Like What

You recall how I used to get inspired all the time by inspirational phrases. Inspire is part of their name! Well, inspir. What was I saying? Megan and I are reading the Philip Glass memoir, and he says, "As long as you know what you're doing, nothing much of interest is going to happen." Another thing I've had a chance to read lately is this Henry James book. "'Henrietta is not delicate!' she exclaimed with a certain bitterness." I just want every sentence in a book to be like that. Like what? I don't know. You can't get inside my head. (See also.)

Here We Are

Well, I stopped "blogging," of course, but I also quit social media, so now I have nothing to do. And occasionally, McNeil will email me about something that reminds me of something else, and you know what? That's a "blog" "post." So it just comes out. Like gravy! That's an ODD COUPLE allusion. Remember in the movie when Oscar tells Felix that he (Oscar) thinks gravy just "comes when you cook the meat"? Oh, Oscar! But that's not why we're here. McNeil sent me a "link" to a news report about a guy who has a silver alien ball from outer space. I'm not going to "link" to it, for valid reasons! But you can easily find out more about the silver alien ball from outer space by googling the guy's name, Jim Marlin, and the word "ball." Or "sphere." The funniest part of the article was "'As I was laying on my back on the floor, I was just mindlessly rubbing my feet on this sphere while I was talking to a friend,' Marlin said." McNeil noted the strangeness in his email, writing, "He was just rubbing the sphere with his foot, like any other Saturday night." Well! The exciting thing was that the article also mentions another family with an alien ball... and I have "blogged" about this other alien ball in the past, thanks to a tip from Lee Durkee. Doubling down on the excitement, McNeil missed that other alien ball when I "blogged" about it in 2015, so it was all new to him! He was like a wide-eyed child in a field of flowers.

Characters

I think you know why I'm here. I'm back to reading Mann's DOCTOR FAUSTUS, and one character calls another character a "crazy hoot-owl."

Long Way to a Short Thing

I'm sure you all remember the Simpsons episode when some fans are asking questions of the people who work on their favorite cartoon, "Itchy and Scratchy." One of the fans observes, "In episode 2F09 when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones." All right, keep that in mind! So, I recently rewatched TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, and thought, in the middle of my viewing experience, that it would be a good idea to order a self-published (?) book by an obsessed (?) fan of the show, because it would be fun and interesting to read some theories about the plot and so on. Well, the book came, long after I had finished watching the series again, and I sort of flipped through it, and it was giving me a headache, through no fault of the author. It was just cloudy yesterday, and the light was poor. But also, I couldn't remember why I had ordered it... or, to be more accurate, I couldn't recapture the feeling of wanting to engage with it. Furthermore, to my jaded eyes, a lot of it seemed to be, maybe (and this is based on an unfair skimming under bad conditions), of the "he strikes the same rib twice in succession" variety (the questioner goes on, "What are we to believe, that this is some sort of magic xylophone?"). I see that I have mentioned xylophones on the "blog" only twice before! That seems low. I've been doing this for, God, 17 years, please help me, though, of course, I stopped "blogging" in 2016. Well, all I really wanted to say, and it should come as no surprise to anyone who has a passing familiarity with Twin Peaks, is that this book has an owl in it.

An Incident Drawn from Life

Yesterday we saw a commercial in which a golf cart mat was presented as the perfect Father's Day gift. A father was so excited by his golf cart mat that he enacted a frantic dance of appreciation. At this point, I remarked, "Your golf cart mat isn't 'all that,' as the kids say." And Dr. Theresa wisely rejoined, "When was the last time the kids said that?" To which I admitted, "Probably when that movie came out," meaning SHE'S ALL THAT (1999). "That's what probably killed it," my baseless speculation continued. But then my brain jumped up in my head! I suddenly recalled, thanks to the fact that I had recorded it on the "blog," the time I was walking around in 2016 and heard a young woman tell her friend that scarlet fever wasn't "all that" as far as diseases go.

Going

It seems that I have six books going at once, a feat (?) not equaled since July 2020. I don’t know what it means, but it can’t be good, can it, given that timing? Troubled times! The usual number of books “going” is one or two. I have calculated, in fact, that it is always one or two, with the twin exceptions, from now and then, of six. It is never three, four, five, or seven. How can this be true? At some point they must have piled up, one by one. Furthermore, as two books cannot be finished simultaneously (can they?), the stack must likewise dwindle, 5, 4, 3, if only for the span of a word or two. One must also consider, I suppose, whether a "next book" is waiting to slide into its spot, complicating matters, but I'm already so tired. Now, I thought for a moment that I might escalate to seven, but I (ironically?) finished Megan Abbott’s new novel (maybe her best yet: dreamy and dangerous, with a gothic punch!) just before I was due to start another book that Megan Abbott and I are reading in our tiny book club consisting of only ourselves. Now! You may ask how I know a book is “going.” I can only answer that I know when a book is NOT going – when it has been abandoned. Not one of these books has been abandoned. Two of them may look that way to the untrained observer, but they are merely being read at a rate impossible to detect, much as someone told me in a dorm room once (was it McNeil?) that glass is nothing but a very slow-moving liquid (a claim for which I have sought no evidence in the three decades or so since I passively absorbed it - the claim, not the glass). For example, I was only a couple of pages into a Stephen King novel when Megan’s book arrived. The former, therefore, may appear as though I have not even begun to read it. But I have. In the case of Mann’s DOCTOR FAUSTUS, I may have come close to abandonment, but now I am too far along. It has attained a kind of glacial momentum. Here, I must admit that I was tempted to abandon THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN quite a few times during the first hundred pages or so. I’m glad I didn’t, as the final 800 or 900 pages really rollick along. They have a rootin’ tootin’ time in that tuberculosis sanatorium! In conclusion, for a book to be “going,” it must be made for reading (from cover to cover), as opposed to browsing, a distinction that I regret to say is not up for further exploration within our current framework.

Nestled Together

I'm rusty at the old jotting game. As you know, it used to be that when I went on a trip, I jotted everything for you in one of my dear old jotting books. Everybody was simply crazy about that! But then I stopped "blogging," and the last time I went to Los Angeles, why, I hardly even mentioned it. But since then, I quit social media, and as a result, I no longer have anything to do aside from the ocassional jot. Bearing that in mind, I shall now attempt to make you one of those lists that I used to make that everyone adored so much. 1. I asked a question at the front desk of the hotel and the desk clerk said he knew my voice! He said, "Are you Root Beer Guy?" I screamed back in his face, "YES!" That has never happened to me before (being recognized as Root Beer Guy, I mean; I have screamed enthusiastically into many faces), and, I dare say, never will again. (Full disclosure: on a later date, I overheard him telling a coworker "Did you know that guy is the King of Root Beer?" So maybe he didn't have the solid grasp on my character that I thought.) 2. I don't usually use conditioner on my hair. In fact, I would almost go so far as to say I never do. BUT! I figured, what the hell, this hotel conditioner is free. I'm going to put it on my hair! What's the worst than can happen? I also cleaned out my wallet. 3. Rode around with Richard, the chillest Uber driver in the world. If you're ever in California and need a ride, ask for Richard! 4. Remember the drugstore where I famously bought my expensive brush? And, let me double check, did I buy an expensive comb there? Once again, I scream, "YES!" Anyway, that drugstore is gone now! It's just not there. How could they have gone out of business? They must have been raking in a fortune on brushes and combs alone! All kidding aside, I miss you, fancy drugstore. Go with God! 5. I had steak Sinatra two nights in a row, once at Dan Tana's and once at The Smoke House. (I think I have erroneously called it "The Smokehouse" a few times in the past, but their official signage separates the smoke from the house.) I may have formerly insisted that Dan Tana's steak Sinatra is superior to the steak Sinatra at The Smoke House. On this ocassion, however, I must advance the opposite claim! The old Smoke House waiter stood and mixed the spaghetti in with the steak and peppers right at the table, but not with showy theatricality, no, just in the background, in a workmanlike fashion, getting the job done without undue fuss, which, of course, did not add to or subtract from the toothsome nature of the dish in question... OR DID IT? The result, in any case, was delectable. 5. I had stars in my eyes whilst consuming my steak Sinatra that night, for across the table from me sat Jesse Moynihan and his brother! Now, I have never met Jesse's brother before, and, as I have often boasted (most recently a few seconds ago), I quit social media. The only thing I miss about social media is "Pickle Minute," a thing that Jesse and his brother and some of their friends do on Instagram. I'm a big "Pickle Minute" fan! And there, at The Smoke House, I felt I was in a live episode of "Pickle Minute," as Jesse's brother took a photo of me pointing at a fried pickle. For, yes, having spotted fried pickles on the menu, how could two of the hosts of "Pickle Minute" resist placing that order? They could not. 6. Also at dinner, a guy named Joe I met at a party in 2012 and haven't seen or talked to since, but I remembered him, because you meet so few people you can talk about Anthony Braxton with! 7. Had a meeting scheduled at the Bob's Big Boy restaurant where David Lynch used to go every day. It turned out that Bob's Big Boy was too crowded to host the meeting, to my deep chagrin, as I thought it a wonderful coincidence that Lynchian muse Laura Dern was at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, whence I had come, at the very same time! 8. After the meeting, I walked around the neighborhood with a person who had been in the meeting with me. We wandered about, talking about the meeting, and what it meant, and sharing our regrets about the salad place across the street from Bob's Big Boy, where we had ended up. Finally, in our circular perambulations, we saw Bob's Big Boy looming before us. "Should we?" said the person. To which I again screamed, "YES!" By now, its lunchtime rush concluded, Bob's Big Boy was quite accommodating. The person ordered a slice of strawberry pie, because the Bob's Big Boy menu stated that the strawberries were "nestled together." When the pie came out, this person observed joyfully, "They ARE nestled together!" The person went on to declare the strawberry pie at Bob's Big Boy "maybe my favorite piece of pie." 9. I brought some Henry James to read on the airplane. I always found him tough going in the past. Anyway, this time, his characters were making lots of wisecracks and I was getting into it. 10. Well, I have left out many of the nice people I saw on the trip, and interesting events, but my jotting is not what it used to be. Special mention must be made of Hanna K Nystrom, who was flying in from Sweden just as I was about to fly back to Mississippi. She thoughtfully made time for breakfast in the brief Sweden-Mississippi overlap we enjoyed. We talked about how cold and gray it was. (Los Angeles was chilly and gray for the whole of my stay, once again lending some weight to the Lorenz Hart lyric.) Hanna said it was colder than Sweden!

Pleasure

It brings me no pleasure - or maybe it does; I can't tell - to report that I found a typo on page 369 of this edition of Mann's DOCTOR FAUSTUS. It's an "it's" for an "its," truly an all-timer of a typo, a typo for the hall of fame, must be one of the top 10 typos in English. I'm looking at you, Vintage International paperbacks!

What a Great Time

Lsst night Dr. Theresa and I were watching the Hitchcock movie FAMILY PLOT, and the bad guys were going to release their kidnapping victim, but he (the victim) said "I haven't finished my chicken yet." To which I hilariously responded "Who did they kidnap, Kent Osborne?" Because he loves to eat chicken! Only in our house could that line get a laugh, though, come to think of it, Dr. Theresa did not laugh. (See also.)

Bangers

I was reading the Thomas Mann novel DOCTOR FAUSTUS (though it seems to be on pause now) and there were a lot of allusions to LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST, so I did what anyone would do and picked up a copy of that Shakespeare play at good old Square Books. Thumbing through the introduction, I read about a 1978 production in which a "genuine owl" from outside the performance area, in the trees somewhere, joined in on the final song. Now! I thought to myself, will I have to put this on my big list with an asterisk, as I did once before for a volume with an owl in its scholarly introduction, hedging my bets as to whether that really counts? But it seemed to me that I knew just where to peek to find out whether the play itself contained the necessary owl. Knowing that LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST concludes with two absolute bangers ("click" here for more information about how I started using the term "bangers"), and reading closely the commentator's verb choice in observing that the owl in question "reinforced" the songs, I concluded that there might be an owl at the very end of LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. And there is! "When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl/ Then nightly sings the staring owl." You know how it is!

Yesterday

Square Books called yesterday to let me know that my Peter Falk memoir had come in: it's the next selection in the Megan book club! Well, I had a doctor's appointment later that afternoon, so I moseyed to town a little early and ran into Shadan on the sidwalk... she's one of the excellent booksellers at Square Books, and let me emphasize that she wasn't even at work. She was just on the sidewalk in the middle of town, and she stopped to remind me that she and I like a lot of the same books, to which I replied that indeed we do. So she told me about a book she thought I would really enjoy: THE BLIND OWL by Sadegh Hedayat, and she even described in detail where I would find it in the shop, like a human GPS! This was just a friendly gesture on her part, I had caught her outside of work - now, that's what I call a bookseller! And she didn't even know about my owl problem. So I went to the bookstore, and the book was just where she had said it would be, and I read on the back cover that it is "a haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation," or, as I call it, "The Bill Boyle Seal of Approval." In fact, if I knew anything about Venn diagrams, or what they are, I could show you how a certain subset of books perfectly overlaps in the preferences of Bill, Shadan, and myself. But the adventures of the day were just beginning! Off I went to the doctor. The nurse who took my blood pressure recorded the results on a piece of paper, and as she did so, she said, "Wow, this pen is great. I wonder where I stole it from." That's an exact quotation! So I said, "What kind of pen is it? I'm always on the lookout for a good pen!" And she looked at the side of the pen and read from it the brand name "EnerGel." And that is what is so damn weird, I tell you! Just ONE DAY EARLIER, I had "posted" a chapter of my serialzed novel SOUR BLUEBERRIES, in which one of the protagonists similarly uses a pen that does not belong to him, is amazed by its high quality, and discovers that it goes by the brand name EnerGel! WHAT! I conclude by assuring you that I am no paid shill for the EnerGel corporation, it is just a weird thing that happened.

McNeil Special

Typing "McNeil Special" made me hungry for a J.J. Special, ha ha, good times, that allusion is only for me, not to mention which, it is the truth. Very similarly, and much like the time Public Enemy and Jerry Lewis appeared on the same episode of The Tonight Show, this "post" is only for McNeil. I am sure you will recall - because you are McNeil - McNeil's interest in the generational ubiquity of the "Globe Illustrated Shakespeare." That is why I snapped this photo of it (above) during a recent viewing of a film entitled MARRIED TO IT. For those who are not McNeil, if any, it is the chunky red number on the top visible shelf over Cybill Shepherd's head, characteristically daubed with gilt - the book, that is, not Cybill Shepherd's head, which is in need of no such embellishment.

Looking

Look, I don't "blog" anymore unless it's really important, and I just saw a Dairy Queen commercial I needed to tell you about. I'm the first to say I don't know a darn thing about Dairy Queen, except for what I wrote in Chapter 84 ("click" here) of my acclaimed alphabetized serialzed novel SOUR BLUEBERRIES, but, that being said, in this Dairy Queen commercial, the announcer brags of a "tasty-looking burger" served at nationwide Dairy Queen establishments. Tasty LOOKING. He seemingly can't bring himself to say it tastes good! And he's the announcer in the commercial, reading from a script that has been prepared for him especially for the occasion!

The Waiter's Secret

Well, there was a piece in the online version of today's New York Times where the fancy big shots who work there extolled in hushed, reverent awe the incomparable virtues of Skippy brand peanut butter, and that reminded me of a time when Dr. Theresa (before she was a Dr.) and I used to go to this restaurant in Atlanta, where we really enjoyed the peanut butter pie. One night, the waiter asked us if we knew why it was so good, and we said no, and he leaned in close, over the table, and said, behind his hand, from the side of his mouth, in a funny, conspiratorial voice, which we have imitated for all these years since, a single word: "Skippy." Just think of all the time we have spent, Dr. Theresa and I, saying "Skippy" to each other in a funny voice, never knowing that the waiter who said "Skippy" would one day be validated by the wonderful Gray Lady in all her glory. Anyway, Dr. Theresa is downstairs trying to work as I type these words, and I went down and asked her what the name of the restaurant was, but neither of us could remember. It didn't last too long. It was behind the post office.

Sex and Power

Such is my curse: I was watching TCM last night and there was young William Powell as a man of importance. He put a cigarette in his mouth and a dozen underlings rushed forward with a light. I am doomed for all eternity to notice this gesture, which is sometimes about sex, sometimes about power, probably always about both, as I have said before, but neglected to mention in my cigarette lighter book (the part about power, anyway). The good news is that the resulting title of this "post" is sure to make "blogs" popular again.

Coda

"Got a light?" Clint Eastwood constantly asks in his 1990 movie THE ROOKIE, which Dr. Theresa and I watched last night. Usually, no one does (have a light, that is). That's the joke. Wait! I should warn you there will be spoilers for this Clint Eastwood movie from 1990. Anyway, at the end, he asks his friend "Got a light?" and his friend does not have a light, and Clint Eastwood says, "Story of my life," and slumps over dead. Great ending! Except they keep going. There's a brief coda to let us know that our hero Clint Eastwood is not dead after all. Big mistake, in my opinion. It ruined the cool ending, which definitely would have gone in my cigarette lighter book, even though what Clint is looking for all through the movie would technically be a cigar lighter, because he smokes cigars. Still, there is something existentially irresistible about a man who always needs a light and never can get one and does not have one of his own. (See also.)

It's Over

It is only fair to mention that my sister beat my head in, 16-5, in our annual Oscar guessing contest. We both claim to know nothing about the Oscars, and I think it is clear that at least one of us is telling the truth. That must be my lowest count of correct guesses ever! But we'll never know for sure, because at some point I stopped recording the scores out of shame. I was curious to know exactly when I began losing interest in the Oscars, which I watched every year since 1973, until last year when I just... stopped. And of course I missed the big brouhaha! But I didn't learn my lesson, and I skipped it again this year, but I don't think any big brouhahas occurred. Anyway ("click" here for confirmation), imagine my surprise upon discovering that my interest in the Oscars has been very, very slowly fading for ten miserable years now.

That's Right

I'm under no legal obligation to tell you this, but I picked up Ovid again. I was like, where was I in this? And I opened it at random, and what do you think I read? That's right: "above the bridal chamber brooded the evil hoot-owl." So another owl in Ovid, big shock. Similarly absent of shock: the other night I couldn't sleep, so I got up and turned on TCM and there sat Robert Redford with an obelisk, and I wasn't even going to tell you about it.

Star

I keep forgetting to mention that McNeil saw an obelisk in WHERE THE SPIES ARE (1966). "This one has a star on top," he reported soberly. I would have put an exclamation point on that! McNeil provided no photographic evidence of this unusual star-topped obelisk, but he is my oldest friend and his word is solid gold in my book.

The Golden Obelisk

You know me! Sometimes I have a large book and a small book going simultaneously. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm reading CIGARETTES by Harry Mathews. But I am also reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, a towering, big, giant, huge, monumental masterwork by Thomas Mann. Now, is it going to knock Wuthering Heights off of my list? Never! But it's got to be a Top 5 novel. Now! I was ruminating yesterday about whether I could even say I have been reading it, given the fact that I am not reading it in German. How could I read it in German? I don't know German. And now I am old and will never know German. That's part of why I'm reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, if I am: the oldness. Like, "I'm old, and I have never read THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN." Such were the thoughts that came to me before I began reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. Of course, another part of me was and is like, you are old, why bother? Oldness goes both ways! I'm glad I'm reading it (in the translation by John E. Woods). It has everything! Including an owl. But! Before we get to the owl, it's so funny, I was thinking about not being able to read German yesterday, and then I read this in Harry Mathews's obituary: "His novel 'The Conversions,' otherwise in English, concluded with nine pages in German." But! That's not why we're here. I just wanted to say how weird it is that I'm reading two books, then one book has a hallucination talking about an owl and the next day the other book (THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN) has a ghost reciting a poem with a line about an owl in it! I didn't mention this yesterday, but the hallucination in CIGARETTES has a ghostly quality... it first appears in the form of the character's late grandmother. So you might say I was reading one book in which a ghost talks about an owl then I pick up another book and happen to come to a passage in which a ghost talks about an owl. So: 2 days, 2 ghosts talking about 2 owls. Now! Ordinarily, I wouldn't mash this all together. Back in the days before I stopped "blogging," I would have separated the following into its own "post." But those days are behind us forever! I went to bed early last night but couldn't sleep, so I arose at midnight and turned on TCM, where I saw Lana Turner as a powerful executive. And in her boardroom stood the golden obelisk glimpsed above! I used to keep tabs on obelisks in movies because McNeil cared about them. Now I don't know why I'm doing it. In conclusion, I had another thought about THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, which I shared in emails with some friends (in this case, Ace, Bill, Jimmy, Megan, and Ashly). Feedback has been scarce, because what are they going to say? And I am certain the observation has been made by someone before me, though I am much too tired to google it. So! The TB sanitorium in THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN obtains a record player for its residents. Our protagonist, Hans Castorp, takes it over. He puts together little programs of music, with much thought (and many pages) spent on consideration of how one seemingly unrelated selection will flow into another. Only he has the key to the cabinet! Only he touches the records and decides what to play when! And thus he entertains his audience, becoming, in my limited knowledge, LITERATURE'S FIRST DJ.