Make It Stop

Once again a New York Times article includes the supposedly novel observation that the French love Jerry Lewis. Today it is in the first sentence of a theater review. Make it stop!

I Like to Find the Things I Find

Remember how I used to have a big office I never went to? Well, they got wise and now I have a smaller office I never go to. Today I went. I found something the previous tenant had left behind: a self-published book called ALLEGHENY MOUNTAIN. The copyright page says that it is "based on a previously published book called Allegheny Mountain," which is an attribution I believe I have never seen before. On the back of the book, where the tempting summary goes, there is a descriptive paragraph containing the line, "The world can be a big bad place and sometimes we are on our own." The long bio on the back flap describes the author, Mr. Hesselbein, as "a brave soldier and an honest and competent roofing contractor... Love came easily to his heart... Near the close of his life he is quietly proud of having lived a life of manly virtue." There is a chapter called "Savage Girlfriends." All of this makes me want to drop everything and read ALLEGHENY MOUNTAIN. May I tell you about something else I found? In the campus coffee shop there's a shelf where the library places free discards. The other day I saw a gigantically fat (but not particularly tall) book with the imposing title GUIDE TO PRODUCTION. When I opened it, there was a card inside, perhaps a bit larger than an ordinary business card. There's the black-and-white picture of a smiling man on the left side of the black-and-white card, a thin, clean-cut young white man with a modest pompadour, like if you looked in the dictionary under "1950s white guy" you would find this picture. The card is printed with the message "ALEXANDER JESSE For Arts & Science Representative EXPERIENCED & QUALIFIED." Two ampersands! I hope he got the job.

A Good Joke About Repressive Desublimation

Here is a great icebreaker to use when you want to engage a stranger at a cocktail party about repressive desublimation. You can say, "Hey, do you know what's worse than repressive desublimation?" When the person says no, you answer, "DEpressive REsublimation!" A few good laughs and a new friendship is born. Here's how the joke works: "depressive" sounds sad, and "resublimation" sounds as if you sublimated something, and then you finally opened up about it and acknowledged it and the healing process began, and then for some reason you had to sublimate it again! What a drag! It's a play on words. I just "googled" it to see if I was the first to think of switching up the first letters to create some hilarity with depressive resublimation. I was not. Jean Baudrillard said it once, apparently, on one page of one book. According to wikipedia, he was a "French cultural theorist, sociologist, philosopher, political commentator, and photographer." So we have a lot in common! Now, maybe you think that it sounds as if, in the joke, you are "putting down" repressive desublimation. But don't worry! It is a great way to get the conversation rolling as we head into 2010, "The Year of Repressive Desublimation."

Do Your Part For Repressive Desublimation

Gearing up for 2010, which the "blog" has named "The Year of Repressive Desublimation." Have you used the phrase "repressive desublimation" today? If not, why not? Please do your part. Together we can make 2010 "The Year of Repressive Desublimation."

"Blog"ligations

When you "blog" habitually, unreasoningly, about certain things, and then two of those things coincide, you are obliged to "blog" about it by the laws of the universe. This is called a "blog"ligation. It is how you realize your life is not your own. For example, I am required to mention that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were referenced within the first ten minutes of tonight's episode of MAD MEN. By the way, I can also predict what Dyna Moe's next MAD MEN illustration will be... SPOILER ALERT! It will portray several of the eponymous "mad men" colorfully speckled with blood. I can say no more!

"Blog"trospective 7: Beach Boys, The

VOLUME ONE: TOM FRANKLIN -- VOLUME TWO: PHIL OPPENHEIM -- VOLUME THREE: MOVIES -- VOLUME FOUR: THE MOON -- VOLUME FIVE: SANDWICHES -- VOLUME SIX: THE UNITED STATES. And now fate has determined that there should be another volume in our prestigious series of "blog"trospectives. It's like this: the search engine here doesn't work anymore and no one is ever going to fix it. So, now that I am elderly and forgetful, how can I stay true to my promise never to repeat a song or a performer in our famous "Amateur Beach Boys Cover Songs" feature? Why, there can only be one answer: a brand new "blog"trospective. And here it is. "409"---"Barbara Ann"---Barry B. confused about lyrics of "I Get Around"---basic qualifications for inclusion in Beach Boys cover feature---"Be Still"---"Be True to Your School"---"Busy Doin' Nothing"---"California Girls"---"Caroline No" (apparently retracted)---"Caroline No" (substitute version)---"Catch a Wave"---Chuck Berry's chords, style, arrangement, and melody; appropriation of---complex transparency of Brian Wilson's genius, the---"Country Air"---"Darlin'"---"Deirdre"---"Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)"---"Don't Worry Baby"---"Forever"---"Fun, Fun, Fun"---Funicello, Annette, and---"Girl, Don't Tell Me"---"God Only Knows"---"Good Vibrations"---"Hang On to Your Ego"---"Help Me, Rhonda"---"I Can Hear Music"---"I Get Around"---"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times"---"I Went to Sleep"---"I Went to Sleep" (pun on title of)---"In My Room"---"Karen"---"Kokomo"---"Little Deuce Coupe"---"Little Honda" (French version)---"Little Pad"---McNeil and my sister prompt reassessment of "The Monkey's Uncle"---"The Monkey's Uncle---"Our Prayer"---"Pet Sounds" (song)---"Sail On Sailor"---"Sloop John B."---"Surfer Girl"---"The Surfer Moon"---"Surfin' Safari"---"Surfin' Safari" (professional version)---"Surfin USA"---"Surf's Up"---TWIN PEAKS makes me think of these Beach Boys covers---"Vegetables"---"The Warmth of the Sun"---"When I Grow Up to Be a Man"---"Wild Honey"---"Wild Honey" (another version)---"Wind Chimes"---Wilson, Brian; biopic of watched on an airplane---Wilson, Brian; in Theremin documentary---"Wouldn't It Be Nice"---"Your Summer Dream"

Cacophonous Christmas

Let's get back to our ambitious plan. Here is # 34 in our series of people on the "internet" doing Beach Boys covers, mostly in the privacy of their own homes, no two performers or songs the same. Here, I like the cacophony, compounded by the careening camera. There's a Christmas tree and a man with a string on his hat and a shirtless drummer. Some nice little filigrees on piano near the end. I like it! It's wild! What are they doing? Just having fun, that's what. You should try it sometime.

Fun Brain Fun

Part of me is sorry that people may find the "blog's" new policy of random, recycled illustrations upsetting and confusing. But another part of me doesn't care very much about anything. And why should it? Random illustrations can make your brain do exciting things! I believe your brain will try to connect the random pictures with the texts to which they are attached, producing stimulating brain thoughts from your brain. That's where the fun comes in! For example, is Herman Melville casting a sternly disapproving look at the idea of a man tickling astronauts? Or is he just sorry he didn't put it in BILLY BUDD? Is a barbershop quartet about to sing some of that "punk rock" all the children are talking about? Is George Lazenby going to shoot a garden slug with a real slug... from a gun? I hope not! But isn't it fun to pretend? I guess so. Sometimes. Other times it is better to be serious and think about what you have done with your life. Look, I've made my choice. But that doesn't mean it's too late for you.

Tickle Confirmation

Well, I almost had it. I believe this ("click" here) is the same syndicated story to which I just referred (though only the first few paragraphs appeared in the Arkansas paper). The actual quotation seems to be, "he plans to tickle the professional astronauts while they're sleeping." But here, let's let him speak for himself: "I'm a person with a pretty high spirit, who's there to crack jokes and make jokes to those guys, and while they're sleeping, you know, I'll be tickling them."

Please Don't Do That Thing You Want to Do

The paper delivered to my hotel door this morning was the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and on the front page was a tiny item about the founder (owner? I left the paper in the hotel) of Cirque du Soleil, who has bought a ticket to fly into outer space on a Russian spaceship. And he said in the little item that he plans to (and I believe this is an exact quotation, though I can't find the front page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette recreated on the "internet") "tickle the astronauts while they sleep." I can imagine all sorts of things going wrong with this idea.

Literary Matters

Time once again for "Literary Matters" - terrible, horrible literary matters. Nobody likes literary matters but they keep happening anyway. Today we have a quartet of literary matters. That's fancy talk for "four"! 1) George Singleton writes in - spurred by the recent sad news - to say that a few weeks ago - before the sad news! - he was on a panel and an audience member asked him to name his biggest influence. He said Henry Gibson. "And it's true," Singleton avows. "I started writing little poems after watching that genius on Laugh-In... Who needs Faulkner?" 2) I picked up a big old sackful of books at a Little Rock used bookstore called River City Books & Gifts. One thing was a first edition of THE NEPHEW by James Purdy. At the top of page 1, some helpful person has scrawled a message in pencil: "THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE." Another thing was THE LORE OF THE UNICORN by Odell Shepard, so expect even more unicorn lore than usual! The NBIL will be glad to hear that Chapter Two is all about the unicorn as it appears in the Bible. Mr. Shepard writes a lot of things like, "If we were concerned in this book with the unicorn itself rather than with unicorn lore there could be no excuse for having postponed for so long the question concerning the animal's actuality." 3) I believe this is a literary matter because it concerns the book that McNeil and I intend never to write. An article in yesterday's New York Times ponders "what Herbert Marcuse called 'repressive desublimation,' which reroutes unruly and rebellious instinctual energies into politically harmless sybaritic indulgence, escapist entertainment and spiritual delusion." And I was like, okay, but the title of our book ("Hipster Hegemony," which refers to the same phenomenon) is a lot catchier than "repressive desublimation," though that's not going to stop me from saying "repressive desublimation" ALL THE TIME! (Once again, credit for the term "hipster hegemony" goes to our friend DJ Gnosis.) 4) This is from a blurb (by Benjamin Kunkel) on the back of a Robert Walser novel: "When Walser met Lenin in Zurich during the war, all he had to say was 'So you, too, like fruitcake?'" First, I love a blurb with an anecdote in it. Second, it reminds me so much of the single remark that James Joyce passed with Marcel Proust. Goodbye from your dreaded "Literary Matters."

Henry Gibson In Heaven

(This picture makes me think of Henry Gibson in Heaven.)

Lesson Learned

So remember, kids, if one day you see Guillermo del Toro and Freddie Roach walking around together and you can't believe your eyes, maybe you don't have to! It's probably just me and McNeil.

McNeil But Not McNeil

McNeil was in a Trader Joe's grocery store the other day and some guy who worked there kept saying "Freddie Roach" to him and snickering. McNeil had no idea what the guy was talking about. "You know who Freddie Roach is, right?" said the guy. "You look just like Freddie Roach." McNeil went home and looked up the famed boxing trainer Freddie Roach on the "internet" and it turns out that Freddie Roach is indeed McNeil's celebrity doppelgänger. Naturally, this has led to another rare instance of the "blog" adding a brand new picture to its rotation. In the past we have seen McNeil's shirt and McNeil's arm, but here at last is McNeil's face, in the form of famed boxing trainer Freddie Roach. See also: the time I looked like Guillermo del Toro.

Your Jerry Roundup

Time once again for Your Jerry Roundup. This is when the Jerry references begin to accumulate. First, the sad part of Your Jerry Roundup. Jerry is mentioned in the New York Times obituary of Henry Gibson as the man who gave Mr. Gibson his break in the movies. (E-mail from Mark Childress on the subject of Henry Gibson: "If, like me, you loved him as Haven Hamilton in 'Nashville,' then you will probably also not be able to forget him holding up his little flower on Laugh-In.") Now for the mysterious part of Your Jerry Roundup. A nice person on the twitter told me that the CIA had a hand in the editing of a Jerry Lewis movie! It's true, people! Here is the article, if you care to "click." The movie in question was the Martin & Lewis vehicle MONEY FROM HOME, and the scene removed by an "operative" who was "planted... inside Paramount Pictures" sounds truly awful, so maybe they're not so bad after all. You know I am a HUGE fan of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, right? I even OWN a copy of MONEY FROM HOME. But let me tell you, in this case I don't think the CIA went far enough. There were a few other scenes they might have trimmed while they were in there, that's all I'm saying. Not because of any political content... just as a favor.

Gibson

Henry Gibson died, reports the New York Times. I was always happy to see him on the screen. He was one of my favorite actors. He wasn't in enough movies. Henry Gibson was menacing, witty, pompous, or gentle, depending on the role. Underrated I think, but I hope not. Always something going on behind his eyes. Mainly, he was funny. Henry Gibson! For him, as for the mutant grasshopper, a new picture. Hey, I just "clicked" on the NYT obituary (by William Grimes) and it says what I said, except better: "In repose, his face had a sneakily bland expression that served him well. It could express pure innocence, bewilderment, fatuous self-delusion, a puckish sense of mischief or Machiavellian duplicity." Hey everybody, don't forget Henry Gibson!

Hope You Didn't Buy Expensive Cake Ingredients, California

Hey, remember how I wrote a new book? And it got reviewed? And there's a cover for it and everything? And it's completely finished and all? But it doesn't exist? Because it hasn't been printed? Remember? As this report, which was spotted by a friend, tells me, don't hold your breath! My, that was an interesting surprise. At least it was better than the extra scary initial report, sort of. Just letting you know I had to (very regretfully) cancel my appearance at City Lights. They were kind and understanding and promised to reschedule me in that dystopian future when the book actually appears (as predicted by Nostradamus), though I'm a bit worried because the Zac Efron reference on page 22 (it's really there; he was also predicted by Nostradamus) gets staler by the day. How long must a hungry world wait for my Zac Efron reference? I don't want to say anything official until I hear back from my good friends at Skylight, but you'll probably want to make alternate plans for that evening, too, California. Sorry, California! You have always been so good to me.

A Hint of Desperation

Today the New York Times tells us of an event starring Geoff Sobelle, a "rubber-limbed actor" who "shares the manic if slightly less desperate intensity of a young Jerry Lewis." As you know, I always alert you when the New York Times mentions Jerry Lewis. And I point out their subtle digs! Like suggesting that he's desperate! Sobelle trained in Paris as a clown, of course. The show features "aliens in blue elastic suits."

Pink Grasshopper Occasion

This is one of those rare occasions requiring a brand new picture to be added to the "blog." "Blog" Deputy Rhea has found the story of the little boy in Devon, England, who found a pink grasshopper while traipsing about in the woods. "Blog" regulars, of which there are none, will recall the pink dolphin first brought to our attention by the OBIL.

These Unicorns Mean Business

You will notice that in the Biblical unicorn concordance provided by the NBIL, "unicorn" is next to "unicorns," plural. Check out this passage from Isaiah: "And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness." If I am reading it correctly, those are some scary unicorns! By the way, you will also notice, if you "click" on the translations provided, that the NBIL's original unicorn has been identified as a buffalo, a rhinoceros, a mountain ox, and some other animals. But we all know it was a unicorn. (Remember: all images on the "blog" are now chosen at random.)