watch it. I'm like, "Let the man eat his damn cookie!" I also wonder whose idea it was. Like was the actor all, "I don't think my character would ever eat the cookie"? Or was it in the script? Unless I'm hallucinating, the commercial starts with a closeup on the plate of cookies, which might argue for the latter. You know what this reminds me of? When I was a kid, you could send in a boxtop to vote on whether or not the Trix cereal rabbit finally got to eat some Trix. I seem to recall that I perversely voted to deny the rabbit such enjoyment. My reasoning, as I recall it, was that of course they were going to let the rabbit eat the cereal (which they did). But if I voted no, and then the rabbit was not allowed to eat the cereal, I could believe in the power of a single vote. Sobering thoughts for us to mull over in our times of contemporary life we currently experience in our daily existence as it is lived among us, the living, breathing people of the times we have today.

The Bolger Assertion

Hey, the other day, the ninth episode of ACE GOES HOLLYWOOD "dropped," as you kids like to say. You say it all the time! I can just hear you now, saying it. How I hate you! Where was I? You remember ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD. It's where, on the "web" site FLAMING HYDRA, I converse with Ace Atkins about his time working on the Pauly Shore film JURY DUTY. But today I was thinking not about the latest episode, but episode 6, in which Ace mentions Sammy Davis Jr. and I demand that he explain to the reader, if any, who Sammy Davis Jr. is. Ace doesn't think it's necessary. That's when I say, quote, "I told you, I work with kids that never heard of CHEERS! Which is fine. Why should they? You know what? It’s time for me to die anyway." To which Ace wisely replies, "Well, we gotta finish this first." You'll see the connection soon enough. Connection to what? Leave me alone! So, I've been reading a book about ancient Greece, but I'm not going to name it, because I'm enjoying it, but it's going to seem like I'm being peevish and critical when I say things like it seems to be written for people who have never read a book before. Like the author will interject - and this will be a paraphrase, but I wouldn't call it an exaggeration - "The ancient Greeks didn't have online banking like you and me!" Okay. Maybe she's being welcoming and chummy, and what's wrong with that? I'm the real monster here. We all know that. But late in the book she starts a sentence this way, and this is an exact quotation: "As Ray Bolger sang..." WHAT! It has the feeling, again, of being an attempt to draw in the reader cozily, conversationally, but WHAT! Not even I would start a sentence "As Ray Bolger sang..." and I've seen a lot of Ray Bolger movies. More than you have! I've seen more Ray Bolger movies than Ray Bolger ever did! And look. She's not even talking about THE WIZARD OF OZ. She's talking about something called "The Churkendoose." The Churkendoose! And here's where you smugly inform me that you know everything about the Churkendoose, and everybody knows about it, and you've thought about the Churkendoose every day of your life for as long as you can remember, and I'm the last person on earth who doesn't know about the Churkendoose. It's like the time I was so excited to see wild turkeys (of which the Churkendoose is a close relation!) and everybody got together to pee on my happiness. I'm just saying the hip kids of today aren't Ray Bolger experts. Or maybe they are! But I think maybe you're pushing them away! Hey! Remember the time I read a long, serious book about Hinduism and the author almost immediately quoted Garrison Keillor? Anyway, the Churkendoose came out as a book in 1946, and Ray Bolger croaked his way through the musical adaptation in 1947. Or, as A.I. so helpfully informed me (without me asking!), it was "first published in 2003."

Grievously Bedaubed

I don't come around here much anymore, because I'm so very, very tired of telling you every time I read a book with an owl in it. No more of that! What else is there to talk about? Nothing, that's what. Well, McNeil lobbed a couple of softballs at me, and I could have "blogged" about them... like, let's see... he found, on this very site, a zombie "link" which, before its zombification, had been about Jack Palance. I neglected to check it out, on account of being so tired and weary and filled with bitterness and ennui and so on. Then he said that by going down a rabbit hole, not his phrase, or more like a Palance hole, also not his phrase, he found a clip of Jack Palance reading from a novel he had written (!)... all right, does the inclusion of that parenthetical exclamation point mean that the spirit of "blogging" is beginning to surge afresh in my congealing veins? I doubt it! But to quote McNeil, "I stopped when he's about to read an excerpt from his novel. I just can't bring myself to listen. I don't know why. It's probably fantastic. Maybe that's what I'm afraid of? Who knows? You watch and let me know." Lacking the energy, I did not follow up on McNeil's request. In a separate communiqué, he mentioned a TV show called DIRTY SALLY, which, to his surprise (I think), I remembered quite well. I remembered how much it bothered me as a child, or whatever I was. "Dirty Sally" was no figurative nickname! This character was a spiteful old woman quite literally covered in dirt. This is what we thought was a normal TV show in whatever year that was! She was "grievously bedaubed," as John Bunyan put it in THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, though he wasn't talking about Dirty Sally. Let me give you more of the quotation: "Here therefore they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt." Now, I say that John Bunyan wasn't talking about Dirty Sally, but "Dirty Sally" sounds like one of his characters, doesn't it? He's all about Mr. Clumsy and Johnny Sewermouth and such. Those examples come from my own fertile imagination. Ha ha, we're having a lot of fun talking about THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, aren't we? Yet I'm still filled with a curious mixture of numbness and rage. I didn't even let you know when Megan Abbott was coming to town! Usually, I am like, hey, everybody, there is an event! Pretending that putting such an announcement on the "blog" serves any real purpose. As you can see from the tragically rain-spattered chalkboard above, the gods themselves wept as Megan and I brought our public conversation to a conclusion. As Megan is the other member of the Million Dollar Book Club, we did get to discuss our latest selection in person for a change. It's called WILD MINDS and it's about the early history of animation. And thus I learned of a Warner Brothers character doomed to failure, yes, "a bespectacled owl named Oliver." DAMN IT!

Winning

The other evening I went to City Grocery Bar to knock one back with Tom Franklin, but I stopped by Square Books on the way and got the new edition of CHOCTAW TALES, compiled by Tom Mould and Rae Nell Vaughn. There was a reading scheduled for the very same time that I was supposed to knock one back with Tom Franklin. So, to be clear, though I did not attend the reading, I did get the book, and that’s something, right? It’s not nothing! Get off my back! Anyway, the book was lying there on the kitchen counter a day or two later and Dr. Theresa said, “This looks interesting,” and I thought she was right! It did look interesting! Who was so smart as to pick up such an interesting book? Me? Wow, I’m great! Such were a few of my amazing thoughts. So a little later I opened the book at random and I think you know where this is going. Have I become too predictable? Has the spark gone out of our relationship, dear reader? In any case, I opened right to a story about an owl and a buzzard arguing over which of them was going to have the most children, which struck me as a pretty funny argument, but I’m not an owl or a buzzard or J.D. Vance. So the owl sits in a cherry tree and the buzzard knocks the owl on its ass with a dead branch... forgive me, the book is downstairs, I’m paraphrasing from memory. Also, I feel I’ve been saying “ass” on the “blog” a lot more frequently. Sorry about that, but not too long ago my brain went a little bit sideways. (See also.) Anyway, the buzzard wins and gets to have more children, if you call that winning. I left the “Animal Tales” section but kept finding owls anyway, including one really good one in the story of a mysterious old woman who chopped off a man’s head and fooled a bear and a couple of wildcats but anyway she turned out to be an owl and nobody saw that coming! I do care about things other than noticing which books have owls in them, but I can’t remember what those things are anymore, can you? Please help me.

Incurious

Well, there's this series of books I don't really like that much. I guess the first one was okay, but as I think back, it was just sort of a novelty, maybe. And the second one I didn't enjoy at all. This hit me recently when I saw a new hardcover in Square Books the other day, a third book in the series, hot off the presses... and friends, I bought it! Why? It may have something to do with a problem in my brain. Oh boy, I've thought of a few more points to touch upon before we get to the gist, if there is one, which there almost certainly is not. Yes there is. But no one will like it. I recommended the first book in the series to Dr. Theresa recently when she was looking for something to read in bed. It was only some days later, when I saw the third in the series at Square Books, that I truly considered whether or not I had actually "enjoyed" the first... which I had, up to a point. But enough to recommend it to Dr. Theresa - a person to whom I have made sacred vows - to read in bed? Well, it was too late! It was already happening! Something else you may not be wondering... Jack, you may not be wondering, isn't it very seldom that you "post" something negative... admitting that you don't like a book, for example? Aren't you afraid of hurting the author's feelings? Well, I'll tell you. No. Because I know you! And you don't exist! And even if you do exist, which you don't, you never "click" on my "hyperlinks," so you will never, ever know what books I am talking about. I know what you're thinking! You're thinking, okay, this third book - which you bought for full price in hardcover - in a series you don't care for: does it have an owl in it? You bet your ass it does! It's a stuffed owl with "incurious glass eyes." I am sure you will recall the "cheap glass eye" an owl has in a John D. MacDonald novel. Or if you want to get fancy, you can think of a stuffed owl whose glass eyes are "knowing topazes" in a fancy Italian novel... or James Joyce, whose stuffed owl has a "clear melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze." One day we'll have to write a monograph on approaches to owl eyes in literature. Apparently, there are two. Oh, and the owl in my current book is just one of a series of unfortunate stuffed creatures with "incurious glass eyes"... to quote: "Crows, foxes, rabbits, owls, just about every form of wildlife." Oh, really? Was there a walrus? A walrus with incurious glass eyes? Come on!

The History of Literature

Never thought I'd run across the phrase "She was going to turn me into an owl one time" in an Elmore Leonard novel, but I did... twice! The second time, it's "gonna" instead of "going to," the kind of distinction you notice only if you've wasted a good portion of your life cataloging every time a book has an owl in it. Anyway, after I read that (in KILLSHOT), I got in bed and came by coincidence to the part of THE ODYSSEY where the guys get turned into pigs. That's the history of literature for you, from THE ODYSSEY to Elmore Leonard: people getting turned into owls or pigs. What else have I been reading lately? Some Jack Kerouac journals that McNeil gave me for my birthday. He (Kerouac, not McNeil) is struggling to finish writing his novel THE TOWN AND THE CITY... which made me recall one of Dr. Theresa's former bosses, who told me that her favorite Kerouac novel was THE TOWN AND THE CITY, so I marched right down to Square Books and bought a paperback of it and stuck it on a shelf and never read it. Well, after reading some of those journal entries, I took THE TOWN AND THE CITY off the shelf, opened it, and the receipt fell out... May 27, 2013. And the pages of the book had turned brown with age! Look. That's not necessary. Once, when Dr. Theresa was still just an undergrad, we went to her Latin teacher's house, where fruit punch was served! And her Latin teacher brought out a book from the 15th century for us to pass around, and the pages were as white as snow! So my guess is that the people at Harcourt were like, "What are we going to do with this cheap paper we have lying around? Let's give it to the beatniks, they like that kind of crap." Related: there's a blurb from Johnny Depp on the back cover - ?! - in which the word "Kerouac" is misspelled... with two c's! "Yeah, I saw it. The beatniks won't care." (See also: the cheap glue used by Scribner.)

Chicken of the Sea

I'm telling you for the last time! Just because I keep a list of books I read with owls in them doesn't mean I have to tell you every time an owl appears in a single volume. One owl per volume. My obligation begins and ends there! BUT! I came across more owls in THE ODYSSEY and they really gave me something to think about. See, these owls are on Calypso's island and... well, here, I'll let Emily Wilson's translation do the talking: "Birds nested there but hunted out at sea: the owls, the hawks, the gulls with gaping beaks." So, the way I'm reading that, the owls are out there with everybody else, grabbing up a healthy diet of crabs and fish or what-have-you. Now, if you're anything like me (you're not), you're thinking about the time I just couldn't picture owls hanging out on a beach. Such an image was beyond my mental capacity, save for a fancifully scornful "owls on surfboards" motif. Looks like I'm wrong again! OR AM I? I am. Although I often say I don't care about looking things up, or anything else, anymore, and it is 100% true, I did get out of bed and consult my Robert Fagles translation of THE ODYSSEY, which I had sworn I was too tired to ever do again. I guess I have a few tricks left in me after all. Just like wily old Odysseus himself! Anyhoo! Here's Fagles: "birds roosted, folding their long wings, owls and hawks and the spread-beaked ravens of the sea, black skimmers who make their living off the waves." So, if I'm reading that correctly, which I'm certainly not, Fagles has only the "ravens of the sea" (sounds like a worse version of Chicken of the Sea brand tuna, ha ha! What if you ate some canned tuna and said, "Wow, this tastes just like raven"? Oh my goodness, what a world that would be, we're having some fun now), what Emily Wilson more sensibly calls "gulls," eating out of the water, not the owls and hawks. Which of them translated more accurately? Well, I'll never know. I don't know ancient Greek and something tells me I'm not going to start learning it now. But! According to things I glanced at on my phone, there are several kinds of owls known under the umbrella term "fish owls" or "fishing owls," and you'll never guess what they eat! That's right, fish. It's all part of the theme of the "blog," which is that I'm wrong about everything. For example, when I sit around thinking ha ha, owls on the beach, what a gas, that's rich, ho ho ho, what a time to be alive.

Recent Developments

Having watched a couple of different movies about Odysseus lately, I've learned something important: Odysseus was just about naked a lot of the time. Last year, Dr. Theresa and I went on a big kick of watching Biblical epics and other movies set in ancient times. One we really liked starred Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus. At the end, I lugged out my hardcover translation by Robert Fagles, like, did such-and-such really happen in the poem? And if I recall correctly, it did, whatever it was I got so worked up about. So then the other day I watched an Italian movie, which I had recorded from TCM, with Kirk Douglas as Odysseus, and it was a lot of fun. They had a good Cyclops. Then I was like, "I should read THE ODYSSEY again. But I am too old and tired to drag out this Robert Fagles edition so many times (twice), and my gnarled, elderly hands and arms like twigs are too frail to hold it up in bed at night. But hey! If memory serves, wasn't there a recent translation I should check out?" So yesterday I went by Square Books and found the recent translation of which I was thinking, by Emily Wilson. It was in paperback, and I bought it with money. Recent! I checked the copyright page and it came out in 2018. That still seems recent to me. When did that happen? When did seven years begin to feel like nothing, really? Like, when I was 16, I didn't go around thinking, "I was recently nine!" But as you get older, things that happened longer and longer ago seem more and more recent. You'll find out! And I suppose, when you're thinking about THE ODYSSEY, everything is recent. But what I really want to say is Athena is there right out of the gate. To mix sports metaphors, she comes out swinging! And you know what I was thinking: "She famously hangs out with owls!" And yes, it isn't too long before she is described as "the owl-eyed goddess." What's more, she "flew away like a bird, up through the smoke." And what did Telemachus think about that? "Watching her go, he was amazed." No kidding! Oh, Telemachus, you crazy kid, when will you ever learn?

Utter Chaos

Few of us will ever forget where we were when I saw Dianne Wiest perform in the Samuel Beckett play HAPPY DAYS. But did you know that I was tempted to stand up at the end and shout “I loved you in COOKIE!”? As I recall, I was wearing my pink jacket, which, at the time, I thought might catch Dianne Wiest’s eye as I yelled incoherently about COOKIE during the standing ovation with spittle flying out of my mouth. Please be assured that in the end, I simply clapped like a normal person and kept my fat mouth shut. I’m just listing these details to avoid the inevitable... the inevitable being something about owls. Look. We all remember The Great Owl Drought of 2023, which lasted over three months. But other times, owls just come at a person too fast. There are too many owls! And yes, I get tired of telling you about every time I read a book with an owl in it, a habit that I began for reasons long forgotten or, more accurately, repressed. Before we go on (see how I’m still putting it off?) I should explain that the illustration for this “post,” of Peter Falk and Jerry Lewis walking on the beach, was taken from my TV in 2016, if I am supposed to trust the date stamped there by my computer. And indeed I can say with certainty that it was after April of that year, at which time our former TV blew up, because this is obviously a normal widescreen TV like everyone has now, whereas our old TV that blew up was one of those square boxes so heavy that even Ace Atkins had trouble lifting it when he came over to carry it out of our house, due to our begging and pleading. But the date stamped on this photo without my knowledge or consent... why does the government want to know the last time I watched COOKIE (2016 was not the last time I watched COOKIE)? And why am I talking about COOKIE? Because the Million Dollar Book Club is reading the memoir of Susan Seidelman, who directed that movie, along with DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN and at least two other really good ones of which I am too tired to type the titles. Anyhow! When Susan Seidelman is a kid, she and her siblings huddle up and watch late, late monster movies on TV, because they are “night owls.” As you will recall, the last night owls we mentioned were from Shakespeare, and he meant owls that literally fly around at night, which is... most owls? Right? You know what? Despite your many assumptions, I am not an owl expert. But Susan Seidelman is referring to the famous metaphorical night owls, people who thrive in the wee hours. The latter, I would say, is the most common kind of owl to run across in the Million Dollar Book Club. Previous examples of this kind of night owl (hardly a comprehensive list!) include Andy Warhol, Anna Magnini, and Yoko Ono. As I bring this interesting whatever it is to a close, I will say, look! If somebody else tells me a book has an owl in it, I usually don’t include it here. If I included every owl book that people told me about secondhand, featuring owls I didn’t witness in context with my own elderly mist-filled peepers, it would be utter chaos. Utter chaos! One time this guy Brian told me about the owl in a John Le Carré novel and it was a good (if upsetting) one, so I put it on the list. But don’t let that give you any ideas! However! McNeil read a book horribly called THE RAT ON FIRE, in which someone is as “drunk as a hoot owl,” which, fine. I’ve often wondered about where the phrase or concept comes from. I’ve seen it used in a work dating back to 1177! Which is quite a while ago. I don't think I was even born yet! But no one has ever explained to me why owls are supposed to be drunk (despite at least one owl who drank schnapps in real life). So I mentioned my puzzlement to McNeil, who immediately zapped me with an answer that struck me as satisfying. As you will recall, McNeil also explained to me why the wind blows in 2008. (I feel sure he once laid out the purpose of lightning for me as well, though I can find no textual evidence of when that happened. I do believe I wrote about it in my precious diary like the sweet little thing I am. I even recall that my mom found some tragic aesthetic or philosophical fault with McNeil's electrical reasoning. Sorry, McNeil!) Anyway, here’s what old McNeil had to say, and I quote: “Maybe because owls kind of bob their heads, and when they move on a branch they do it kind of awkwardly - one step to the right, then the other leg (or claw?) follows so it looks like their whole body is bobbing up and down. This is how they move in my imagination when I am asked by the authorities to describe the movements of owls.” PS! Embarrassingly, as I compulsively looked back over the "blog" for pointless "hyperlinks" that no one will ever "click" to add to this "post," I found one in which I had already been gently guided to a similar conclusion about drunken owls... over ten years ago! Like a jerk! Similar but not identical, I hasten to stipulate! McNeil's version holds more water... or booze! Ha ha! We're having fun now! We're finally having some fun, aren't we?

Talking Fancy

I am so tired of telling you about owls. But as I reached the final owl in HENRY VI, PART 3... an owl that Henry claims shrieked when Richard (the future Richard III!) was born... I realized that HENRY VI, PART 3 had four distinct uses of owls in it, owls of a great variety, placing Shakespeare alongside Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather for the big "Most Owls in a Single Work" award. Yes, HENRY VI, PART 3, gives us lazy owls, owls stumbling around like jerks in the daylight, and, one might argue, two examples of the same kind of owl... an owl screeching or shrieking with ill omen. But I say that while the first such owl is definitely a metaphor, the one that Henry is talking about appears to be real, unless he's just talking fancy... but I think it's a bit of both... what Rob Schneider once called "kidding on the square," ha ha, oh boy!

Heads Keep Rolling

Boy, things are a mess in these HENRY VI plays by Mr. William Shakespeare! People's heads keep getting chopped off. And there are owls a-plenty! Like, right before they chop off Clifford's head, they call him a "fatal screech owl." Ouch! That's got to hurt! But not as much as having your head chopped off. I have to tell you, though, I don't think old Clifford... well, never mind, it's all too gruesome to talk about. Last night in bed I was telling Dr. Theresa about all the stuff they do with people's heads in these plays and she made a face indicating that it wasn't pleasant to hear. And it's not! And I'm sorry! I'm sorry to the world! Clifford is not to be confused with the big red dog. (See also, Pliny the Elder on fatal screech owls.)

Wrong Again, Shakespeare!

You know how I feel about owls: I either have some interest in them or pretend to have some interest in them, who the hell knows? So in HENRY VI, PART 3, Shakespeare has Warwick give a long speech about some soldiers he saw doing a half-assed job, if I may be frank, and he compares their actions to "the night owl's lazy flight." WHAT! Owls fly deftly by night, and to great purpose, I say.

Making Some Headway

As you know, we're very, very concerned here at the "blog" with famed crime writer John D. MacDonald's attraction/aversion to hungry women who are storybook giants. I'm sorry! His PROTAGONISTS' attraction/aversion. Ace Atkins memorably described one such character as a "sexy woman who can lift a car." Well, McNeil has finished reading THE BRASS CUPCAKE and reports that MacDonald's hero, and these are McNeil's words now, "makes it with a 'rippling muscles' woman who drinks a whole stein of beer in one gulp, then wipes the foam off her nose with her knuckles." McNeil concludes his summary with an appreciative exclamation that is unprintable here in our family newspaper. Speaking of which, these Shakespeare HENRY VI plays are really violent! These guys stick some people's heads on poles and then they are like (I paraphrase, but only slightly), "We should make them kiss!" So they get these heads on poles close together and make it look like they're smooching. That's in Part 2, I think. In Part 3, Richard (who will grow up to be Richard III!) says (paraphrasing again), "Did I put up a fight? Why don't you ask THIS guy?" And he pulls a decapitated head from behind his back (I guess) and everybody has a good laugh. His dad is so proud of him! Dad pretends to ask the head a question, and for a second you think they're going to do a puppet show with it, like something out of a FAR SIDE cartoon. Anyway, the head budget on these shows must have been enormous.

Suffolk's Head

Just because I keep a big long list... look... I've told you this a million times! But just because I keep a big long list of books with owls in them doesn't mean I have to tell you EVERY time an owl appears in a single book. I am obliged to mention only one owl incident per volume. But! I could not help but notice in HENRY VI, PART 2, or 2 HENRY VI, as Oral Sumner Coad calls it, that screech owls make a second appearance. Not regular non-screeching owls, but screech owls... twice! As if one set of screech owls wasn't enough. Allow me to paraphrase or summarize Shakespeare. I'll make it hip for the kids of today! So Queen Margaret is like, okay, Suffolk, if you're so dang mad why don't you start cursing everybody? And Suffolk is like oh yeah? Wait until you see how great I am at cursing people! Then he wishes that the sweetest thing anybody ever gets to eat is bitter gall and, I don't know, that lizards will bite their asses? The book is downstairs by the bed. Hence the paraphrasing. And he hopes the only music they hear will come from snakes and screech owls. That kind of stuff. Finally, Queen Margaret is like, okay, we get it, put a sock in it! But she loves him. I hope you don't mind some spoilers. Anyway, it doesn't go well for him because one of the subsequent stage directions is (and I think this may be a quotation, not a paraphrase, or darn close to it) "Enter Queen Margaret, carrying Suffolk's head." Speaking of books with owls in them, McNeil wrote with the unhelpful suggestion that I begin a second list... one of books I've read WITHOUT owls in them. See, he was reading THE BRASS CUPCAKE by John D. MacDonald, and he checked the list, curious to know whether he might expect an owl, but found himself at a loss. Was it not on there because it didn't have an owl in it? Or did it have an owl in it but I just haven't read it? Or... did it not have an... you get it. My mind is wandering. Most importantly, McNeil reports that THE BRASS CUPCAKE confirms our observation that John D. MacDonald is afraid of women, especially their mouths. Wait! I mean his PROTAGONISTS are afraid of women and their mouths. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that all his protagonists are deathly afraid of women's mouths, just a crazy coincidence, having nothing to do with the unspeakable fears of John D. MacDonald himself. Anyway, and this is gross, so brace yourself, according to McNeil, the protagonist of THE BRASS CUPCAKE kisses a woman and her mouth is "like a soft open wound." Okay!

Oral Sumner Coad

You couldn't sleep last night! You were up tossing and turning, wondering about the connection between HENRY VI, PART 2 and MACBETH. It's my fault entirely! I don't apologize. Anyhow, I checked my copy of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: A TEXTUAL COMPANION, an unwieldy volume crammed full of words in a tiny little font arranged in multiple columns across many hundreds of pages, which was of no use at all, as it informed me only of the unbridgeable gulf of time separating the composition of the two works, which seemed to confirm my decision to never care again about looking things up or anything else. But then I went to the “internet” and “clicked” lazily on the first relevant thing I saw: a 1923 letter from a person named Oral Sumner Coad to the academic journal (?) MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES. Writes Coad, “It is a commonplace of Shakespearean criticism that certain of the early plays contain characters or situations that were reemployed in expanded form in some of the later dramas... A resemblance which I have never seen mentioned may be detected between 2 Henry VI and Macbeth.” I’ve got your back, Oral Sumner Coad! And 102 years from now, someone else will bring it up again. Oral Sumner Coad cites three compelling chunks of parallel text from each play, which is more than I’ll ever do. I’m sorry that you’re certainly dead, Oral Sumner Coad!