This Is Now!

The NBIL sends along a whole book you can read on the "internet"! That's how all the kids are reading these days. This one was published in 1972, and it is about living in the future, 2010. Which is now! It is called 2010: LIVING IN THE FUTURE. The first chapter starts like this: "The year is 2010. 'It is seven o’clock,' says an alarm clock hidden in the wall. Suddenly the room is filled with the sound of music. Time to get up—off the floor." Yeah, but how did they know?

Barry B.'s Movie Korner

Barry B. was very excited to see our mention of Ben Gazzara the other day, because he HAPPENED TO BE WATCHING A BEN GAZZARA MOVIE AT THE VERY SAME TIME! And this brings us to another edition of "Barry B.'s Movie Korner." Today's movie is THE GIRL FROM TRIESTE, starring Ben Gazzara. Here's what Barry B. had to say about it: "So comic artist Ben Gazzara is sitting on the beach drawing when a beautiful young lady (Ornella Muti) gets rescued from drowning. The charming Gazzara makes a little small talk and loans her his blanket, which she immediately wraps around herself and takes off her bathing suit. She confides to Dino (Gazzara) that she was faking drowning. She shows up at Dino’s house to return the blanket and have *** with him then jets off again. He knows she’s lying to him pretty much about everything, and she shows up and leaves at inopportune moments, but he can’t help himself. 'I thought I’d been around. This girl’s putting moves on me (that) I’ve never seen before,' Dino confides to a lady friend (who happens to keep a closet full of clothes at his house). Well, she eventually moves in with Dino and keeps acting crazy. 'You’re inside me! Don’t you understand, you’re in my soul!' the frustrated Dino tells her. She’s really crazy. She does freak Dino out but he doesn’t know what to do. I don’t want to give away the end."

She's Okay, Folks!

I guess Jessica Biel is using her mountain climbing skills to "draw attention to the global water crisis" so I'm sorry I'm always such a jerk about Larry King's twitter account. In the course of my research into my jerkiness, I came across a great (partial) USA Today headline: "Jessica Biel Hit By Blizzard."

Now Hear This!

Hold onto your hats! Jessica Biel is at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro! How do I know? Larry King's twitter account, of course! It's how I know anything worth knowing.

Anthony Braxton Book Club

Why is Anthony Braxton one of my heroes? Well, he once wrote a piece of music (to quote him now) "for dump truck, live dump truck... the truck would dump a pile of coal and the score would be for four shovelers - and each shovel would have an electronic modulation on it." That's from FORCES IN MOTION: THE MUSIC AND THOUGHTS OF ANTHONY BRAXTON by Graham Lock. My friend in Hubcap City has a copy! Get your own copy today, and you can be in our Anthony Braxton Book Club.

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up

Welcome once again to All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up, for all the latest in sizzling celebrity gossip. ITEM! Kelly Hogan knows who Joey Heatherton is! ITEM! Today I read about an Anthony Braxton composition for 100 tubas! That's it for today's edition of All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up. Until next time, keep reaching for the stars!

Arts & Rats

Hey, speaking of art and rats, remember that time over three years ago when I saw some art that was made of glass bricks with squashed rats in them? Those were the days.

Creating a Community Dialogue Through the Rats

Come February, I am going to be part of an event called "the Marginal Arts Festival" in Roanoke, Virginia. I am very excited to discover that the festival has an eight-foot-tall mascot called the Art Rat. Plus "art" is an anagram for "rat," which made me briefly misread the press release so that I thought the festival was described as "a very serious attempt at creating a community dialogue through the rats." Thinking back over the "blog's" long love affair with mascots of every kind, I suppose my current favorite (having not yet met the Art Rat) is the "Groundhog Festival Mascot," if only because it wears a helpful t-shirt that says "Groundhog Festival Mascot."

Art

Art Clokey died. He made up Gumby. He was a complicated man. The world is hard! But Gumby is adaptable.

Ill-Suited to Mingle With Lumberjacks

So I was watching some skits from Jerry Lewis's late-60s variety show. So what? Why do you care what I do with my own time? Leave me alone! And suddenly there was Ben Gazzara, and I thought "!". Nor was that the first time I thought "!" as I watched some skits from Jerry Lewis's late-60s variety show, nor was it the last. I thought right away, "Ben Gazzara is playing the Dean Martin role." And then I thought, "Jerry Lewis should have been in a John Cassevetes movie!" And then I realized that Gazzara really, truly WAS playing the Dean Martin role, because I remembered seeing the EXACT SAME SKIT on the COLGATE COMEDY HOUR starring Martin and Lewis, predating the Gazzara skit by, I don't know, let's say 15 years. And I was like, "Pendarvis, you have to tell the world!" I was like, "Everyone wants to know!" I was like, "You can't sit on this important information!" I was like, "Now my students will respect me more than ever!" But then there was a hilarious skit in which Jerry hung out with some lumberjacks, and I got distracted. He was ill-suited to mingle with them! But what really made me think "!" was an extended bit of great surreality and stylization - with musical numbers! - in which Jerry Lewis and Laurence Harvey (!) - weirdly well matched, and trying to outdo one another in perverse line-reading choices - played old-timey prospectors (!!) with Joey Heatherton (!!!). I don't think I feel like explaining why, but it made my brain explode. The DVD was front-loaded with weaker material for some reason, but the prospector skit was ambitious, employing the kind of sound design so excellently analyzed in Chris Fujiwara's new book on Lewis. Despite all my self-imposed rules and regulations, I think I need to find a picture of Joey Heatherton, of whom you have never heard.

Glistening, Explosive Sunlight

It was my friend in Hubcap City who first "turned me on" to where all the weirdest, most stimulating writing in the New York Times is: the cabaret reviews. Like today they were talking about "the abrupt interruption of a sedate passage with an explosive percussive burst that has the glistening texture of sunlight on a snowfield." And I was all, "Huh?" But then it turns out to be "a jubilee of the most rarefied sort." And I was like, "Okay, well, that sounds nice, I guess."

Ice Head

"Bloggy" the "Blog" Mascot responds to McNeil's icy query: "I can't say I've seen any triangles (perfect or otherwise)... however I have seen some strange ice-creations in the last few days here in Wisconsin: A fountain that had been gushing forth pink water froze when the temperatures dropped, appearing like a fountain spouting cotton candy. I also saw a beer can that was shaken, opened, and so cold the foam froze as it emerged, creating a perfect sculpture of beer can ice-head."

Today's Weather: Perfect Triangles of Ice

Welcome once again to our popular regular feature "Today's Weather." Today it is snowing in Oxford, MS. Meanwhile, McNeil reports from North Carolina that he has seen a frozen birdbath with a "perfect triangle of ice" rising from it, a perfect triangle that seems too perfect to have been made by nature. "It's not in the center of the birdbath," he clarifies. "Closer to the edge. Isn't 'Bloggy' the 'Blog' Mascot [pictured] from Wisconsin?" McNeil inquires. "Could you ask her if that's a common occurrence? A perfect triangle of ice rising from a frozen birdbath?"

An Angel Playing With a Cat

I just knew I would break my resolution and stuff a new image into my computer even though one more image is going to make my computer blow up. It's an angel playing with a cat. Via Blair Hobbs.

Don't Blame the Good Wife

Tonight the TV program THE GOOD WIFE wasn't anything like I told you it would be. Don't blame the Good Wife! Everybody wants something from her. The Good Wife is pulled in so many directions! So in that sense I was right, because I told you that the Good Wife has problems of her own. Well, tonight this guy comes in with a problem, the way they always do, and I thought the Good Wife was going to help him, how she always does. Because the guy was like, "This isn't about the money!" He was all, "There are important things at stake!" These are the types of people the Good Wife enjoys helping. But suddenly the Good Wife was taken off the case! And I was like, "What? How will the problem ever get solved without the Good Wife?" So this woman came along who had nothing to do with the important problem and basically USED THE GOOD WIFE AS A PAWN IN HER SCHEME! That's not what should happen to the Good Wife! The Good Wife is not some patsy! And she never went back and never helped the noble guy with the tragic problem. So that was an unusual episode of THE GOOD WIFE.

Samuel Beckett's Banana Fun Time Jamboree

While I was locked out of the house today I was thinking about how great Jerry Lewis would be in the Samuel Beckett play KRAPP'S LAST TAPE. I am not trying to be funny, so shut up. Take a gander at these stage directions, among the first in the play: "takes out a large banana, peers at it... strokes banana, peels it, drops skin at his feet, puts end of banana in his mouth and remains motionless, staring vacuously before him." Come on! It's pure Jerry, you have to admit. And a few minutes later, Krapp slips on the banana peel! It's in the stage directions! Jerry's at the right age to play it. He may be a little old for the part, even, but it calls for an old man. To make it perfect, someone should have recorded Jerry's voice back in 1965 or so, doing young Krapp's monologue that old Krapp listens to on a tape. I'm fairly certain no one had the foresight. Oh well. It would have been poignant! Old Jerry listening to young Jerry and all. Maybe we could piece together young Krapp's monologue word by word from old Jerry movies!

Oblique Frozen Mammoth Recollection

Theresa and I were watching a movie called SO LONG AT THE FAIR, the plot of which reminded me of something I had read in that touchstone of my tender youth, the Reader's Digest publication STRANGE STORIES, AMAZING FACTS. But never mind about SO LONG AT THE FAIR. While I was looking for the particular article, I stumbled across a section entitled "Ten-Thousand-Year-Old-Steaks," which is about some woolly mammoths found frozen in Siberia, and how delicious they are! Yes, says Reader's Digest, "In spite of the thousands of years that have passed, the meat is still good enough to eat - according to those who have tried." But those few passing words are all you hear about the people who supposedly ate millennia-old woolly mammoth meat! Not another hint about it in the article, nor anything at all about steaks, save for the title. Why am I telling you this? Well, no good reason. But remember my novel that I first turned in to my publisher over a year and half ago and it was coming out in August and got reviewed and everything, and maybe someone will bring it out someday when they're feeling better, but I don't know because nobody will tell me? Remember that? Well, I believe I refer obliquely to these frozen mammoth steaks in that novel. You'll never know because 1) it's oblique and 2) you'll never read the novel because it only exists in a mysterious land somewhere far away with coconut moonbeams and butterscotch lakes and ever so many pixies as far as the eye can see. But I thought it was funny that those frozen mammoth steaks must have been stuck in my head since childhood, and I had no idea where that image came from when I put it - or something like it - in the semi-nonexistent novel. How about that! Thanks for everything, Reader's Digest! The idea probably wouldn't have stuck in my head for so long had it been more concrete than "those who have tried," and I guess there's a lesson in there somewhere for somebody. Oh, here's the section from my book. Who cares? Maybe I should just publish it here on the "blog" one random paragraph at a time: "He thought he remembered a newspaper story about a Viking ship that had been frozen in the ice. Scientists found steaks on board, steaks from Viking times, and Burns believed that the scientists had cooked and eaten one of the steaks just for fun, although that didn’t sound like scientists, who were usually a******s."

Curious

The other day I read this in a book called NAMES ON THE LAND: "The name sounded to the English in such a way that they wrote it down at first as Quinetucquet or Quenticutt. Finally they wrote it Connecticut, although no one knows who first put in the extra c, or why - for none who have lived there, Indian or English, have pronounced it." See, the thing is I know a guy who says all the c's in Connecticut! For real! He is not being funny. He does it with such aplomb and easy conviction that I was starting to think I was crazy. Like, "I am so uncool I don't even say all the c's in Connecticut." But I am happy to know I am not crazy according to George R. Stewart, the late author of NAMES ON THE LAND. Do you know someone who says all the c's in Connecticut? Why not write and tell me about it? "Connecticut" c/o "Writer" Oxford, MS 38655. (PS! By a crazy coincidence, today's randomly chosen illustration is a photograph taken by McNeil in Connecticut! Crazy!)

The Only Way to Be

An inspirational Anthony Braxton quotation, via our friend in Hubcap City: "Of course Stockhausen is crazy, of course I’m crazy, of course Sun Ra is crazy, of course Bach is crazy—it’s the only way to be!"

Remember That Stupid Thing I Did?

Hey! Happy new year! Remember when I used to try to make a poem out of all the most typical lines I could find from the New York Times "Arts" section? That was stupid! But today's New York Times "Arts" section was overflowing with so many typical lines (as a rule I limited myself to one per day) that I have to do it one last time, and I am allowing myself to use all four typical New York Times "Arts" section lines. Two ("tart and luminous" and "bleary and glib") are from a film review, and two ("stout marvels of anachronism" and "furrowed, Monkish hiccups; boppish two-handed octaves; flare-ups of funk and Chopin") are from a music review. So maybe this is the whole poem because I don't think I could or should do this anymore because it's not amusing or interesting in any way whatsoever: "A footman approached Ms. Minogue,/ who was fretting glamorously/ on a couch flanked by panther statues./ After furrowed, Monkish hiccups;/ boppish two-handed octaves;/ flare-ups of funk and Chopin;/ some conversation and homemade sorbet;/ I watched a world of wonders unfold bleary and glib./ Bass was played, largely superfluously,/ by Mr. Brenner -/ Evocative puppet play tart and luminous,/ an unlikely mix/ of Shamballa and shoo-be-doo./ The crowd - stout marvels of anachronism -/ for the most part swayed/ in reverent silence."