My Dear, Suspicious Friends

Not to brag, but I did successfully predict the hottest new trend of 2024: Rachel and the teraphim! Marilynne Robinson covers it in her new book READING GENESIS. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I picked up that book just because I knew Rachel and the teraphim would be in it. Oh, my dear, suspicious friends. Nothing could be further from the truth. I guess a few things could be further from the truth. After all, I know about the contents of Genesis from my many mornings in Sunday school. And the story of Jacob, which includes Rachel and the teraphim, also contains my favorite Bible character (as this important document ["click" here] from fifteen years ago will confirm), Esau. I was a bit put off by the very rough treatment given to Esau by Thomas Mann. Marilynne Robinson goes easier on him in the end, though she does call him a "boor," ha ha! I seem to be forgetting the task at hand, which is to show you why you're all wrong about me, all the time. See, I happened to find READING GENESIS at Square Books, and I remembered seeing something nice in the New York Times about it, and I've always meant to get into Marilynne Robinson somehow or another, and that's all there is to it. Though I did text Megan that I thought it was going to be a good companion piece to JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS. Yes, that's the kind of thing we text about! Sometimes! And I was right. I dip into READING GENESIS for just five minutes at a time, and that just twice a day, right before I take my blood pressure. I probably read somewhere on the "internet" that you should relax for five minutes before taking your blood pressure. And what could be more relaxing than the Old Testament? Even though I am going through READING GENESIS at such a modest rate, I'm getting near the point where it's going to present spoilers to me as I continue with JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, which I am reading at a much faster clip. I mean to say that Robinson covers in a paragraph what it takes Mann tens of thousands of words to get across. You would think I would be immune to spoilers, given my supposed familiarity with the narrative, but lots of times Mann will tell of an outlandish incident and I'll think, "Well! No way that's in the Bible!" and then I'll look, and there it is in the Bible. Oh! Remember how I said that I loved THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, but it took me about 100 pages before I really got into it? The same goes for JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, except it takes 200-400 pages to get going.

Of Mice and Dogs

Yesterday, when I was telling you the shameful story of how McNeil's grandfather stole a copy of PAL JOEY, I was looking for something to "link" via "hyperlink" to the words "PAL JOEY." You know how I love to "link" to things! Indeed, if you examine the "blog" with the eye of a scholar, you will soon realize that it is designed in a secret way to be nothing more than a never-ending loop of "hyperlinks" that an immortal person could enjoy forever. (And, as I have emphasized repeatedly, it works much better on your laptop than on your phone, due to the extra bells and whistles. But I'm not the boss of you! Also, you may not exist.) Anyhow, I could have sworn that I had mentioned PAL JOEY on the "blog" before. But as far as I could tell, I had not. So I went ahead and "posted" the damn thing. Pardon my salty language! Later on, I thought, wait a minute, I could swear I "posted" at least a photo of the time when Laraine Newman and I went to William Faulkner's house and one of us (I couldn't remember which) held up, whilst being photographed, Faulkner's own personal copy of PAL JOEY... presumably purchased legally. Turned out I had not "posted" that either... until now! (See above.) Meanwhile, McNeil has been emailing me his thoughts as he begins to read his grandfather's stolen copy of PAL JOEY: "On page 35 of Pal Joey and so far only a dog has shown up. Joey mentions 'mouse' a lot, but that's just when referring to a female human." To be clear, McNeil brings up the dog because he was hoping for an owl. He also learned, from the eponymous Joey, the term "one-arm joint," which he passed along, and I looked it up in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG, which cites, in clarifying the definition, PAL JOEY itself, as I was thrilled beyond measure to report back to McNeil. Just another endless loop.

The Wonderful World of McNeil

McNeil has stumbled across a copy of the novel PAL JOEY that his grandfather checked out of the library... it's 58 years overdue! (See proof above.) The discovery led McNeil to reflect upon his own tardiness. He still has a copy of WITHOUT FEATHERS that was due back on May 26, 1982. "I guess it runs in the family. We get busy and forget!" McNeil's email concludes. Incidentally, McNeil dug out "his" WITHOUT FEATHERS and opened to page five, where he read "The only thing you'll do is in collaboration with an owl."

Innocent Merriment

I was listening to Haydn's Drumroll Symphony... yes, I was! Shut up! And I grew curious about the almost modern-sounding melody line at the very beginning, so I thought I'd see if my quaint and trusty old MILTON CROSS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC had anything to say about it. Well, sorry to report that they devoted just one short paragraph to that work, containing nothing on the subject which had captured my interest. But! Underneath that paragraph was one on the Toy Symphony (now [and I use the word "now" loosely, considering the relative antiquity of the volume] attributed to Mozart's father), for which the following instrumentation was catalogued: "penny trumpet, quail call, rattle, cuckoo, screech-owl whistle, a little drum (in G), and a little triangle." This, Milton Cross and his associates conclude, makes for "innocent merriment to delight both young and old." It also makes the MILTON CROSS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC - Volume I, at least - a book with an owl in it.

Outlaw Pants

As you know, I tell you every time I read a book with an owl in it for secret reasons that no one except we (as I believe is gramatically correct) will ever understand. As you also know, Tom Franklin brought me a bunch of old comic books when I was in the hospital, and in one of them, the masked cowboy known as Vigilante met up with some real rascals (spoiler alert! they were reformed and had been framed!) known colloquially as "owlhoots." I don't suppose any of us will ever forget that. But what you DIDN'T know was that after I got home from the hospital, Tom brought over a fresh stack of old comic books! I was lying in bed reading one of the new batch last night and this character the Two-Gun Kid shoots Jesse James's pants off him! He does it in order to embarrass Jesse James in front of a bunch of schoolchildren. It's an odd choice, but hey, he's the Two-Gun Kid. He uses his two guns to shoot off Jesse James's pants, what's the big deal? Here, let me give you a direct quotation from the Two-Gun Kid himself: "LOOK, YOUNGSTERS! THE OWLHOOT WHO HOLDS UP STAGES IS HAVING TROUBLE HOLDING UP HIS JEANS! AND NOW, JESSE... DANCE!" What may we conclude? Let us consider: Vigilante is a DC character, while the Two-Gun Kid was created by Marvel. Therefore, though these mighty giants of comics publishing were adversarial in every other way, the term "owlhoot" was universal enough to bridge the immense gap between them. Can't we all learn a lesson from that in these trying times? Sidenote: I was going to title this "post" "I Shot Jesse James...'s Pants," an allusion to the Samuel Fuller film I SHOT JESSE JAMES, but no one would have understood or, had they understood, cared.

TV Memories

Last night I turned on the TV, which happened to be tuned to TCM, as it often is, and I saw a super special guest co-hosting a movie presentation, and I was like, "Hey! That's a guy who fired me once!" Actually, he fired Barry and Sven and myself, and we all got in a car (well, not the guy who fired us, but the rest of us did) and drove straight to Manuel's Tavern, suddenly jobless, and on the way there, we saw a dead man lying in the street. I realize now that I recounted this story in an anthology about bars called COME HERE OFTEN?, which I assume still exists in some form, if you'd like more details. I'm not sure there are more details.

Teraphim For Real

Almost exactly two years ago, I made my famous prediction that 2022 would be the year of Rachel and the teraphim. Maybe I was off by a couple of years! Because guess what I just read in JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS by Thomas Mann? That's right: a chapter about Rachel and the teraphim. It took me a while to get there, because the book is so big and heavy that I wasn't allowed to lift it during a recent medical adventure (not the most recent medical adventure).