Fred Wemyss

Dreary Are the Raindrops

2007-04-11T20:02:00.000-04:00

Dreary are the
raindrops
Dropping in wet dreariness,
Splashing on the pavement
helplessly.

Jeff Daniels In BLACKBIRD

2007-04-05T02:06:00.000-04:00

I hopped on the train from Huntington yesterday, got out at the last stop, Penn Station and went to 55th Street, home of the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center. At the box office I bought a ticket for that evening's performance of a play which is still in previews, BLACKBIRD. I went because I wanted to see Jeff Daniels on stage. The play (which has an author whose name I can't remember) is about a sixty-year-old man being confronted by a young woman he sexually abused, years earlier, when she was twelve. It is a well-focused play. Mart Crowley, who wrote BOYS IN THE BAND, wrote a similar one thirty or so years ago, the title of which I can't recall, about a young man confronting the priest who abused him when he was a child. It's in a collection of Crowley's plays. I've not seen that one performed, but it strikes me that Crowley's take on the theme is unironic, and, therefore, perhaps, more powerful than BLACKBIRD, if only because the Crowley play seems to be mournful and BLACKBIRD is, essentially, ironic.
The actress playing the woman confronting her abuser is excellent in the role. She is waiflike well into adulthood. Jeff Daniels, of course, plays the more interesting role. He is cast well because almost any other actor would come across as a monster. Another actor could play this very well, but Jeff Daniels removes the freak factor, somehow.
Crowley's play was deeper. It indicted history, the church, society and the powewrful in general. BLACKBIRD may be more realistic. The two characters are truly postmodern, subject to their own sentiments, whereas, in the other play, the priest feels the pull of his calling and the young man marches with the strength of what was a new phenomenon then called Gay Lib. In BLACKBIRD, clinical detail heightens the reality. But Crowley's play has an apocalyptic feel. In fact, it is a more felt play.
But BLACKBIRD moves briskly. The set, showing the hallways and breakroom of an office-building of the wall-to-wall-carpeted, charcoal gray and chrome sort, reflects the anonymity of the two characters. Indeed, the predator has changed his name and the victim, although speaking her name to another character who appears fleetingly, considers herself "a ghost."
Opening night is less than a week from now, I think. One thing might need working out. I'm not certain the slow fading of the ceiling lights during the monologues of the protagonists helped. The lights are glaring for the rest of the play and I think the revelatory speeches would play better if the light stayed harsh.
Jeff Daniels sold me on this play. It was what I expected it to be. It has an important subject.
But it lacks the anger which made its equivalent from three decades ago profound.

My Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem Review

2007-04-03T00:16:00.000-04:00

Here I reprint a review I posted on a superfamous book and music selling website which has the name of a river in its address. The review is from 2005. (It's a review of a CD called LUCK OF THE IRISH.)

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Where's the Rest of Their Catalogue?, July 5, 2005
Reviewer: Fred Wemyss (Actual Name) (Huntington, NY United States) - See all my reviews
Chances are that those reading my review already have a concept of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. So, with a nod to the knowing, I'll begin: In the early 60s, more than one musical quartet from across the Atlantic got a boost from going on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW. When this particular team did the show, the folk-music fans responded positively, but a demographic which had not yet been tapped also suddenly made its spending-power known. The vast Irish-American consumer block wended its way to the record store and Columbia had a fairly unlikely hit. Of course, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem had been playing clubs in Greenwich Village for three or four years and had recorded a lot of songs for a label Tom and Pat Clancy had founded, "Tradition." But, by the time they made their first record for Columbia, their singing had become incredibly forceful and distinct. From 1961 (or '62) until 1969, the team recorded at least ten full-length albums for Columbia, some live, many in the studio. Eric Weissberg (who had a hit in the early '70s with "Dueling Banjos") often played on the Columbia recordings and their first Columbia album featured him and Pete Seeger. In short, the Clancies and Makem were in top vocal form here and had the best musicians in the business backing them. Makem's tin whistle was of course at its hypnotic best. These were funny, exciting, moving albums. The bulk of them are NOT available on CD. THE LUCK OF THE IRISH has tracks from various times in the sixties, some of which made it to the albums and some which are either alternate takes or which were never used. "Home Boys Home" is marvelous and sounds like the exact recording on the unavailable-on-CD LP HOME BOYS HOME except that a rhythm guitar has been removed. Like other releases by Sony (which IS Columbia)
the booklet tells you very little about the Clancies progression in the sixties. Is there some taboo on telling the fans which albums came out when? It's as if some Soviet bureaucrat were given the keys to the Clancy vault and caused most of their recordings to vaporize before the wall came down. This is not only really good music, it's important to the Irish folk movement, and it's not on CD. Bob Dylan, thankfully, invited the Clancy Brothers to sing at the Madison Square Garden tribute to him in 1992, so people will, through that CD, run into the Clancy Brothers, but Sony otherwise seems to try to keep them hidden. A bunch of CDs of random tracks packaged for a Saint Patrick's Day audience does no justice to this seminal folk group. Here, off the top of my head is a list of their Columbia LPs. The boldfaced ones are the ones available on CD as of July, 2005:
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem
Hearty and Hellish
The Boys Won't Leave The Girls Alone
The First Hurrah!
In Ireland!
IN PERSON AT CARNEGIE HALL
Isn't It Grand, Boys (Not to be confused with the boxed set "Ain't It Grand")
Freedom's Sons
IN CONCERT
Sing of the Sea
So, two, count 'em, two actual albums have made it to CD and the other CDs are culled from different albums with many, many tracks left off. May I also point out that at least three of these are concept albums. HEART AND HELLISH, for example, is a truly well recorded live nightclub performance and the audience, roaring with laughter and cheering and, at solemn moments, almost prayerfully quiet, is as much a part of the recording as the group. Did some manager throw this stuff in some legal hell-hole? It's as if only two stories from DUBLINERS were allowed to surface. What gives?
So, if you buy LUCK OF THE IRISH you'll like the songs. But they jump back and forth through the Clancies 60s career. Why not allow the CDs to reflect the albums, as is done with the Clancy Brothers' friend Bob Dylan? And if the answer is "The album's are short," MY answer will be, put two on one disc. But put them in order and let's hear them in their entirety!

"House" Is "Holmes"

2007-03-28T00:20:00.000-04:00

"Why?" you ask.
Because they're both British. (No American could play Gregory House. Hugh Laurie plays him with an American accent, but Hugh Laurie can be seen in many episodes of JEEVES AND WOOSTER, playing a twit straight out of Graham Chapman's twitbook.)
Because there's an undeniable Transatlantic thing going on. (Sherlock Holmes may have been a British literary creation, and the actor who played him the way everybody imagines him may have been English -- Basil Rathbone -- but Hollywood was where the classic Sherlock Holmes movies were filmed, and it's where HOUSE is shot.) And speaking of shot:
House dies.
Holmes dies.
Holmes is brought back to life when readers demand his return.
House returns to life at the beginning of the next season.
Both deaths are murders.
House walks with a cane.
Sherlock Holmes carries a cane. Is that similarity too superficial? Get ready for this:
House is a drug addict.
Sherlock Holmes is addicted to cocaine.
Sherlock Holmes merely looks at somebody and deduces extraordinary things about that person.
House merely looks at somebody and deduces extraordinary things about that person.
Sherlock Holmes constantly amazes and exasperates his highly educated assistant.
House constantly amazes and exasperates his highly educated assistants.
Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories, based Holmes on a doctor he'd worked for as a young man. Therefore, Sherlock Holmes is actually a caricature of a medical man.
Sherlock Holmes is always pissong off the authorities.
House is always pissing off the authorities.
Everybody who likes to read or watch movies loves Sherlock Holmes.
Everybody who watches TV loves House.
Nobody really understands how Sherlock Holmes comes to his conclusions but they read the stories in one sitting if they can.
Nobody really understands how House comes to his conclusions but when HOUSE comes on, they sit watching the show for the whole hour.
I was in a diner tonight getting take-out when I heard the waitress say, "Oh! I'm not going home now. This is a new one!" She was looking at the TV above the counter. HOUSE was on.
When I got home with my take-out, I put HOUSE on.
Back to HOUSE's simultaneous Britishness and Americanness: Hugh Laurie's British show JEEVES AND WOOSTER is based on stories by P.G. Wodehouse, an Englishman who spent most of his adult life in the United States, whose main character, Bertie Wooster, is, by Wodehouse's own admission, based on the American conception of "an English dude." ("Dude" in the sense of a man-about-town, not in the "Do you have some pot, dude?" sense.)
More to the point, Gregory House and Sherlock Holmes both wear tweed.
And they're witty.
Practically superhuman.
And completely entertaining.

Answering Service

2007-03-25T23:52:00.000-04:00

3:17 pm
Answering Service
[A note from Fred Wemyss: I wrote "Answering Service" twenty-one years ago, in 1986. I turned twenty-five that year. My brother happened to mention this afternoon -- March 25th, 2007 -- that he found something I'd written. I said, "What was it?" He went to a filing cabinet and pulled this story out. I'm copying it onto this site. The copy in front of me is a carbon copy of the rough draft which I'd written using a manual typewriter. The final version, written on a computer after hours at a place where my other brother and I worked, has italics which help the reader figure out who's talking. I don't know where that version is, so, what I've posted is the rough draft the first brother I mentioned found this morning. Good luck figuring out who's saying what. By the way, my brother has a cameo in this story. But which brother?]

Answering Service

by Fred Wemyss

Hope it's for me. "Hello?

"Hello. Am I speaking to Marshall Pepys?"

"No, he's at work. I'm one of his sons. Hank." And not unemployed, as it were. Law School. Home for January.

"I'm so sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you can help me. I'm looking for a Wally Pepys. Are you a rela-?"

"Oh. We're different Pepyses. Sometimes we get Wally's mail." And, of course, I should tell her he's dead.

"Does he live near you?"

"The family isn't far, I guess. They're one town over from us in Chatterton. We're Greentown. We're only technically Chatterton."

"You don't happen to know his number?"

I've got his number: Dead. But I'm not sure about that. So: "I can find it for you." Should tell her to look it up herself. But I'm that nice."

"Oh, would you? That would be such a help. I called Information and they only listed you. I have to tell you: The number may be unlisted."

Not a chance, with this out-of-date book. Wally's only been dead three months. He's just dead and they disconnected it. "Well, let me give a look." What possesses you, Hank? "It should be in here. When I was a kid I used to look up Pepyses in the phone book, and I remember always seeing his name." Tell her your life story.

"And there's no relation at all? With a name like that your being in the same town is a real coincidence."

She could pass for Scarlet O'Hara with that accent, if Scarlet were real. Even if she were, though, she'd be dead too, by now.

"Can you tell me anything about what he's doing?"

L-M-N-O-P. That's right. Peperino. Pepp. "Well I know he's a dentist." That's the present tense. Can't use it for long. "I think I've heard it's a big family." Peptino. Which didn't visit him in the rest home. Not according to that nurse who attacked Tom. But did she say it was Wally?

"I knew he'd become a dentist. When I knew him in medical school it's all he would talk about. Even when he was dancing. And could he Jitterbug!"

A Jitterbug's best friend, these days. "Could he?" Where do they list Pepys?

"Oh, Wally Pepys was quite something."

This woman almost sounds like Cordelia. But Cordelia was much better at not sounding Southern. What was her full name? There was a "Three" in it.

"You know, it wasn't until this morning that I thought of looking him up. I flew in from Baltimore last night. And I was sitting in the hotel dining room having breakfast, and it occurred to me: Since I'm in the city and not far from Long Island, then I'm not to far from W--
the Pepyses, am I? I hope this isn't an awful bother."

"Oh, no." Just a bore. "I'm just sorry to take so long finding the number for you."

"That's all right. The company pays for this."

Med School drop-out, huh? Cordelia Three Lockwood Whitcomb. No. Cordelia Margaret Three Lockwood Whitcomb. Did she just mention Harry James?

"Yes, dancing, Wally was something. Graceful as a ballet dancer. Not that he would have wanted to hear that, of course. He was quite a man."

Is she laughing? Pepys, W. T. "I found it. Do you have something to write with?"

"Dear me! Let me look in my purse."

Giggling!

"If I'd only been looking through it while you were looking for the number, instead of talking on and on like this."

Keep talking, while I think of how to let you down.

"You know, Wally always said people would think I was just senile when I got to be this age, because I was always so absent-minded, and here I just proved it!"

Again the giggle. The tinkle of a Belle. Habeus Corpus! This could be Cordelia Margaret Lockwood Two Smith or something. Number Three loved to dance, too. But it's radically remote.

"You know I haven't seen Wally Pepys in -- why I'd have to say forty years. Will he be surprised!"

It'll be more the other way 'round, I think. "Wow."

"How the years do pass."

She never danced with her boyfriends. She'd say, Hank, won't you do a dance with me? That hint of an accent. What was she doing in New England, anyway? And there was that time she whispered in my ear, I like dancing with you. You're the only one who doesn't try to make a move on me. The nicest thing a girl ever said to me.

"Yes, it's been almost half-a-century! Ah. Here is is. A stubby little pencil, but it'll do."

What's the dog barking at? Oh. Tom's here. "Excuse me. I have to let someone inside. I'll be right back." Hey! That's what Johnny Carson wants on his tombstone!

"Certainly."

"Spot, quiet. Quiet. Hello, Tom."

"Hank."

I could ask him.

"Have you seen Joe, Hank? I'm looking for him."

"No, he's in the city today. But --"

"Who's on the phone?"

"Come here a second." Living Room. "Here." Out of earshot.

"Who's -- ?"

"Just -- come here. Are you sure Wally Pepys was the Pepys the nurse thought we were related to?"

"Yes. Is that for Wally Pepys?"

"Yeah. It's this old Southern lady."

"Did you tell her about -- ?"

"Shh." So. It definitely is Wally. Of course. That's exactly what Tom said when he said he had a story to tell after visiting Aunt Wanda in the nursing home. 'Hank, remember Pete Munger's sister? Well, she's a nurse there, and she remembered me from high school. She came up to me and started shouting at me. How come you never visited your grandfather before he died? I said Because he died before I was born. She said Then who was that asking for you? I said I don't know. She said Right, you didn't know Wally Pepys? Upon which I was unfazed and said we weren't related.' Then it's Wally for sure. And I have to spring it on this lady after five minutes spent hiding it. Back to the phone. "Sorry to make you wait."

"There's no rush."

"The number is -- "

"He's dead!"

"The number is Four-Two-Three, Six-One-Oh-Five."

"He's dead!"

Better muffle this phone. "I know." Your soul commands you speak. Tell her. "I guess you know the area code is Five-One-Six." What if it HAS been disconnected? No one would answer her. "You know, this is last year's phone book. You might want his address if the number's been changed. For some reason."

"Do you think it might have been?"

"Maybe."

"Well, maybe that's the reason Information only listed you. Would you give me the address?"

"Sure." Where's that piece of junk mail? "Also, if he's moved, maybe, whoever lives there now might be able to tell you where Wally is."

"Well, thank you."

"Hank. Hank, Wally's dead!"

Cover the phone again! "She'll hear you. I know the guy's dead."

"Excuse me?"

"I was just talking to someone else. We have a letter for him that came to us by mistake a few days ago. That'll have the address. I don't think we returned it yet." Hope nobody emptied this. "I'll check our mail pile." Coke cans, Dos Equis bottles, orange peels. Saved! Mister Wally Pepys, You Can Be A Millionaire For Life! "Here it is."

"Oh, good. I'm ready with the pencil this time."

"Okay. You do know that even though we pronounce it 'Peeps,' the name is spelled P-E-P -- "

"Y-S. I could never forget it."

Cordelia knew how to say it right away when she read it.

"Do you often get people spelling it wrong? Wally got that all the time when I knew him."

"We get P-Y-P-S a lot of the time. And people say Peep-iss or Pipp-iss." It was in Expository. First day I met her. During the paper swap. She corrected mine, handed it back and said, 'Here, Hank Peeps.' Freshman year. She couldn't have heard of me. She just knew.

"We had a professor who called him Wally Pipes. Can you imagine?"

"Oh, all too well. Well here's his address."

"Come here, Hank."

"But -- " Yanked from the phone!

"Hank -- "

"I know all about it."

"But you haven't done anything about it."

"I'll tell her."

"Oh, really?"

"Listen, she's waiting to finish talking to me."

"You have to tell her he's dead."

"Well, I'll ease her -- "

"Do you give a damn?"

Tom is right. "Sorry."

"Sorry?"

"To her, to her I mean. See? I'm speaking into this."

"Pardon me?"

"Nothing." Hope she couldn't make that out. "I mean -- "

"You know, with my own name I get the most drastic mistakes. It almost comes out Cord of Wood sometimes. And you know what it really is? Cordelia."

"Cordelia!"

"Yes, and people just can't meet that name at eye level. Even my best friends would rather call me Margaret."

This isn't happening.

"Tell her about Wally, Hank."

Cordelia Three Margaret Three Lockwood Three Whitcomb. Her blue eyes and silky hair. She'll seek me when I'm old. "Do you happen to have a granddaughter named Cordelia Whitcomb?" Or when I'm dead.

"I'm sorry for the interruption, Mrs. Smith, but I have a call for you from Mr. James. Shall I put this call on hold?"

"You don't mind, do you? I'll only be a minute."

"No. I don't mind."

"Yes, please."

"Very good. One second, Mrs. Smith."

"Hey, Tom, this is pretty slick. They put me on hold. She's at Trump Plaza or some place. She could have said to give her the address right now so she can take this other call. But she wants a conversation. She wants all the recent Wally facts."

"You're afraid to break the news, aren't you?"

"I'll break it. I just have to find out something from her, first."

"Yes, I heard you asking, and couldn't believe you. Who is Cordelia Whitcomb?"

"She's a girl I knew at Cotton Mather. This lady might be related. She has two of her names. They're both Southern."

"The names, or them? Well, before you make the small talk, inform her of the big Wally fact. It's bizarre to keep her in the dark like this."

"Yes." I should have asked Cordelia out, at least once. She might have been willing. I was invited to her parties. What a family that was. Actually printing up invitations with her full name on them. And the house had a name. Couples and worshipers only need attend. I was a worshiper; one of the Ashley Wilkses. Cordelia will ignore appointed boyfriend on Saturday, April Second, between the hours of eight-thirty P.M., at Cloverleaf. R.S.V.I.P. And there were the artistic pictures of her in the hall. Condescending to Santa at the age of six; at fifteen smiling admiringly at Great Uncle Thurmond as he relates a tedious stock market anecdote. But then, the lassie, leaning on a picket fence, resting on an oak, holding a Lily-Of-The-Valley. They hired the best. Not photogenic. Absolutely glowing in real life, though. Thou art a beauty, daughter, and no scholar. The Thurmond Agency needs ads for five-hundred-dollar egg cups; look charming for the crystalware people; grin, please, if you can't look natural. She saw through the photogs. They never used her in an ad. She committed heresy at her parties. Allowed her humor and common sense to shine. Counteracted the impossible colonial furniture. And worse: She managed to share laughter openly with the accepted escort. The parties were fun. And all of this with a first name out of Hell, twice borrowed. Of course, she once asked me to take a Polaroid of her and Howard at the Halloween dance. She saw through me.

"I'm back."

Yes, end on a happy note. You are Ashley, and care. Tell her the sad stuff first. But first: "Well, this envelope says Wally Pepys lives at Seventy-four Bridge Street, Chatterton, New York, One-one -- "

"He WILL be amazed. I'm really looking forward to this. Put yourself in Wally's shoes, and just imagine not hearing from some of the girls you knew -- why I daresay you're about the same age he was when I knew him -- imagine not seeing one of those girls for forty years and then hearing from one."

Or imagine never agin being able to talk to someone you've always wanted to talk to again. I'll tell her now. "That would be something, all right. But -- "

"You've been such a help to me, and I do thank you. Now did you say the name Cordelia Whitcomb before?"

First thing's first. "Yes, but -- " Now that I've assured you that you can rekindle a forty-year-old flame -- "I think I should tell you, though, I heard that he might have -- " become as nothing, become dead, dead -- "passed away two or three months back."

"Oh. Well, then I'd better tone down this enthusiasm a bit when I call him. Thank you."

"You're wel-" Did she -- That's it? That's it. I'll always wonder. Hang up the phone, Tom Dooley, hang up the phone and cry...

"Well, Hank?"

"The lady missed the boat with Wally Pepys on board. He's dead."

"You don't say?"

Now We Come To The End Of Life's Journey

2007-03-15T01:59:00.000-04:00

I had the day off yesterday and, after dreading oncoming twilight, I got on the phone and ordered a ticket to the eight o'clock performance of JOURNEY'S END. I hopped on the LIRR, got out at Penn Station, walked a block to Stage Door Deli, ordered the Stage Door Sandwich (corned beef, pastrami and roast beef on rye) followed it with some cherry pie and walked to 111 West 44th, address of the Belasco Theater and picked up my ticket. It was for a balcony seat. I walked to the outdoor entrance, which is the only one leading to the balcony and the ticket-taker told me the balcony was closed, so I could sit in the mezzanine. Not bad for thirty-six bucks!
This play was what I expected: a powerhouse.
It was originally staged in 1929. It's about stiff-upper-lip British officers in a trench in the Great War (Dub-a-yuh Dub-a-yuh One) and, for all the repressed emotion in the dialogue, the nuanced acting strikes every human chord.
I've seen plays I liked better. (August Wilson's JITNEY is the most moving thing I've ever seen.) I've seen more profound plays. (THE GLASS MENAGERIE, for example.) But JOURNEY'S END may be the most noble play I've ever seen. How many Broadway shows can you call noble? One. This one.
JOURNEY'S END came to Broadway without bally-hoo. None of the large magazine spreads HISTORY BOYS got in advance. No big-ass American stars.
Just the right play at the right time for a public clamoring for depth.

Friends En Masse

2007-03-11T00:31:00.000-05:00

This Saturday at work many of my patrons were people I've worked with or known anyway.
First, a guy from a book store where I used to work came in, saw me and said, "You work here?"
Then a friend of a friend came in and talked to me for about ten minutes. Then a co-worker from another book store said hi. She's just moved to town and had told me months ago she'd become a patron. Then a guy I worked with twenty years ago came in. He recognized me right away. I knew he was a patron because I'd seen a few books on hold for him last week. I'd been hoping he'd come in when I was on hand. Another friend came in earlier and we talked about Peter Sellers. (This is because he was borrowing THE PARTY, a Blake Edwards/Sellers thing done between the two clusters of PINK PANTHER movies.)
Last night a friend from childhood came in and said, "You work here?"
Best of all, during my break I went to the bakery across the street. A girl behind the counter whom I'd never seen before appeared to be offering to help me before other people who'd been waiting. I wasn't sure if they were ahead of me or not, so when she said "Can I help you?" I dropped my scruples and ordered. Her co-workers gave her the look that says, "What are you doing?" She got me the tea and the scone I'd ordered and said to me, "Did you read a story at the open mike at the library recently?"
"Yes," I said.
"I thought so. I was in the audience. You were great."
Now I was sure she'd let me cut in line. For the first and probably the only time in my life I was being given the preferential treatment celebrities get.
The story I'd read at the library was LAW ABIDERS, which is on this blog as a fairly recent entry. Ever since reading it my co-workers have been coming up to me saying they enjoyed my reading or that they wish they'd been there to hear me. That is very nice indeed, and not something I'm at all used to. But that a person with no connection to me would have singled me out just to say she liked my story is really thrilling.
Before all these nice people encountered me today I had a moment of shared hostility with a patron. I was in the wrong and apologized to him about twenty minutes later as he was walking toward the door. He was graceful about it and I'm grateful. I am not quite the stereotypical Civil Service worker I've been afraid I might become.

The Library Police: Book Him!

2007-03-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

Today I was ringing up a patron. Having just come out of 17 years in retail, my commercial terminology is mixing with Civil Service terminology. I don't use the word "customers" when referring to "patrons," but "ringing up" is still the only phrase I can think of to describe checking out books to patrons. Oh! "Checking out!" Okay:
Today I was checking out books to a patron. He was about fifty-five and had a girl about seven with him. He had a bunch of children's books, and, as he approached the desk, he was waving his library card. "The library police! The library police," he said. He looked at me.
I gave him the smile that says, "May I check out your books?"
"Hope the Library Police don't lock us up!" he said.
His daughter picked her nose.
"Returning or checking out?" I said, smiling the smile that says, "I'm unflappable."
"I'd better pay that fine or the library's going to come after me! I've been summoned by the Library Police!"
"Well," I said, "Let's see what kind of fine you've got. May I see your card?"
"Oh, I have my card! I need my card for the Library Police!"
The daughter stood, looking at him the way she will when she wants to borrow the car fifteen years from now.
I scanned his library card.
"You owe fifty cents."
"Oh, boy, I'm glad I came in and confessed. I was afraid you might lock me up."
"It wouldn't be my policy," I said.
I took his fifty cents and printed up a receipt. "So, you're taking these out?" I said.
"If I can get out of this jail I will," he said.
I checked his books out.
"Thanks," he said. "You ready, Pumpkin?" he said.
"You have some books on hold," I said.
"On hold? How come I wasn't summoned to pick them up?"
I didn't answer. Taking his books from the hold shelf I put them on the desk."
"Oh," said the man, "Guess I'd better return these on time!"
I rang him up before time could elapse.
I mean, checked out his books.
Before I had to spend another second with him.
"Say goodbye to the Library Police, Pumpkin."
The child maintained a stony silence. Prisoners are like that.

Regrets

2007-03-03T01:59:00.000-05:00

Regrets
Here's a list of regrets of mine:

1) I regret not being able to post regrets at this time.
2) I regret not being able to post regrets earlier.
3) I regret not being able to post regrets in the future.
4) I regret not being openly gay when I was 18.
5) I regret being defiantly gay when I was 34.
6) I regret wearing clothes two sizes too small for my body when I was 38.
7) I regret not having worn my retainer at the age of 15.
8) I regret having stopped reading THE IDIOT at page 48.
9) I regret not having taken up my Freshman roommate's offer, at the end of Freshman year, to room with him and two friends of his on the fifth-floor dorm Sophomore year.
10) I regret agreeing to live off-campus with three other friends Sophomore year.
11) I regret not having asked John from down the hall, Freshman year, if he was gay.
12) I regret not having told John from down the hall Freshman year that I thought I was gay.
13) I regret not taking John from down the hall up on his offer, Freshman year, to play Frisbee with him that time he asked, he having suddenly appeared in my room with no shirt on and a bandanna around his head and cut-off shorts and a smile the size of our shared attraction.
14) I regret never knowing if the attraction referred to above was, indeed, shared.
15) I regret lunging toward Leo, one of my Sophomore roommates, in the Raathskellar and kissing him on the cheek in front of his girlfriend Beth.
16) I regret lunging toward Leo, one of my Sophomore roommates, in the Raathskellar and kissing him on the cheek in front of his girlfriend Beth, again, twenty-five seconds later.
17) I regret not admitting to the guy who came to me Senior year for advice on what he was "going through" that he was right in assuming I, too, had gone through what he was going through.
18) I regret walking around naked at those off-campus parties.
19) I regret that there was never another naked person next to me as I suddenly noticed, at various off-campus keg parties, that I was walking around naked.
20) I regret.
21) I regret.
22) I regret.
(Comment on this)
Friday, March 2nd, 20073:13 am
Scotsmen

Fiends Only

2007-02-27T00:25:00.000-05:00

Stratford-Upon-Avon, February 26th, 2007 [Reuters] -- Four-hundred-forty-three years after his birth, wordsmith William Shakespeare announced that, from now on, all of his plays, most of his poems ("Except maybe VENUS & ADONIS, which doesn't really reveal much about me") and definitely his will would be "Friends Only." The entire sonnet series "will be friends only from now on and that will never change."
"I never said people could read my will half a millenium after my death, did I?" said Mr. Shakespeare. "What do you care about the second-best bed? You trolls! And they post my picture above every drinking establishment in every Bohemian section of every half-assed burg in the Western World. I never said they could do that. All I can do is only let people who know me read HAMLET. HAMLET, KING LEAR and ROMEO & JULIET represent my personal vision and I don't think half the world should just be able to access them as if I didn't care who read them."
"Don't dare dig the dust enclosed here!" will be the warning at the top of any page touched by the playwright.
"Do you think I honed my words so carefully so that all of humanity for centuries could become intimate with them? From now on, any actor trying to read my lines will have to show himself to me first so I can be sure he's sincere. All the world's a stage in my everlasting humiliation! I have to be select in the future. My writing is my own and death shouldn't be an invitation for just anyone to peruse my every exclamation!" exclaimed the Bard.
"You're just looking over my shoulder," he added, looking over a shoulder.

Frog and Toad

2007-02-23T02:43:00.000-05:00

Frog did all the singing. Toad was rhythm. He'd stand on the stool and leap, which gleaned him attention, but Frog, from the safety of the lily pad, created an aura of sound more visual than Toad's tableaux.
They toured all the big ponds, The Palm Frond, The Croc o' Dero, Platy's Puss, etcetera, and they even headlined Tadpole's on Lake Michigan, but hopping from one body of H2O to another took its toll on the act.
"Flies taste the same wherever you go," Frog said to an up and coming peeper once. "You can catch a firefly, but lightning disappears once it's in your mouth." Frog died last month, leaving a web much bigger than the spread of his toes.
Toad spoke to that peeper too, but it was only after Frog's passing: "You don't know whether to crawl or wriggle," he said to me, "But Frog jumped!"

Law Abiders

2007-02-15T22:23:00.001-05:00

By Frederick Wemyss

This may not be important, but I remember it vividly. Henry and I were nine, ten or eleven years old. I'm not recalling merely one conversation, but a recurring one. I'm not comparing it to a recurring nightmare. I am acknowledging that I have never heard the word "recurring" occur in any context other than the description of a nightmare. "Recurring" is the only word I can think of to describe this conversation we kept falling into.

A song one of us didn't like would come on the radio. One of us would groan. "I hate this song," one of us would say. Most of the time, we agreed about the song. But when a song came on which only one of us didn't like (that one always being me) the conversation would become the sort of conversation I've always regretted.

"You should buy a radio station when you grow up," Henry would say.

As he spoke, we'd be passing one or another Northeastern mountain range. We'd be in the back of a station wagon, a model called the Country Squire, driven by Henry's father. We'd be looking out the back window, watching the swaying of the trailer which was hitched to the back, and we'd be talking above the voices of Henry's brother and sister, who'd be singing the song on the radio in earnest, honest voices. Henry's other two siblings, the eldest and the youngest, would be asleep. Henry's mother would be in the front passenger seat, speaking to Henry's father in a practical voice which, every so often, broke into laughter. Every now and then, Henry's father would shout at a driver, "Use your signal!"

The song on the radio would continue, and I'd say, "You always say I should buy a radio station when I say I hate a song."

"I'd listen to it, Chambliss," Henry would say.

"But only because you'd know me," I'd say.

"Wouldn't you want me listening to your radio station?" Henry would ask.

"Yes, but if you were only listening to it because I was your friend you'd be missing songs on a station playing songs you liked."

"But I'd want to hear it because it was your station."

"But then I'd feel guilty about not playing your song."

"But I wouldn't want you to play a song which you didn't like on your radio station just because I liked the song."

Our conversations about hypothetical situations never turned into arguments. Instead, they'd end with one of us (always Henry) becoming silent. He'd stare at the beige carpet on the floor of the station wagon. "Why do you have to sing?" he'd shout at Randy and Ellen. "You drown out all the good songs."

Henry was unforgiving toward his brother and sisters, just as they were unforgiving toward him, but all of them treated me as if I were innocence embodied. Whenever Henry found I disagreed with him, a look of confusion would get in his eyes. He'd get the look in his eyes and then look away.

But one conversation on one trip upstate meant more to him than I thought. I'm sure he's forgotten it now. But I remember it because, like my friendship with Henry, its memory has meaning for me still.

I think we were twelve. Again, we were in the Country Squire, which, I'm certain, was packed with camping equipment, food and Henry's family. The radio was on, Randy and Ellen were singing the song on the radio, Henry's mother and father were talking, Henry's eldest sister and his youngest sister were sleeping and Henry was looking right at me.

"If I murdered someone, would you hide me?" he said.

"What?" I said.

"If I killed someone and the police were after me, would you protect me?"

"Alone Again, Naturally," Randy and Ellen's favorite song that summer, was playing, but they weren't singing along. They were listening to us.

"I don't think you would murder anyone," I said.

Henry looked away. He looked at passing station wagons with camping equipment tied to the roofs.

"But what if I did?"

"It would depend on what kind of murder it was," I said.

"No," said Henry. "I asked you if you would hide me if the police wanted to arrest me for murder."

"Well, if you killed someone in self-defense I wouldn't turn you in."

"So you'd shelter me."

"If it were for something innocent, like self-defense, yes."

"But if I killed somebody deliberately, you would turn me in?" Henry's voice had become urgent.

"If you deliberately killed the person in self-defense, I probably would not turn you in."

"Alone Again, Naturally" had ended and Randy and Ellen didn't even start to sing the next song. Henry's mother had stopped talking and Henry's eldest sister had woken up, as had the youngest. We were passing a clip joint called "The Trading Post," and Henry's father wasn't even sticking his head out the window and shouting "Witch," the way he always did when we passed "The Trading Post."

They hadn't been listening earlier, when we were crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge and Henry and I were talking about my hatred of STAR TREK. I'd said that, even though I couldn't stand STAR TREK, a show Henry loved, I would not ban it from a TV station I'd own in the future. I had reasoned that, STAR TREK, being a popular show today, would be a popular show at the time I took over the TV station and that it would be mean of me, not to mention financially foolish, to stop showing it.

"But you hate it so much. Why would you show it?"

"Well, just because I hate it, it doesn't mean it's bad for people. If they like it and I had the rights to it, there would be nothing wrong with showing it."

"But wouldn't you want the station to only show shows you liked?"

"Yes, but shows I like don't get high ratings. So I'd show high-rated shows."

"But it would be your station."

"Yes, but other people would have to watch it, so I'd try to put on shows they'd want to see."

"But you hate so many shows, wouldn't you want a station that showed only good shows?"

"Well, just because I like something, that doesn't mean it's good. If STAR TREK isn't hurting anybody, why wouldn't I show it?"

"But you hate it."

"But that's not the point."

All through this conversation, Rand and Ellen were singing over "Betcha By Golly Wah" at the top of their lungs, Henry's mother was talking practicalities and laughing on and off, Henry's father was shouting at the traffic and Henry's eldest and youngest sisters were asleep.

But, without looking at us, they listened, loudly, somehow, as Henry said, "What if it wasn't self-defense?"

"If it were just an accident," I said, carefully, "I'd still hide you."

"But what if I just went up to someone on the street and shot him in the head?"

"Well, then, that would be a real murder."

"Would you hide me?"

"If I killed someone out of the blue," I said, "I'd want you to turn me in."

"But what if I didn't want to be turned in?" said Henry.

"I'd ask you to turn yourself in."

"But what if I wasn't going to turn myself in and I was at your house when the cops knocked at the door?"

"Before letting them in I'd ask you one more time to turn yourself in."

"So, you wouldn't turn me in?"

"I'd shoot you and then let the cops in."

"What?"

Granite boulders rose up on both sides of the road.

"We're halfway there!" Henry's mother shouted.

Sheet 444 of the Big Roll

2007-02-14T22:36:00.000-05:00

There were two carved derrieres on the wall. They must have been plastic, actually, because plaster would have been too heavy and they'd have fallen and shattered. In any case, one was on the left and the other was on the right and we were all facing them. A fat bald man with thinning hair stood at a podium in between.
"It's all right," he was saying. "This is the place to dump."
A middle-aged woman in the corner cracked, "Just be sure you wipe after."
Eruptions of laughter followed.
"Thank you," said a tearful young college man who'd been describing his irregularities. He was standing.
The man at the podium said easily, "Sit down. You can if you can."
Everybody said at once: "You can if you can!"
There was applause when the young man seated himself.
"These twelve sheets," said the gentleman at the podium, pointing to the stream of paper descending from the right-hand butt, "Are the ten commandments of absorbency." He pointed to his right, at the scroll streaming from the left-hand butt. "It's a two-ply program!" he said.
There was a pause and then a smattering of grunts. "Ah," said the man, "You had your hand up."
"Who, me," said a truck driver.
"Who else, asshole?" said a businessman.
"Oh, I'm such an asshole," said the truck driver. "Such an asshole. Today I was sitting, stuck in --"
"Who are you?" said a malnourished blonde.
"Yeah, I'm Joe and I'm an asshole."
"Hi, Joe!" everybody said.
"I've been circling Uranus in search of Klingons."
Everybody poured forth mirth at this.
"So, so, I was sitting in traffic, stuck."
"Stuck," someone said.
"Stuck, going around in circles."
The lady in the corner cracked "Can't wipe if you don't dump."
The leader interrupted. "God sets up his rotaries whether we like it or n
"But I was going around and around! But I'm not blaming anyone. I opted to drive
[Folks, the above was something I was writing the other day. I don't make drafts, I simply write in the space Livejournal.com provides (I've swiped this from my other blog) and then post, but while I was in the middle of writing the entry I hit some sombination of keys which appeared to erase everything. So, I thought I'd lost what you've read. Certainly, I have lost the desire to finish it, but, indeed, the above was all of what I thought had been lost the other day...Fred Wemyss. 02/14/2007.]

The Woman In the Window

2007-02-11T00:41:00.000-05:00

Now that's a good title. Some day I'll write something based on it.
Should "some day" be two words?
"Someday I'll write something" looks wrong to me. But there is a word which goes by the name "someday." When does it apply?
I refuse to use Spellcheck. I won't use "Spell check" if it exists. I can spell "cheque." But I won't sign one. Maybe I will someday. That's when you can spell "some day" as one word.
I'd better check, though.

Why Is the Blogger Screen Scrambled?

2007-02-11T00:38:00.000-05:00

A Christian, A Sinner, and a Homosexual

2007-02-08T00:47:00.000-05:00

A Christian, a Sinner, and a Homosexual

By Fred Wemyss

[I wrote this in the spring of 2000, posted it on my website of the moment and, two days later, feeling I had been harsh on the parishioners of my church, took it down. A few weeks later, on a trip to San Francisco, I went into an internet cafe, searched my name and was astonished to find someone had copied my essay and preserved it in cyberspace. I made a copy of it on the internet cafe's printer (even though I had it on a folder in my personal computer) and am now posting it on the net again. A few years after I wrote it I did take up my priest's offer to become a reader.]

A Christian, a sinner and a homosexual walked into a bar one day and discovered they were the same person.

I told my parish priest I was gay and he said this: "Here is the Episcopal Church's view: There are mortal sins and there are venal sins. Being gay is a sin. But it is not as bad a sin as false pride or genuine lack of charity." He then reiterated an offer he'd made about six months before. Would I like to be a reader at Sunday services?

If the parish were made up of people like my priest I might have taken up the offer to read. The reality is that I'm not certain the members of the parish would be particularly happy with an openly gay man reading scripture to them.

Do I feel compromised in this? Yes, I do, most of the time.

You're going to want to know what runs through my head when I think about being both Christian and gay:

First of all, my being a Christian does not mean I'm without sin. Society certainly accepts heterosexuality far more easily than it does homosexuality. Nevertheless, the heterosexual person's concept of God is no different from the homosexual person's concept of God. God is pure. No human being is pure.

Each of us, praying in church, is asking for God's help.

Anybody, praying in a church, is also wondering how he or she measures up to the other people who are praying there. 99 per cent of people who stay away from church are doing so because they feel that the other parishioners do not or will not accept them. Of that 99%, the same percentage are gay as make up the gay population of the world. Gay people are not alone in feeling that organised religion has abandoned them. Furthermore, by no means have all gay people rejected organised religion.

My duty as a Christian is to follow Jesus and tell others about Him. In a house of worship, people express their common faith in God. I choose the phrase, "common faith," because that which is common is disdained in our Darwinian culture. What I have in common with the other people in my parish is my belief in God. I do not go to church in order to chastise my fellow church-goers for their views. I am not there to persuade them of the justice of any cause. I am there to join with them in prayer.

Are they intolerant of gay people? Yes, most of them are.

A church can influence society. Through much of history, churches have been agents of oppression. It is obvious that at this point, the church has little sway in American political matters, despite the tremendous noise it makes. At the same time, it is clear that the church has more sway than it did twenty years ago. George W. Bush talks about Jesus as often as he can. He knows the voters. I don't want him in office. Nevertheless, a unified, polically conservative church is preferable to a liberal, divided one. When a church collapses, freedom is virtually impossible.

It is a profoundly conservative institution, and a human one, susceptible to apathy, zealotry and corruption. I would do little to change it by walking away from it.

My priest said, "Being gay is a sin." I disagree with that. He offered me a place of visibility, and I did not take him up on that. Nevertheless, I haven't left, and God has something to do with that. So did my parish priest.

Nobody

2007-02-06T00:51:00.000-05:00

I notice nobody's updating his journal lately.
It's too bloody cold to update a journal. It's about 10 degrees outside on Long Island (which is EAST of New York City, and stretches NORTH of it as well.) The people I know who write journals are based within a seventy-five mile radius of Manhattan. Their apartments are cold. Exposing their fingers long enough to press the keys on their computers is too much for them to take. Their journal entries are more than a week old, dating back to the genuinely tropical last week of January.
Polar bears are standing on little slivers of ice, but New York bloggers are frozen solid.
I'm crying ice cubes!

Blunder Capricorn

2007-02-03T01:45:00.000-05:00

Last night I watched Image Entertainment's DVD of UNDER CAPRICORN.

UNDER CAPRICORN is a movie released in 1949 by a production company called Transatlantic. This company was founded by Alfred Hitchcock and UNDER CAPRICORN was Transatlantic's first project. The movie was directed by Hitchcock. It bombed. Transatlantic ceased operations.

I've seen UNDER CAPRICORN twice before, but on a worn VHS tape from the nineties or earlier. Image Entertainment released a DVD in 2003 and the restoration job is great. The lines can be heard clearly. The music can be heard clearly. The colors are fine.

The script remains too long.

The music still has no relation to the dialogue. It's marvelous music. It's good dialogue. But they do not work together.

This movie would have had a slightly larger audience if the music had been shut off during the talking.

UNDER CAPRICORN has two big-name stars who turn in great performances. These two stars are Joseph Cotton and Ingrid Bergman. The actress who plays their housekeeper acts her role perfectly.

There are shots rivalling the crane shot in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. Another Welles film, TOUCH OF EVIL, goes to a place Hitchcock's PSYCHO goes to. PSYCO came after TOUCH OF EVIL and UNDER CAPRICORN came after THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. AMBERSONS had Joseph Cotton. TOUCH OF EVIL had Janet Leigh. So did PSYCHO.

Hitchcock makes serious tribute to Welles in UNDER CAPRICORN. It's got a big house, as do so many Welles movies. It's got incredible crane shots. (It has that thing ROPE has: The camera closes in on someone's back and then backs up, simply so the camera can be shut off when the back fills the screen and Hitchcock can put new film in the camera. It was sort of cute in ROPE, a stunt of a movie which calls attention to its lack of cuts. It's not very noticeable in UNDER CAPRICORN, but if you do notice it you'll be thinking of the fact that HITCHCOCK went to town with the continuous take in ROPE. You'll stop paying attention to the plot of UNDER CAPRICORN while you're thinking about ROPE.

Someone on Internet Movie Database says ROPE came before UNDER CAPRICORN. I think it came right afterward.

Very few Hitchcock fans have seen UNDER CAPRICORN. I was completely unaware it was on an Image DVD before I stumbled on it last week at a local CD shop. I don't sympathize with Image's decision not to provide a commentary track. Image charges a lot for their DVDs. People who buy Image's restorations are film buffs. It is film buffs who select the Commentary Track option. UNDER CAPRICORN has value as an heroic miscalculation. PSYCHO, a movie many people revere, has less need of a commentary track than this extremely obscure Hitchcock effort. But PSYCHO, because it's a Universal DVD, is about two-thirds the price of Image's UNDER CAPRICORN, and PSYCHO includes a Commentary Track, a storyboard, a PSYCHO trailer featuring Hitchcock, and a study of the music of PSYCHO which features the shower scene with the music removed to reveal the gruesome sound effects created by a knife plunging into a cantaloupe. UNDER CAPRICORN has nothing but UNDER CAPRICORN itself.

The print is superb, though.

The Littlest Stalker

2007-01-30T01:20:00.000-05:00

1972: I see my first Tennessee Williams play, THE GLASS MENAGERIE. It is at P.A.F. Playhouse, a repertory company here in Huntington, New York. It's an intimate little theatre and I find the Gentleman Caller not only gentlemanly but callworthy. He is blond with a soft voice and hidden wit.
1972: I turn twelve.
1972: I am a boy.
1972: I see my first Ibsen play, HEDDA GABLER. It is at P.A.F. Playhouse. Hedda's husband is blond with a soft voice and wears wire-rimmed glasses. But I can tell he's the Gentleman Caller underneath the glasses. It is an intimate little theatre.
1972: I see my first incomprehensible play, THE SHOW-OFF. The Gentleman Caller isn't in it, which is incomprehensible. It's P.A.F. Playhouse, after all.
1972: I see my first cross-dressing play, CHARLIE'S AUNT. Even without the Gentleman Caller, I feel at home. It's P.A.F. Playhouse, after all.
1972: I see the Gentleman Caller at the supermarket. I pass by, pretending not to notice. I go down the other aisle. I come up the next. I see him. I walk up to him. He doesn't see me. I walk away, turn around and look at him. I'm about to say, "You were in THE GLASS MENAGERIE." He has the wire-rimmed glasses. I meet his eyes. I turn and run.
1972: I see THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD at P.A.F. Playhouse. The Gentleman Caller isn't in this one, either. I miss the wire-rimmed glasses more than the startled eyes behind them.
1972-Present: Tennessee Williams still talks to me. His is an intimate little space.

From Here To Eternity

2007-01-28T10:26:00.000-05:00

I've read the first book of the post-World War Two novel FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, by James Jones. The entire novel is about 700 pages. The first book is about 85 pages. I enjoyed the first book thoroughly, but I'm a slow reader, so it took me about three weeks. (I usually read for about an hour before bed. I'll read a NEW YORKER article, look at a review saved from the TIMES and then a bit of a chapter from a novel. I read in bed, often falling asleep resting on my elbow, my hand holding up my head. I'll be in the middle of a paragraph. I'll wake up, try to keep reading, fall asleep again, and then, when my hand hurts from holding my head up and my elbow hurts from keeping my hand in such a position as to allow the holding up of my head, I wake up again and shut off the lamp. So my progress reading FROM HERE TO ETERNITY was tortoise-like.)
I've returned the book to the library, because it was due and because I want to take a break from it. I want to finish it. I very rarely want to finish a book. This one is very good. I had forgotten that great literature doesn't have to treat the rest of literature as if it were a sampler from which to draw. You don't have to have read any other writers to get James Jones's exact meaning. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is the story of an army man. This epic ends with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Very few war novels end with the beginning of the war being described. But Jones pulls the effect off. (How do I know this if I have only read 85 pages? I know my writers, that's how.)
Just before reading the first book of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY I was going to read Norman Mailer's THE NAKED AND THE DEAD. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD is considered the best novel about Americans in World War Two. It is, apparently, one of the most realistic accounts of war ever written. But I opted for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY instead, even though James Jones has been dead since the seventies and Norman Mailer is someone to whom I could send a letter. Even though one of the greatest American novelists is still alive, I have read something by his dead contemporary. I always wanted to read INVISIBLE MAN before Ralph Ellison died, but I didn't, and when I read it I realized I'd have loved to have contacted him. But FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is a novel I can grasp. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD is, from what my father told me, a harrowing book about masculine brutality. But FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is about a professional soldier navigating the military bureacracy and trying to maintain his self-respect. It is not about a climber and it's not about a self-destructive fool. It's about a man who needs the military. He's stationed in Hawaii, he's got his girl and he wants to be the bugler but cannot because the compromises he must make are intolerable to him. And at the end of the novel, he, above all the other soldiers of any rank, is the one who's ready, because he lives, breathes and tastes army life. He doesn't want to run a business, be a lawyer or own property. He loves the three square meals a day the army gives him, even if the food is bad. He'll stick with the army even if it keeps him from what he considers his calling. He'll stick with the army even if it wants him to box, which he does well but hates. He has accidently blinded a man boxing and he tries to resist boxing afterward. The army gives him degrading duties because he won't yield to it's request that he box. But he knows an army doesn't exist for games. All the other soldiers are distracted by plans for civilian life, desire for athletic achievement or badges of honor. But the soldier in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY knows his life will be anonymous and hard and he can live with it.

Spoilers

2007-01-25T23:46:00.000-05:00

I post a lot of reviews on IMDB.com and Amazon. Often I check a few days later to see if someone has reacted to what I've said. Only once have I really had a direct response, but sometimes I detect an oblique reference to a theme I've hit upon.
I read a lot of the reviews other people have written and I've found that most of the reviews, like mine, miss something that reviews written by professional critics have. This key ingredient is humility. Most of the "Customer Reviews," mine included, are written by people showing off. The professional critics, as arrogant as they can be, have a sense of purpose. The average IMDB reviewer does something for a living other than the reviewing of movies. The average critic published in a newspaper makes his living writing reviews.
The critic will very rarely tell the reader what his favorite movies are. He'll talk about the "best" movie. He'll say something is "fun." He'll say something's a "disaster." He'll even say "This is my favorite movie." But he won't tell you which one actually is his favorite. His favorite is not the best movie ever made. His favorite, even if he says this, is not the worst movie ever made. His favorite is the one he dreams about. Like a lot of people, the critic forgets his dreams as soon as he wakes up.
The IMDB reviewers remember their dreams. They tell their friends their dreams. This is because IMDB reviewers can't completely awaken from their love of movies. A dreamer doesn't know how boring his re-telling of his dreams are.
The critic has awoken from his dreams. He can talk about other people's dreams.
This makes the critic a much better bridge between a movie and a moviegoer than the fan.
A fan's self-involvement becomes an obstacle to the sharing of his love for a particular movie.
A critic may be a fan, but his best reviews (whether these are the best because their praise is well-expressed or because their disdain is properly described) will not be about his favorite movies. If he reviews his favorites he steps aside a little, praising the director for hiring a crack cinematographer. The fan will say "I wish my uncle Harry could have seen this."
The fan will save a seat for Harry.
The critic won't save a seat for anyone. He wants to curl up with a good movie.

I'm Sorry

2007-01-21T18:40:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry/
So sorry/
Please expect/
My lobotomy...

--Old Jukebox Number

Someday I'll write something I've been planning in my head for many years. It will simply be one apology after another, detailing specific humiliations brought on himself by the narrator.
The constant refrain wil be "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

Saul Bellow actually did this in a novella called "Him With His Foot In His Mouth." It takes the form of a letter the writer of the letter has no intention of sending to the person to whom it is addressed; a woman he slighted thirty years earlier.

Sorry, folks, but I have to post this entry. I'll leave you with a quotation from Brenda (Little Miss Dynamite) Lee:

Wuh/
Uh/
Uh-oh/
Uh-oh/
Oh yeh...

Titles and Descriptions

2007-01-13T02:06:00.000-05:00

Here are some books I haven't written yet:

HIGH DUDGEON--A novel in the style of Wodehouse.

PERSONS FROM PORLOCK--About people who make the main character forget what he's trying to do; the joke being that Coleridge never finished writing "Kubla-Kahn" because his butler came in as he was scribbling and told him that there were "persons from Porlock" at the door.

THE MATERIALIST--A confession.

SEPARATIST(S)--A play in several separate acts.

ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE--A story to be written as if English were not my native tongue.

FOREIGN AS A SECOND LANGUAGE--A double-take.

THE FOREIGN-AMERICAN--A memoir.

SIBLING RIBALDRY--Brotherly wit.

AMERICA IS TURNING INTO CANADA--An objective report.

THE HORSEY SET--Auchincloss's world seen from far away.

DOMEDARY DOMECILES--A phrase I first read while dimly perceiving the above-mentioned world as I scanned the Social Register. A Domedary Domecile (and it may be "Dromedary Domecile," but I can't remember and am too lethargic to go downstairs and lift up my family's extremely bulky "Webster's 2nd") is a house-boat. I used to work at a place which bought used books from people who had copies of the Social Register. I have lived!

GOOD POVERTY--An appeal.

THE ROAD TO MACCA--A story I wrote one night and lost when I pressed "Done." I'll re-write it if I ever again get the inspiration.

Run Devil Run

2006-12-31T22:56:00.000-05:00

I'm going to make this a New Year's Eve tradition. Starting tonight, I'll post this little record review from March, 2000. I had it on my Geocities page. I still believe what I wrote in this review. This record is the best thing Macca has ever done.

March 12, 2000

RUN DEVIL RUN-Paul McCartney

This disc was recorded in the first few months of 1999 in a few quick sessions.

The personnel are, of course, McCartney (bass, guitar, vocals), David Gilmour (guitar), Mick Green (guitar), Ian Paice (drums), Pete Wingfield (keyboards), Dave Mattacks (drums) and Geraint Watkins (keyboard.) The booklet says these musicians "recreated that golden age of rock 'n' roll" which inspired the Beatles.

Two things are notable about the booklet: First, it actually refers to the Beatles, which no other McCartney release has done (with the exception of the first pressing of the McCARTNEY album, which came with a piece of paper on which McCartney explained, bitterly, why he was leaving the group.) The second thing is that I find its boast about the recreation of the early rock sound not at all far-fetched.

Geoff Emerick, one of the engineers who worked with the Beatles, co-engineered this CD. He's worked on several of McCartney's solo albums, so his presence here doesn't necessarily mean he helped make this one sound the way it does. Nevertheless, this effort is so focused that I suspect McCartney made sure he worked with people understood him.

Proof that he respected the thinking of the people he was working with is in his description of his recording of COQUETTE: "It's just me singing Fats. We tried fixing little bits of it because I thought 'God, this is too much like a pub singer'...but we ended up going back to the earliest mix, it just has a feeling." After working with McCartney in 1989, Elvis Costello said, in an interview, that he couldn't prevent McCartney from adding layers and layers to some of their songs. He essentially said McCartney didn't know when to stop. Steve Miller worked with him on the FLAMING PIE CD and said McCartney would work on a song of some originality and then record three or four in a tried-and-true McCartney style. Steve Miller said something like, "I said to him, 'You don't need to prove to anybody you can do a pop song. Why do you keep trying to prove that?'"

The impression I get is that successful recording artists who have worked with McCartney have indeed tried to get across to him that they're disappointed with him. But, Elvis Costello owes too much to the Beatles, if only because he is a post-Beatles hit-maker. Steve Miller is, when he wants to be, a blues man, and when he wants a hit, a pop artist. There is no compelling reason for Paul McCartney to listen to what Elvis Costello and Steve Miller say to him. He doesn't have to listen to their music, either.

But David Gilmour, who is on every cut on RUN DEVIL RUN, is just the guy to get McCartney's ear. His sound is his own. He's not blues, he's not pop and he's never been studio. When he's on somebody's record, even if you don't quite know it's him, you don't picture some slick jack-of-all trades walking into the studio, doing his bit and hopping back out. He takes a song to a personal level. "No More Lonely Nights" would have been a commercial jingle if Gilmour hadn't done deep-sea-diving. He knew he could find something and knew how to bring it out. On the RUN DEVIL RUN disc, however, McCartney does something he almost, but didn't quite, do on "No More Lonely Nights." He works with Gilmour.

The whole CD features a band which is paying attention. One of the drummers was in DEEP PURPLE, which was a sixties band. He can do those sounds which fifties and sixties rock requires. The keyboard work is to the point, which is absolutely necessary with songs which must make an impact quickly. While the only two musicians I'm at all familiar with here are McCartney and Gilmour, it's clear that what the entire band is going for is a British rock sound circa 1962. The American influence is heavy. But the early-sixties English abilility to remove the commercialism from such tunes is in evidence. England took rock more seriously in 1962 than America did. This CD takes American music from that era more seriously than Americans do now. This band does Elvis Presley's, "I Got Stung," a song virtually created for the further humiliation of its original singer, and turns it into an urgent, living thing.

With humor and drive, McCartney's vocals call the listener's attention to these songs. "Lonesome Town" ends with the words, "Maybe down in Lonesome town/ I can learn to forget." Not having heard the original version by Ricky Nelson, I can't say if he managed the pathos McCartney does with those lyrics, but I'll say this: McCartney's never sounded so much as if he meant what he sang.

The best track on RUN DEVIL RUN is a true example of the Liverpool sound. It's called "No Other Baby." The booklet says it was done in 1958 by the Vipers, "a British Skiffle Group." Apparently, only McCartney had heard the song. He couldn't find the record. He sang it to the rest of his band and they recorded the track. When he sings the words, "Got a little woman/Lives across the hall," Gilmour plays a note for each syllable. This harmony is blues to the core, but something more. I hear it and I picture a dimly lit hallway and a door being opened. Here's a song about adult pain and pleasure. The bass-line is brooding and sweeping. The keyboard is somewhere between revery and hangover.

Add to this all a cajun sound on "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," such as Dave Edmunds might do, a version of Carl Perkins' "Movie Magg" which sounds as if it was part of a Gene Autry one-reeler, and a positively thrashing "Honey Hush" (McCartney is a riot when he belts the words, "Don't make me nervous/I'm holdin' a baseball bat.")

You won't hear this on the radio. The age of hit singles, while not exactly gone, was an age for McCartney's generation. He's put together, with a tight band, a CD of songs that should be hits. If they do this well musically with songs they know very few people will hear, they put themselves in good company. How many people have Bob Dylan's GOOD AS I BEEN TO YOU? Only as many people as know that that's one of Dylan's most well-realized projects. McCartney's done something similar here. He's interpreted other singer's songs (as Dylan was doing with GOOD AS I BEEN TO YOU) and let us hear that they mean something to him.

Ready For Primetime

2006-12-27T18:19:00.000-05:00

At 12:30 a.m. today, I was at a friend's house watching a DVD. We got bored of it. My friend shut it off and put on the TV. There were clips of Gerald Ford on many channels. So, after a few minutes of thinking about my first memories of Ford (Nixon's announcement that Ford would be Agnew's replacement as Vice-president pre-empted a showing of a much ballyhooed TV movie of DRACULA, which was going to have Jack Palance in the comeback of a lifetime, and I was one outraged thirteen year old movie buff), another thought came to mind: "In a few minutes," I said to myself, "Chevy Chase is going to be shown bumping his head." I mentioned this to my friend. A minute later, Chevy Chase was shown stumbling from a presidential podium. They say Chevy Chase's running gag involving himself as Gerald Ford tripping over every object that got in his way helped Ford lose the '76 election. This is an amazing idea. It was not even an imitation of Ford. No mimics ever did Ford. Richard Nixon, who'd stepped aside to allow Ford to take his place as president, had been the most mimicked president in history. David Frye, Rich Little, and one Richard M. Dixon owed their livings to Nixon's hangdog expressions and lugubrious vocalizations. Rich Little tried to imitate Ford a few times, but, ace impressionist that he was, he always prefaced his effort with, "This is a hard one," and he'd move to the Jimmy Stewart impression after a phrase or two. Chevy Chase, tall, dar-haired, skinny, handsome, tan and, indeed, obviously graceful, would have to stand behind a podium with the presidential seal on it in order to make the audience realize he was doing a Ford routine. Ford, often shown on the news banging his head on his way out the door of a plane, or hitting someone with a golf ball, was gray (or blond turning gray) muscular going chunky, relatively tall but made to seem shorter by his ill-fitting suits. He was, clearly, a man's man, which is about the best thing a man can hope to be. Chevy Chase played him as a sort of prep-school Inspector Closseau. But the image stuck. Chevy Chase, the least idealogical of comedians, helped push a moderate out of the White House merely by doing shtick having nothing to do with the faintest human observation. Chevy Chase became fairly close to Gerld Ford after Ford's presidency. He has said, a few times, that he regrets the negative effect his comedy had on Ford's fate. But Ford has an odd effect on Chevy Chase's fate. Chevy Chase is now being shown in primetime, whenever a Ford report runs. In history books, people will find more references to Chevy Chase in chapters about Gerald Ford than in chapters about comedy. He left SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE about the time Ford left the White House. Both Ford and Chevy Chase are symbols of 1976. They actually got along with each other. But Ford will always be characterized as a President who was never elected and Chevy Chase will always be the guy who went downhill after SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Ford lived a long time after trying for the brass ring. Chevy Chase has spent a lot of time hearing himself called a has-been. Someday Chevy Chase will join Ford in that great golf course in the sky. He doesn't want to be with Belushi. And Ford, I'm sure, isn't currently hanging with Nixon.

Christmas In A Block

2006-12-17T02:37:00.000-05:00

I never write about Christmas and only once before have I written without trying to create a paragraph. Since I can't get this journal service to allow me to indent, my paragraphs are created by my placing spaces between blocks of prose. But, to my thinking, a paragraph needs indenting if it is to have the look of a literary effort. So, my Christmas gift to the global community of Fred fans is the presentation of another entry in a block form which bears no resemblance to the paragraphs I was taught existed. Allow me to change the subject without indenting first! When I was seven, my brothers and I went downstairs at four in the morning to see if Santa Claus was dropping off our presents. We'd been sitting on the steps for an hour and finally my oldest brother, Frank (who certainly knew Santa was not a person, but an idea, but who also knew not to open the living room door until many hours after my parents had gone to bed) said to my middle brother, Bob and me, "Come on." We tiptoed down to the living room. Frank slowly turned the door knob and we sent to the fireplace. The stockings were hanging there, containing various toys and candy canes. Frank quietly flicked the switch controlling the overhead light. I grabbed my stocking from a hook above the fireplace. The little bells attached to the plastic holly jingled. I removed a little figure which stood on a semi-circular stick and began balancing it on a grooved support designed for the purpose. How Santa had stuffed the thing in the little stocking was a miracle I couldn't absorb. "God damn it to Hell," said a voice. It was not a jovial bass voice, of the sort a fat, flying philanthropist in red felt and ermine might have. It was a high, unjovial voice I knew to be my mother's. This was a voice she reserved especially for holidays. "Do you know what time it is?" my mother said. "Seven?" said Frank. "Take another guess," said my mother. "Six-thirty," said Frank. "It's four o'clock, for crying out loud. Go back to bed." "We didn't know," said Frank. "The Hell you didn't," said my mother, "Do you think your father and I want to stand here at four in the morning while you rip open all your presents when we're half-asleep? We just went to bed." "We could open them while you slept," said Frank. "Goddamn it, get upstairs, all of you. You can sit on the steps for another three hours if you want but you're not going to go through everything we wrapped before we're even downstairs. Go back upstairs now!" "But I want to see Santa Claus," I said. "What did I just say?" said my mother. Frank and Bob and I began running out of the living room and up the steps. "Jesus Christ!" my mother said. My brothers and I sat on the steps for the three ensuing hours. We were on the steps leading to the third floor, one landing up from my parents' room, and this staircase had a door. We were sitting on the bottom step with the tips of our toes touching the back of the door, just as we had been sitting before we went down. At six-fifty-nine a soft voice which I recognized as my mother's relaxed voice said, "Okay, boys! Christmas." Downstairs we went and, somehow, in front of each stocking, a little foam rubber face, one a clown's, one a drunk's and one an indian's, had been placed. I got the drunk's face. It was a little puppet. I put my fingers in the holes in the back of the face and made the face collapse, project and otherwise look as if it were having a grand old time, with its bowler hat and bright red cheeks. I was sure Santa Claus has put the faces there after my mother had made us go back upstairs. Later that morning, when my grandmother and aunt had arrived, I asked them and my parents why the little man on the semicircular stick with the grooved support had "Made In Japan" written on him if Santa had dropped him off. My mother explained that Santa only had enough elves to make so many toys. He had to order the rest from actual toy manufacturers. I admired this capitalism on Santa's part. I said "Oh!" Little did I know that at four o'clock that morning I'd actually heard Santa shouting "God damn it to Hell! Get back upstairs!"

Feral Creature

2006-12-12T12:08:00.000-05:00

Today is December 12th. If you visit Google today you'll see that Google has put Edvard Munch's THE SCREAM into their logo. So, if you're reading this after December 12th, 2006, and you click on http://www.google.com/, you probably won't see THE SCREAM woven into the Google tapestry. It's great, though, and I recommend looking at it if it's still the 12th.
Well, there were no rats in my room last night. The one I trapped the night before seems to have been the only one.
Lately I've had several customers asking for books about feral cats. Without reading the books they want, I can tell you to stay away from them. (The cats, not the customers, although you might do well to steer clear of feral cat fans.) I think my favorite magazine title is CAT FANCIER. I wonder if there's going to be CAT FANCIER, FERAL EDITION.
The lady who asked for a book on feral cats yesterday had darting eyes and kept rubbing her nose. I think she had a real temptation to lick the palms of her hands, but she's still at the point of knowing this would be weird. I give her till after Christmas before she starts jumping in kitty litter. She whispered, "Do you have anything...?"
"What?" I said.
She looked as if she wanted to scratch her ribcage. "Anything on...on...feral."
"Feral?"
"Feral cats. Do you guys...Do you guys have a book on feral cats. Does anybody ask for those?" She looked behind her twice, but obviously couldn't find a tail to bite. She looked at me with big eyes welling with tears.
"I'll look one up," I said.
I found one on the computer and showed her the shelf. She grabbed the book hungrily. I'm sure she's sitting in the woods now, pawing through it.
Of course, I get a hungry look when I shell out sixteen-ninety-five for a CD featuring a Paul McCartney vocal (the new one by Al Jareau and George Benson has Paul at the end) so I'm sort of a feral Beatlemaniac.
I have a friend who had a virtually feral cat. The cat had escaped its owners and had become a survivalist. My friend took it in. In order to play with it he'd put on a thick, industrial glove which went up to his elbow and wave his arm in front of the cat. The cat would sink its claws in the glove and my friend would swing the cat around.
"Ro-o-o-ow," the cat would say.
"Yes, my pet," my friend would say, and you'd hear nothing but "Ro-o-o-ow" and "Yes, my pet," for twenty minutes until one of them got dizzy.

Rat Trap

2006-12-11T17:21:00.000-05:00

Rats aren't anywhere near as loveable as our fantasies dictate.
Occasionally, walking in New York City, I round a corner and see one of those giant inflatable rats union workers put up outside the headquarters of their tormentors. The first time I saw one it scared me. This is because I'm used to seeing the real thing, and the rat-shape is stamped on my subconcious like a Jungian archetype.
I live acrosss from a stable. They have lambs. They have ponies. I think they have what we have: rats. Every winter, as I'm trying to fall asleep at night. I'm usually woken up at least once by a gnawing sound from inside the walls. For the last ten years or so, there's always been something chewing away at some plaster in the ceiling. It bothered me when it started in the nineties, but the creature never descended. I slept well. In the seventies and eighties we used to have to move the refrigerator every so often, to cull the supply of rats who'd died hiding under it after ingesting the poison we'd put in the basement.
But when I felt a pitter-patter going across my quilt last week, which began a three-night vigil lasting until dawn, involving sleeping with the light on and waking up every time something shifted, I set a trap by the bed. I slept in a different room last night. This morning I got up and went to my room. I looked at a second trap I'd set, wedged between my CDs and 78s, and saw it hadn't been tripped. "Rats," I said. Then I looked by the head of my bed. I have no box spring, by the way, just a mattress on the floor. This is because I have a Victorian tendency toward clutter and can't fit an actual bed with a frame in my collector's nightmare of a sleeping quarters. Books, record players and old TVs surround my mattress. At the head of the bed is a little space. That space is where I set the main trap last night. And looking there this morning I saw a gray creature, the same shape as the giant thing the union workers put on the sidewalk to scare their oppressors, except on a slightly smaller scale.
"Mother of f**cking pearl!" I said as I picked up the trap with the rat intact and put it in a Hefty bag.
A rat in a trap still beats a congress of rats dead beneath the refrigerator. Especially if the rat is a rat which crawled within a foot of the bed you sleep in the night before you found it.

Peculiar Act of Inclusion

2006-11-25T15:29:00.000-05:00

We moved here just before I started Kindergarten. I've always felt like a foreigner, although the move was only from Manhattan to Long Island. At the age of five I felt the closing of ranks against me as the other boys in school literally walked, a few times, in sets of three or four, with their arms resting on each other's shoulders. What was bonding to them was, to my eyes, which dared not meet theirs, an expression of defiance. All of them were neighbors living within two blocks of the school. I lived a mile away.
I didn't make a friend until the tale end of second grade, when I, sitting on one end of a see-saw, the other side of which was tilted upward without an occupant, heard a voice which asked, "Can I see-saw with you?"
This was Henry, who'd just moved to town. He was tall, I was small. He began to climb the see-saw after I said, "O. K.," and, just as he got on, the same three boys who'd walked around in a phalanx two years before called out to him.
"You don't want to play with Worms!" My last name, "Wemyss," is pronounced "Weemz," hence Worms was the logical distortion.
"Why not?" said Henry.
"Come on and play kickball with us."
"No, I want to see-saw."
"Not with him! Come on, play kickball."
"No."
At this, one of them said, "We'll never play with you."
Henry said, "O. K."
They waved him off. Henry never played with them. He and I became friends.
I gained another friend in third grade. It was another boy named Henry, also tall. He came from Queens, where he'd gone to a Catholic school. Starting third grade, he'd had no prior experience of me. We had the same bus stop. I used to stay about six yards away from the group clustered at the stop and, after after a few weeks, this Henry called to me. "Stand with us!"
found I was able to talk with some of the others with Henry standing there.
I still would start the wait at the bus stop a little way off from the crowd and Henry would appear. I'd walk toward them. He met me halfway once. "Don't hold your books like that," he said in a low voice. "Hold them like this."
Henry had his books at his side. I had mine in front of me, as if I were carring a bag of laundry."
I shifted my books to the side. "But they're too heavy to hold with one hand," I said.
"That's holding them like a girl," said Henry.
Sensing a route to acceptance, I kept the books at my side.
The Henrys didn't like each other. Whichever one would call me first on a Saturday morning was the one I'd play with that day.
One time, in class, the newer Henry once threw a new pencil I'd showed him across the room. "Copycat," he cried. I had bought the sleek lead pencil after seeing the one he had. It was the same color, a shade of blue I'd thought very masculine. The first Henry told me that this Henry was cruel. When I bought a replacement pencil I kept it at home. It was the same blue.
I did befriend someone my height once. He moved in in fourth grade. He wasn't named Henry. He introduced me to the WHITE ALBUM, which had just come out. He used to kick me, very suddenly, between my legs and laugh endlessly. One day my brother told me I should fight back. My newest friend shoved me for some reason. I simply walked to the other room. My brother, who was standing there, said, "Fight back or he'll never stop." I reluctantly went back into the room. My friend pointed his chin at me, shoved me harder and I took my knuckles and rapped him once, on top of the head.
He let out an agonized noise to match his twisted expression. He called his mother and she picked him up. He didn't play with me again for a few weeks.
I had a birthday party once and invited Henry, Henry and the friend who used to kick me in the crotch. I also invited two members of the gang of three who'd walked around en masse in Kindergarten. My mother drove us to Coney Island.
Afterward my original friend Henry said I should stop trying to get everybody together.
I only keep in touch with him now.
The other Henry told me, at our last meeting, that if I didn't visit him and another mutual friend at their post-collegiate dwelling in Manhattan that "this will be your last chance."
I run into the ball-kicker every now and then and we talk about the Beatles.
I did have someone who almost became a friend just before I met the first Henry. We'd play on the see-saw and see-saw faster and fast, shouting bump game. I jumped off once, causing him to smash on the ground. I did that to him again. The second time he got back up and slowly walked toward the kickball field.

No Title

2006-11-19T17:21:00.000-05:00

Back in college I thought of a funny title for a book a character in a novel of mine might try to write:
IMPROMPTU GUIDE TO METHODOLOGY IN RESEARCH.
I never wrote the novel, so I never created a character who tried to write a book with that title.
The title came to me when I was in the college library, stunned at the number of books with tongue-twisting titles.
I decided the character in my novel would be dreaming of writing his book for years.
I've been trying to write a book with a character who tries to write a book. I've taken years to do this and haven't done it and my character is supposed to take years doing what he wants to do and neither of us has done it. My character is ahead of me, in fact, because he has a title and I don't.

I'm Still Here

2006-11-17T01:38:00.000-05:00

I'm still here. There was a time when, after many days without posting, I would post an entry with the Subject Heading, "Still Extant." That almost sound like "Still Extinct."
Maybe I'm extinct.
I have a friend who says I have no instincts.
Actually, I have a lot of instincts. It's the people around me who have none, so I have to test them in order to see if they'll simulate an instinct.
I have a reduced sense of smell, so, with that in mind, I may have a reduced level of instict. People will say, "Do you smell smoke?" and I'll sniff and say, "I'm not sure." My olfactories used to be powerful, but, with the years, my ability to detect odors has declined to a dangerous level. I can't tell if something I'm about to eat is as rancid as it looks.
My instincts have been battered by people who sit and watch TV all day and think that's living.
I walked into a Starbucks one day and the guy behind the counter kept making jokes about Brittney Spears. He saw I wasn't relating and said, "Guess you're a fan of hers, huh?"
The reason I couldn't react the way he wanted is that I have had no exposure to Brittney Spears other than moments when my eye scans the cover of a magazine I'll never open. I could have told the guy, "I don't know Brittney Spears's songs and I've never seen her in a movie if she's made one. But I do know you're likely to be cruel, stupid and misogynist. Plus you're not dealing with me as a customer but as an audience for the lounge act you'll never have the energy to create."
But I didn't say that.
The coffee wasn't bad. I added milk to my liking. It hit the spot.

Both Houses!

2006-11-09T02:52:00.000-05:00

Pardon me:

Both!
F**KING!
Houses!

Wemyss To Abandon NanoWrimo!

2006-11-04T14:12:00.000-05:00

Well, I've given up the write-a-50,000-word-novel-in-a-month project (visit http://Nanowrimo.org if you want to read about this annual web event) because I'm just not in the mood. Last year it got me writing 13,000 words (or was it 3,000?) In fact, here's a chapter from last year's effort. It's about Dr. Boland and a friend of hers. In real life, Dr. Boland was my grandmother and her friend Kate was, for all intents and purposes, my great aunt. They knew each other in their college days. Both of them were born in 1891 and they died within weeks of each other at the shared age of 91. This excerpt depicts them driving from New Jersey to the Catskills to visit my father. I was about three when they came to visit.
Before I paste the excerpt, let me mention that I'm also giving up reading an excellent new novel, LAY OF THE LAND, by Richard Ford. I'm returning it to the library because I simply can't read it in the space of three weeks. It deserves to be in the hands of a library patron capable of reading a deep book at sonic speed.
Okay, here's the excerpt from my NanoWrimo entry of 2005:

DR. BOLAND spread marmalade on her toast and had a sip of orange juice. She looked out the window at the ceramic cat which had been positioned so as to appear to be climbing the tree.
When Dr. Boland was finished with her toast and orange juice she rinsed the glass, put it in the sink and threw the napkin away. She took the piece of paper with the directions on it, read it and put it in her purse. She went to the porch door and made sure it was locked. She went to the closet and took a sweater off a hanger. She put it on. She took her hat from the little stand by the telephone. She took her white gloves from the drawer which held the address book and put them on. She glanced down the hallway toward the kitchen, looked at the living room and walked to the front door. She opened it and stepped into the vestibule. She looked at the umbrella stand. She considered and then took her umbrella. After closing the front door she opened the very front door.
On the stoop she opened the little metal mailbox by the door. It was empty. She shut the door, put the key in the lock, turned it, tested the handle, put the key in her purse, closed her purse and walked down the steps.
She walked along the sidewalk and then up her driveway. She unlocked the garage, pulled the door upward and and then pushed it further up. She got into her car, started it, backed out of the garage, stopped the car, put it in neutral and put on the emergency brake, got out, pulled the garage door down, locked it, got back in her car and drove to Kate's.
When she pulled up, she saw a white-gloved hand part a lace curtain in a second-storey window, as it always did.
"Good morning, Lucy," said Kate when she got in the car.
"Good morning, Kate."
"Now I'm just going to stop at Mr. Benson's and have the oil checked."
"And are you getting gas too?"
Dr. Boland pulled out. "No, it's almost full."
"You don't want to run out of gas, you know."
"Oh, I know, but it was full yesterday afternoon. But, you know, I think I'll get the tires checked."
"Oh, are they low?"
"Well, I don't think so, but driving into the mountains, you know."
"Yes, you need air in the tires on gravel roads."
"Oh, I know."
"Oh, yes."
"You remember Bob Finchenhurst."
"Finchenhurst. Wasn't it Finchenhorn?"
"I don't think so."
"I don't think I remember him."
"Of course you do. He was married to Mamie Finchenhurst."
"Who was she before?"
"Gwendolyn Punker's daughter."
"Mamie Punker married Bob Finchenhorn?"
"Well, the Bob and Mamie I knew were Bob and Mamie Finchenhurst."
"I don't remember them."
"Well his tires were low in the Poconos."
"What?"
"In the Poconos."
"I thought you said 'low in the Poconos.'"
"I did say 'low in the Poconos.'"
"What's that describe?"
"What's what describe?"
"Low in the Poconos. I don't know an expression, 'Low in the Poconos.'"
"In the Poconos, which is a range of mountains, Bob Finchenhurst had low tires."
"How do you come to know he had low tires?"
"Mr. Benson told me."
"Mr. Benson told you Bob Finchenhorn had low tires?"
"Yes."
"Well, why would he tell you that?"
"Because Bob Finchenhurst, whose name is Bob Finchenhurst and not Bob Finchenhorn, hit a rock and the front tire burst and he was stuck all day."
"Oh."
"If he'd had full tires the front tire might not have burst."
"Is it true that low tires are more likely to explode than full tires?"
"Yes. I think so."
Dr. Boland pulled into the gas station.
"Hello, Dr. Boland," said Mr. Benson. "Check your tires?"

Never Eat Anything Which Was Alive During Teddy Roosevelt's Administration

2006-10-26T00:45:00.000-04:00

I've always avoided turtle soup.
But I've been avoiding it for the lesser of two reasons. Up until a few minutes ago, when I sat bolt upright with realization, I'd always avoided eating turtle soup for the simple reason that it's probably really gross, with brown gelatinous packing, if it comes from a can, which, probably, even in restaurants, it does.
But they recently announced the death of a turtle which had been around since before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Now, granted, the average infant is fed food either grown or born before he himself came into existence, and, if the average cow is about eleven at the time of slaughter, a lot of kids are eating their elders.
But a middle-aged man (and I won't be middle-aged too much longer) shouldn't be eating something his own great-great-grandfather might have thrown a stick at before the Empire State Building was built.
That's just wrong.
It's baby carrots for me from now on.

http://www.NanoWrimo.org

2006-10-12T16:44:00.000-04:00

Hey, if you want to write a novel, there's a dynamite way to do it. Go to http://www.NanoWrimo.org, and you'll see a site devoted to the writing of a 50,000 word novel.
Each Novemeber is National Novel Writing Month, as declared by these guys who founded NanoWrimo.org about four years ago. This will be the third year (I think, so, I guess the first year was a year of mere planning.) Before there was a website, there was a group of people out in San Francisco (or, if you're out west, IN in San Francisco) who challenged one another each to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of a month. They picked a month and did it. Now there's a website facilitating any effort to write a 50,000 word novel in November.
There is a winner, but there are no prizes, and none of the novels winds up being displayed after the contest is over. You can display your novel on the site as you make your progress, but that is an option. Even the NanoWrimo staff can't read it unless you post it for the public. The words are counted by the computer but the words are scrambled so that the writing cannot be read.
The idea is that quantity does, indeed, count. A word-count measures quantity, up to a point. Hemingway's words were usually shorter than other writers' words, so he'd have reached 50,000 quicker than, say, Melville.) Anyway, I tried it last year and only got to about 13,000 words, but it certainly caused me to plow ahead. I like some of what I wrote last time. That's enough to make me try again this year.
The winner is, simply, the person who gets to 50,000 words first. Check out the site. It's less of a gimmick than you might think. There are other writers with whom you may communicate through Nanowrimo, or you may choose, as did I, to simply write, or, as I, boldly split an infinitive.
Nanowrimo also allows you to give ten dollars or more to libraries NanoWrimo helps build in Southeast Asia. The donation is voluntary.
This is one of the best uses of the internet.

Sinlessness

2006-09-29T03:14:00.000-04:00

I wrote this last January or February and posted it. I'm pleased with it, so I'm going to re-run it every now and then...

Sinlessness

by

Frederick Wemyss

"What do you think?" said Eve, holding the apple in her hand.
"Bite it, bite it!" said the snake, but Eve just kept walking toward Adam.
"The snake says I should bite this," said Eve.
Adam looked up from the pear patte he was making. "Isn't he droll?" Adam said.
"You think so," said Eve. "I think so. But the snake takes himself" (and here she leaned in toward her mate and whispered loudly) "very seriously!"
Both Adam and Eve laughed. Eve threw the apple hard. It smashed against the apple tree and Adam and Eve heard the snake slithering away in the rocks and leaves.
"Do you think pear-paste wrapped in fig leaves would taste good?" said Adam, after plucking another apple and throwing it at the snake's rattle (which he hit.)
"Well," said Eve, "There's nothing says it wouldn't."
With that, Eve tore some fig leaves off the fig tree and handed them to Adam. Adam, using a clam shell, scraped the mashed pears off the flat surface of the boulder he was using for a table. He put dollops of pulverized pear in the fig leaves and rolled two treats.
"Eve," said Adam, as he and Eve took bites of the tasty treats, "Do you realize we are unparallelled chefs?"
"Absolutely," said Eve. She grinned. "You know, the snake can't even eat this stuff. He has to eat flies!"
"Loser," said Adam.
"Isn't he?" said Eve.
They laughed and laughed, shaking their heads.
"What should we do with the two extra fig leaves I picked?" said Eve.
Adam snatched one up from the table, let it flutter to the ground and kneeled on it. "It would make a great prayer rug," he said.
Eve took the other fig leaf from the table. She held it out to the side and Adam charged. "O-ley," said Eve, "O-ley!"
Then they ran all over the Garden of Eden, snapping the fig leaves at each other after dipping them in the little spring. Every animal they passed was mystified.
Suddenly the snake hissed at them from between a deer's antlers. "Apples," he said. "Apples."
"None for me," said Adam.
"Me neither," said Eve.
Adam snapped his fig leaf on the snake's head, which stunned the snake for a second. Adam and Eve ran to the top of a rock.
"He has no sense of humor," said Adam.
"I know," said Eve. "And this THING he has with the forbidden fruit--"
"You know what's ironic?" said Adam. "He couldn't eat forbidden fruit if he wanted to, but he desparately wants you to have it."
"As if I'm going to eat forbidden fruit!" said Eve.
Both Adam and Eve raised their arms up and shook their heads.
"I think he's a little afraid of me," said Adam. "He thinks he'll persuade you to bite an apple and that you'll get me to try one."
"What a skunk," said Eve.
"You know what?" said Adam.
"What?" said Eve.
"I've had a little plan for a while."
"Oh, don't tell me," said Eve.
"You know what it is, I bet," said Adam.
"I bet I do! said Eve.
Without a word, Adam and Eve set about their happy task.
They stood up, looked left, looked right, saw the snake coiled up in his favorite palm frond and tip-toed past. Snickering, they crossed a stream and walked into a little forest.
With jagged tools made from rocks, vines and wood, Adam and Eve spent several hours making a boat. They tied the boat to a maple tree and placed it in the stream.
"It floats," said Adam.
Eve tested the rope. "It's secure," she said.
They picked up a giant shovel they'd crafted. They walked across the stream again, tip-toed up the hill past the snake and didn't stop until they reached the apple tree.
With patience, devotion and strength, Adam and Eve dug up the apple tree and carried it, roots and all, down the hill past the serpent, who still slept on the palm frond. With their burden they entered the forest and reached the stream. They placed the tree in the boat.
Adam tipped the boat with his hands. The boat rocked and the tree rocked with it. "It's snug," Adam said.
Eve cut the rope and the craft drifted down the stream.
Adam and Eve ran along the banks as the stream widened. They ran past rocks, mountains and beasts. Great fish swam beside the boat. Birds followed its course from above. Adam and Eve kept up with the boat until the river was so wide they could not even see each other. But from the bank Adam chose, he could see the branches of the tree sticking out from the boat in the vast body of water, and from the bank Eve chose, she could see the other side of the boat and the branches sticking out.
When the boat went over the edge of the falls, leaving nothing behind but the pinkest sunset Adam and Eve had ever seen, Adam began walking back and Eve began walking back. By the time they could see each other on opposite sides of the river the moon was up, and by the time they reached the place from which they'd launched the boat which took away the apple tree and all its fruit, the moon was beamed lustre on their embrace.
They lay under the palm frond that night. It was not as low to the ground as it had been earlier, the snake having vacated it, but its breadth was enough to shield the lovers from any rains. Adam and Eve slept so well they didn't notice if there had been rain or not, but when they woke, all the creatures of Eden were around them. Adam and Eve felt tremendous love for all Creation.
Next, they were aware of a slithering sound.
"Oh, him," Adam and Eve said at the same time. The various beasts and bugs jumped as the snake darted under their feet. Back and forth he went, his tongue slipping in and out. "Where is it?" he said. "Where is it?"
Adam, sitting on a log with Eve, said, "He doesn't even stop to hear the answer."
"Good," said Eve.
All day they sat on the log, wiggling their toes in a shallow pool a rhinocerous dug for them with his horn. They listened to a giraffe chewing the top leaves of an oak and patted the little chicadees which had alighted beside them on the log. And they watched the long, twisting entity which had tried to tempt them to eat apples traverse Eden inch by inch, up and down, back and forth, every which way until he started up Eve's leg.
"You're a pest," said Adam, gripping the snake under the jaw. He held the snake in front of him, its mouth opening wide and its tongue protruding. "What do you think, Eve?" said Adam.
Eve stuck her hand in the snake's mouth and as he started snapping it shut she forced her other hand in and soon was ripping the snake in two, all the way down to its whirling rattle.
"An excellent response, my dear," said Adam, and they cooked the tempter over a fire built for them by lightning bugs.
"Are you hungry?" Adam said, skewering a piece of burnt snake.
"Not for him," said Eve.
"Me, neither," said Adam.
Adam threw the piece of snake back on the fire and he and Eve watched the snake burn until he was nothing but smoke.
"Well," said Eve, "That's done."
"Adam?" said a voice. "Eve!" the voice added.
Adam and Eve looked up with a sense of glee. "Well, hello, Lord," they said. They got off the log. Adam saluted. Eve curtsied.
"Why do you curtsy?" said God, "When you have no dress to lift?"
"What?" said Eve.
"Adam," said the Lord. "Must you salute with more than just your hand?"
"What?" said Adam.
"I wouldn't look down if I were you!" said the Lord.
Adam and Eve looked down, first at themselves and then at each other. They gasped.
As the two grabbed fig leaves off the nearby fig tree, the Lord said, "How dare you eat of the apple?"
Covering his loins with a leaf, Adam said, "I didn't eat an apple."
Covering herself, Eve said, "I did not eat an apple."
"Neither of you can make it any better by lying," said the Lord.
Adam and Eve looked around at their friends the woodland creatures and felt preyed upon.
"Lying is wrong," of course," said Adam.
"Yes," said Eve. "It's wrong."
They both said, "But we haven't lied."
"Did I not command thee both not to eat of the fruit of the apple tree?" the Lord asked.
"Yes," said Eve.
"What?" said God.
"No," said Adam. "I mean, yes, you didn't NOT command us--"
"Yes," said Eve, covering her breasts with her forearm, "I mean, 'No, you didn't NOT command--"
"Okay," said God, instantly materializing in front of Adam and Eve. "Stop looking up! I'm right here in front of you."
Adam and Eve looked at God.
God paced three feet to the right, retraced his steps, kept going on another three feet, retraced those three feet worth of steps, turned to face Adam and Eve and said:
"I speak in metaphors."
"We know that," said Adam.
"We know that," said Eve.
"And yet you took what I said literally."
"When?" said Eve.
"When I said not to heed the serpent."
"What about when you said not to eat of the fruit of the--?" said Adam.
"Yes," God said, "You literally thought I meant you couldn't eat apples."
"Well, wasn't that good?" said Adam.
"Yes and no," said the Lord.
Adam saw a bit of Eve's left nipple and had to hold his fig leaf with both hands.
God went on: "Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury."
"What?" said the couple.
"Metaphor! Pretend you're on trial."
"AREN'T we on trial?" said Eve.
"You've been tried, judged and found guilty," said God.
"So we're on trial," said Adam.
"Trial's over. You're punishment began the moment you dug up the tree."
"But that was the happiest moment of our lives," said Adam.
"No it wasn't," said Eve. "The happiest moment of our lives was when I ripped the snake in two."
"Adam," said God, "Were you not the first to stick the shovel under the apple tree, Eve merely following suit?"
"Yes, Lord."
"And you thought you both thought it up at the same time."
"Yes," said Adam.
"Well, you didn't. You were happier about it than she was, because it was YOUR idea. Now, Eve, when Adam had the snake by the neck--"
"Snakes have necks?"
"The part under his head!"
"Okay, Lord."
"When he had his hand gripping the little viper's windpipe...Are you going to question 'windpipe?'"
"No."
"Okay, you thought he wanted you to kill the snake."
"Yes."
"Well, he didn't. He just wanted you to slap the snake's face."
"But when I ripped his face open, it was the happiest moment of our lives."
"'Fraid not, Toots. It was the happiest moment of YOUR life. Adam was a little nauseated. But he put a brave face on it."
"You're lying!" said Adam and Eve.
"No," said God. "Adam thinks I'm lying about what Eve thought and Eve thinks I'm lying about what Adam thought, but Adam knows I'm telling you exactly what he thought and Eve knows I'm telling you exactly what she thought. Answer me: On the night of the day you dug the tree up and shipped it into God knows where -- I being that God who does indeed know where -- Did you not, on that night, which was the night before you killed the serpent -- Did you not have sexual intercourse?"
"No!" said Adam and Eve.
"Why do you lie?"
"We're not lying."
"Yes, you are."
"No."
"Yes."
"What's wrong with sexual intercourse?" said Adam, puffing his chest.
"Yes," said Eve, her chin sticking out, "What's wrong with it?"
God smiled.
"Yes!" Adam exclaimed. "I had relations with her!"
"Yes!" said Eve. "I had relations with him!"
"So?" asked God.
Adam and Eve looked at each other, then at their feet and then at God.
"And yet neither of you says that was the happiest moment of your lives! Interesting."
"Why shouldn't it have been the happiest moment of our lives?" said Eve.
"Yes," said Adam, "Why shouldn't it have been?"
"I should ask you two that. Now," said God. "That was the first time you two did that."
"And the only time!" said Adam.
"So far!" said God. "You could have done it any time before."
"So we were obediant before having intercourse, but not afterward?" said Eve.
"What interests me is that you didn't have sexual union before uprooting and disposing of the apple tree."
"Don't dispose of the apple tree, with anyone else but me," sang Adam sarcastically.
"Bet you didn't know that song until you tried to get rid of temptation," said the Lord. "Did you?"
"I can't remember," said Adam.
"I can assure you, mortal, that you didn't. But now that you've eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, you know a little bit about everything. Even the future."
"But we didn't eat the apple."
"You didn't eat it, but you couldn't leave well enough alone. You wouldn't have destroyed the tree if you felt strong enough to resist its offerings. And once the source of temptation was seemingly removed from your universe you destroyed the creature I told you to ignore, which was doubly foolish because, in your mind, the thing he would have tried to tempt you to eat, that is, the apple, was absent."
"So what does this have to do with Eve and me attaining orgasm with each other?"
"Well, Adam, while you told yourself that you and Eve thought up the dispatching of the apple-tree, it was your idea, which you got her to carry out with you. Feeling, then, that you had power over her, you then felt she would yield to you sexually. Eve, when you did indeed yield to Adam sexually, you felt this gave you power over him and that he would let you destroy the snake, who, with the apple tree gone, could be an annoyance only, as opposed to the threat he was before the tree was removed. So, your night of mutual orgasm was not, as it should have been, a night of mutual giving, but actually a nocturne of enacted bargaining."
"Well, if you know so much--" said Adam.
"Yes," said Eve, "If you know so much--"
And together they said, "Make another snake and we won't listen to him and create another apple tree and we won't eat from it. We'll show you how much you know about us."
"I know something you don't know," said God.
"No you don't," said Adam and Eve.
Suddenly they no longer saw God standing in front of them.
"Where'd he go?" they said. "What does he know?"
A grove of apple trees was there now. Snakes slithered everywhere.
A voice boomed, "To show you I know everything, I've restored the apple tree tenfold and the snake a thousandfold. And if you want to see me, look in places you doubt exist. In nine months, less a day, you'll know what I know now that you don't now know."
"And then we'll know everything?" said Eve hopefully.
"And then we'll know everything?" said Adam, looking at a cloud which had just evaporated.
Amidst the snakes and apples and Adam and Eve, the Lord maintained his silence.
The day the baby was born Adam knew the truth. "Eve," he said, as the newborn suckled at her breast. "He's only a few hours old but I know what God knows!"
"Oh?" said Eve. She burped the baby.
"Yes, Eve. Remember looking at the boat going off into oblivion off the edge of the water-fall?"
"Yes," Eve said.
"Well, we were at the top of the waterfall, right?"
"Yes."
"And that was the edge of Eden."
"I assume so, yes."
"And we were looking West, because the sunset faced us."
"Yes."
"Well, I think we were looking Southwest."
Eve put the baby in the cradle. "That's what God knows?"
"No. Now, we weren't physically removed from anyplace, but we were metaphorically removed from our innocent Eden because God put up all those apple trees and installed the snakes."
"Obviously."
"Well, don't you see? That was our honeymoon. That was Niagara Falls!"
"Thrilling."
"That's not the point, Evie."
"No?"
"No! The direction we were looking. We were on the North side!"
"And?"
"We're Canadian!"
"Well, sort of pre-Canadian, yes."
"No, Eve! It's good news! Given the locale, we'll NEVER be responsible for Bush!"

Books I've Put Down

2006-09-26T04:21:00.000-04:00

Here are some books I've started to read but haven't finished:

ALL THE KING'S MEN, by Robert Penn Warren...I started it about five months ago, when I read that a remake of the 1948 movie was on the way. I read about twenty-five pages and gave up.

CLAREL...Herman Melville's book-length poem of his trip to the Holy Land is damned difficult. I've read five novels by Melville, and six or seven of his short stories. I've tried to understand his short poems ("The Maldive Shark" being one of them.) I haven't been able to do so. And I'm a fan! I have CLAREL, of course, which is more than even most serious Melville scholars have. I liked what little of it I read, but I won't say I had any idea of what was happening. I liked the extreme brevity of each stanza. Each stanza seems to consist of three or four lines of about five syllables each.

THE IDIOT, by Fyodor Dostoevsky...I first started reading this when I was in eighth grade. I got to page 48 of the Bantam paperback I got at Oscar's (which was the great book store in Huntington then) and stopped. The fact that the thugs in school kept saying "Readin' about yourself, huh?" when they saw me with the book had nothing to do with me stopping reading it. I tried again in eleventh grade and got to page 48 again. I tried when I was thirty-six and, again, got to page 48. So I got a book-on-tape, but, even though it was Dostoevsky, it wasn't THE IDIOT. It was THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. I didn't want to cheat with THE IDIOT. I listened to THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV in the car on my way to and from work. It took three weeks! After listening to it, I realized listening to a book-on-tape is not cheating. The written word is a substitute for the spoken word. Anyway, I still haven't read or heard any part of THE IDIOT starting after the part represented by page 48 of the Bantam edition.

COMING UP FOR AIR, by George Orwell...I read about half of this about five years ago and was quite taken with it. But I just haven't gotten up the will to continue reading it.

ULYSSES, by James Joyce...Every June 16th, the day this novel takes place, I listen to excerpts read live on the air. I feel quite acquainted with it. But I have neither heard nor read it straight through. I read "The Dead," though! Joyce wrote that!

CHANCE, by Joseph Conrad...I read about a third of it. It's the only time in reading Conrad that I've felt the problem wasn't that I was not up to his challenge, but that he was being pointless.

THE BIBLE...I try and try. God knows I'll try again.

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, by Thomas Mann...I missed the tension which was so present in other works of his I've completed.

THE UNCONSOLED, by Kazuo Ishiguro...I read about a hundred pages and decided that each extremely lengthy passage was not narrated by a different person but that one schizophrenic character was narrating the whole book. I think Ishiguro didn't think a reader would catch on so early as page one-hundred.

Every Book I've Ever Read

2006-09-21T03:05:00.000-04:00

Just for a lark, I'm now going to list all the books I can remember having read straight through.

THE MONKEY IN THE ROCKET-Jean Bethell; CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY-Roald Dahl; JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH-Roald Dahl; THE LITTLE PRINCE-Antoine De Saint Exupery (This was read to me); WINNIE-THE-POOH-A.A. Milne (This was read to me, too); THE HOUSE AT POOH CORNER-A.A. Milne (And this); THE MYSTERY OF THE STUTTERING PARROT (starring Alfred Hitchcock's The Three Investigators, and I don't know who wrote it); THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH-Norton Juster; FANTASTIC MR. FOX-Roald Dahl; CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR-Roald Dahl; WOLF STORY-William McCleary; TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD-Harper Lee; THE LADY IN THE MORGUE-Frank. J. Lattimore; THE CODE OF THE WOOSTERS-P. G. Wodehouse, who wrote the next six books on this list; BRINKLEY MANOR; THE PLOT THICKENS; THE CATNAPPERS; LOVE AMONG THE CHICKENS; UNCLE FRED IN THE SPRINGTIME; JEEVES AND THE TIE THAT BINDS; MY LIFE AND HARD TIMES-James Thurber; THE MIDDLE-AGED MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE-James Thurber; LENNON REMEMBERS-Jann Wenner (interviewing John Lennon and Yoko Ono); APPLE TO THE CORE-McCabe and Davis; MOBY-DICK--Herman Melville; LORD JIM-Joseph Conrad; UNDER WESTERN EYES-Joseph Conrad; THE SECRET AGENT-Joseph Conrad; THE ROCK 'N' ROLL BOOK OF THE DEAD (I can't remember who wrote it, but I'll try to find out); BRING ON THE EMPTY HORSES-David Niven; THE AMERICAN-Henry James; WASHINGTON SQUARE-Henry James; THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY-Allen Hollinghurst; A BOY'S OWN STORY-Edmund White; MYSTERIOUS SKIN-Scott Heim; PRIDE AND PREJUDICE-Jane Austen; PIERRE, OR, THE AMBIGUITIES-Herman Melville; THE CONFIDENCE-MAN--Herman Melville; ISRAEL POTTER--HIS FIFTY YEARS OF EXILE---Herman Melville; PUDDN'HEAD WILSON-Mark Twain; THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN-Mark Twain; THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER-Mark Twain (audio); THE ABOLITION OF MAN-C. S. Lewis; THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS-C. S. Lewis; THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV-Fyodor Dostoevsky in the Garnett translation (audio); Thomas Mann's DOCTOR FAUSTUS in the H.T. Lowe-Porter translation; ALL WE HAVE IS NOW (I'll supply the author's name soon); AVOIDANCE-Michael Lowenthal; IN AWE-Scott Heim; GIOVANNI'S ROOM-James Baldwin; THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES-David Leavitt; THE PAGE-TURNER--David Leavitt; A MARRIAGE BELOW ZERO-Alan Dale; THE AWAKENING-Kate Chopin; SOUTHERN LADIES AND GENTLEMEN-Florence King, who wrote the next seven titles as well; WASP, WHERE IS THY STING?; REFLECTIONS IN A JAUNDICED EYE; WITH CHARITY TOWARD NONE; LEAVE IT OR LUMP IT; WHEN SISTERHOOD WAS IN FLOWER; WITH CHARITY TOWARD NONE; HE; NOSTROMO-Joseph Conrad; THE LAST ADAM-James Gould Cozzens; BY LOVE POSSESSED-James Gould Cozzens; MEN AND BRETHREN-James Gould Cozzens; ASK ME TOMORROW-James Gould Cozzens; VIRTUALLY NORMAL-Andrew Sullivan; SS SAN PEDRO-James Gould Cozzens; WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE-Robertson Davies; FOOLS OF FORTUNE (I can't believe I've forgotten this author's name); BOON (by two authors, neither of whose names I can remember); THE CLOCKS OF COLUMBUS-Robert M. Coates; ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE-Robert M. Pirsig; MEN OF HONOR-Louis Auchincloss; DOCTOR FISCHER OF GENEVA, OR, THE BOMB PARTY-Graham Greene; CAT'S CRADLE-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS-Kurt Vonnegut (Who dropped the "Junior" with this book); THE FRIENDLY DICKENS-Norrie Epstein; MISS LONELYHEARTS-Nathaniel West; SLEEPLESS NIGHTS-Elizabeth Hardwick; A MIND TO MURDER-P. D. James; DUBLINERS-James Joyce; A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN-James Joyce; THE SUFFERINGS OF YOUNG WERTHER-Goethe (Was he Johanne Von? I can't remember, but it's, well, Goethe, of course); THE FIRM-John Grisham (audio); THE CATCHER IN THE RYE-J. D. Salinger; NINE STORIES-J. D. Salinger; INTRUDER IN THE DUST-William Faulkner; GOD BLESS YOU, MISTER ROSEWATER-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS-James Hilton; LINCOLN'S DREAMS-Connie Willis; PERE GORIOT-Honore de Balzac; WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR-(I think Stephen Runciman wrote this); DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON-George Orwell; ANIMAL FARM-George Orwell; 1984-George Orwell; I LOVED LUCY (I'll find out the author's name and include it sometime soon); HAROLD LLOYD (I'll try to find out this author's name, too); SCARLET AND BLACK-Stendahl; HARD LUCK MONEY-Giles Tippette; ANDORRA-Peter Cameron; THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER-Mark Twain; BARABBAS-Par Lagerkvist; GROWING UP BRADY (by the grown-up version of the kid who played Greg Brady; STRAITJACKET & TIE-Eugene Stein; WHY ORWELL MATTERS-Christopher Hitchens; THE TWENTY-ONE BALLOONS-William Pene duBois; CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN-Galbraith and Cary; THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO-Charles G. Finney; THE EXORCIST-William Peter Blatty; JAWS-Peter Benchley; THE ENCHANTED FOREST-Christopher Milne; THE BODY SNATCHERS-Jack Finny; RALPH THE HEIR-Anthony Trollope; THE WARDEN-Anthony Trollope; RACHEL RAY-Anthony Trollope; THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS-A. M. Sohnlein; THE AGE OF INNOCENCE-Edith Wharton; SUMMER-Edith Wharton; ETHAN FROME-Edith Wharton; LAST STAND AT PAPAGO WELLS-Louis L'Amour; MAURICE-E. M. Forster; BRAVE NEW WORLD-Aldous Huxley; ALL THE ADVANTAGES-Sam Toperoff; THE DEMOCRAT-Sam Toperoff; THE GREAT GATSBY-F. Scott Fitzgerald; O PIONEERS-Willa Cather; WONDER BOYS-Michael Chabon; THE CITY AND THE PILLAR (revised edition)-Gore Vidal; A BETTER ANGEL-Foreman Brown; FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN-Christopher Bram; THE EVENING CROWD AT KIRMSER'S-[I've momentarily forgotten the author's name]; THE BEAUTY OF MEN-Andrew Holleran; FUNNY BOY-Shyam Selvadurai; DRACULA-Bram Stoker; THE WEEKEND-Peter Cameron; THE SAME EMBRACE-Michael Lowenthal; WINESBURG, OHIO-Sherwood Anderson; THE RIDERS-Tim Winton; EATERS OF THE DEAD-Michael Crichton; CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY-W. Somerset Maugham; PIZZA FACE-Ken Siman; FATHERS AND SONS-Ivan Turgenev; THE HAPPY VALLEY-Eric Berne; I HAD TROUBLE IN GETTING TO SOLLA-SOLLOO--Dr. Seuss; THE LAST FLOWER-James Thurber; ALICE IN WONDERLAND-Lewis Carroll; THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN-John Fowles; TOO LONG A SACRIFICE-Jack Holland; LENNON IN AMERICA-Geoffrey Giuliano; RUNNING WITH SCISSORS (I've forgotten the name of the author; a collection of stories, the title of which I cannot remember, by Bernard Cooper; and THE SONG OF ROLAND (I've forgotten the name of the translator.)

The list of books I've started is longer. I've read many short stories and novellas, but very rarely have I read an entire volume of them. I haven't included plays in book form; such as HAMLET.

Cruel Things I've Seen People Do

2006-09-20T03:24:00.000-04:00

Cruel Things I've Seen People Do
All of these things were done by people I love:

About twenty years ago, when we were in our mid-twenties, a friend of mine and I were in his car. He was driving. All his life, even before he learned to drive, my friend would say, "Why don't they signal?" whenever he saw a car turning without the signal going. He also really hated drivers who sped up after you passed them. "I'm passing them!" he'd say. "Why are they speeding up?"
Anyway, he was behind the wheel, preparing to cross an intersection. I think I remember the very one. He was about to cross when a car waiting on the road perpendicular to the one we were on turned left, cutting him off. "Can't use your signal, can you, old man?" my friend shouted.
Indeed, the driver was geriatric.

Another friend and I were in the parking lot at Waldbaum's. He worked in a store in the same shopping center, so he was intimately familiar with the geography of the parking lot. He was driving between rows of parked cars. Another car came along and he had to move a little to make way. "Cunt!" my friend cried. "Drive the right direction!" There were no arrows pointing any direction.

A friend of mine once bragged to me of the time he delivered something to the Huntington Town House. Before going in, he'd noticed a car parked with its flashers on at the side of the road. It wasn't all the way to the side. Part of the car was jutting into the right lane of Jericho Turnpike. My friend went into the lobby and said, "Is somebody's car in the road there?"
A man looked up and said, "That's my car."
"Well, somebody hit it," said my friend.
"Oh, my God!" said the man. "My daughter's in there." He started running out the door.
"She's dead!" my friend shouted.

One time, the friend of the Waldbaum's parking lot was behind the wheel in bumper-to-bumper traffic coming out of Robert Moses. My other two friends from the above paragraphs were in the car, too. We were all sunburned, tired and dehydrated. We'd been in the car tweny minutes and had gone half a mile. Kids in the back seat of the car in front of us were waving at us. They took their fingers and pressed their noses to make pig faces. My friend behind the wheel waved back and signalled them to make piggy noses again. When they did that, his front bumper tapped the back bumper of the car the kids were in. My friend laughed as the kids fell into the back dash. He made a piggy nose himself. The driver door of the other car opened. A short, huge-breasted woman in sunglasses and spandex trotted toward us. "You wanna play little games with the kids, do you? You wanna bam your car into my car with them in the back, huh? You wanna play a goddamn fucking game with their lives?"

The rest of the ride home was polite. Women, children and old people were able to relax for a while, even though we were on the road.

I Meet Louis Armstrong

2006-09-12T14:40:00.000-04:00

The year before he died, Louis Armstrong made a surprise appearance at a jazz concert at Walt Whitman High School here in Huntington, New York. I was ten and got to see him. This was 1970.
My mother was a speech teacher at BOCES. A friend of hers who taught at Walt Whitman High told her about a charity event for autistic children. It was going to be a concert featuring Arvell Shaw, a bass player. She gave my mother secret information. Louis Armstrong was going to appear at the end. This was very much on the Q. T.
I was just old enough to remember "Hello, Dolly" as a hit single. My brother Bob, who was two years older, and I used to imitate Louis Armstrong's raspy voice whenever the song came on. We loved the song. When my mother told us we might have a chance to see Louis Armstrong we were very happy. We kept imitating "Hello, Dolly" for two days. I was in my school band and played the cornet. I was always listening to the Tijuana Brass, so I related to the trumpet (and, hence, the cornet.)
Twnety-five years later, when I had become a collector of Louis Armstrong music, I learned that Arvell Shaw was the bassist in Louis Armstrong's All-Stars, the small combo which began in the mid-1940s.
I liked the concert, but, child that I was, I was distracted, waiting for a surprise appearance by Louis Armstrong. If there was an intermission, I'm sure I began thinking he wasn't really going to show. Word was he was ill. Putting it together, I imagine he came in from Corona, Queens, where he lived. This was an hour away and is now the Louis Armstrong Museum. I imagine most of the audience did expect him. It was not a capacity crowd. It was, if I remember, an afternoon concert. There was a teenager in the audience with a huge scrapbook.

Finally, an announcement was made and suddenly Louis Armstrong came out between two curtains. I can't remember if he had his trumpet with him, but, whether he did or not, I am quite certain he didn't play it. He sang "Hello, Dolly." The audience clapped along. I can't remember if he sang anything else. I feel he only sang that. Then he walked into the audience and sat down next to the kid with the scrapbook. The kid showed him every page in it. It had pictures of Louis Armstrong, newspaper clippings about him, placards and index cards, 8 by 10 glossies and Louis Armstronmg signed every picture on every page, talking to his fan in a quiet voice. My brother and I saw this from a few seats away.

"I want to get his autograph," I said.

"I told you not to bother him," my mother said.

"I want his autograph, too," said my brother.

We took our flyers and ran to him.

We watched him sign a few pages of the fan's scrapbook. "Can I have your autograph?" said my brother. Louis Armstrong looked up, quietly took the flyer, wrote a giant signature and handed back the flyer.
My brother walked a little away and I walked up to Louis Armstrong. "Can I have your autograph, too?" I said. Louis Armstrong signed the book a little more and looked up at me the way he'd looked up at my brother. He signed the flyer.
I think I said "Thank you."

I had that flyer, with the giant "L" at the start and the giant "A" for "Armstrong," for twenty years. I moved from one room in my house to another and, somehow, couldn't find the flyer when I'd finished moving. I used to open it up and look at it. It was next to the mute for my cornet, an instrument I abandoned at the age of thirteen.

The Christmas after he died, a 45 of his reading of THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS appeared at our supermarket. My mother bought it. Each Christmas Eve since then, we play that record. It was one of the last things he ever recorded, There's no music on it, just the voice of Louis Armstrong, giving the poem a charm and drama no one else had ever given it. I wonder if there had been a plan to put music behind it. It's great the way it is.

About ten years ago I dreamed there was a knock at my old bedroom door. It was the room I'd lived in when I still had the autograph. I opened the door and Louis Armstrong was there. He held out his hand and whispered something. I took the flyer from its place next to my mute and handed it to him. He looked at it, folded it up and put it in his shirt pocket. He turned and walked downstairs.

I can hear his autograph, however, on those signature licks waxed during the lifetime of the great jazz pioneer.

From My Later, Funnier Blog

2006-09-09T23:47:00.000-04:00

Here's an excerpt from it. I was talking about the time I met What's-His-Face:

...I met Paul McCartney in the most unbelieveable way imaginable. What are the odds that someone who listens to almost nothing but Beatles music would be handed a postcard at work which said "Help launch PAUL MCCARTNEY PAINTINGS, the new book from Chronicle Books. 4:00 P. M., Such-and-such a date, such-and-such-a-place. Meet the artist. RSVP." I was working at an independent book store on Long Island in the summer of 2000, when my boss handed me that card, saying, "I didn't know there was a book of Paul McCartney's paintings coming out." She handed me the card and I looked at it. Then I noticed that it said "Meet the artist." We RSVP'd, and, about two weeks later, I heard that I was going to meet Paul. The event was at a little gallery/bar in Manhattan in October. It was an extremely low-key event. There were about five people standing outside the bar when I got there. They were all booksellers. Most book store people I knew simply threw out the card, not realizing it was an offer to meet Paul McCartney. They thought it was just promoting a book party. I met some high rollers of the publishing world at the party (including one of the owners of the really quite humongous entity for which I began working five years later.) Anyway, I got to talk to Paul about one of his paintings. I felt like Charlie Bucket, getting the golden ticket in the chocolate bar. I'm still really amazed this happened.

Nothing Much To Say

2006-09-08T02:30:00.000-04:00

While I have nothing to say, there is something to be said for something or other.

Spam from Space

2006-09-07T12:56:00.000-04:00

More Spam! (Sender's name at left, title of message at right.) Sometimes the names are more interesting than the message. You may wonder why I've included the pitch for the Roger Waters concert. I included it for verisimilitude. One weeds through these things.

BackStage Access "Great seats just released: Roger Waters at Madison Square Garden" Essie Chandler "desolation"
conceit "Your home credit"
Pip Bergeron "corporal punishment"
Amelia Burris "disoriented tugboat"
Dolores Tapia "exclamation point speechless"
coverlet "for you to have it"
Lowery "Hey, buddy, you must be very disappointed of it!"
Kate Mahoney "unwieldy garish"
Christina Rios "dislike autonomous"
Priklyparamite1 "kewadin casino"
Lily Cole "purge"
barb "proceed to watching"
Hereward Westlake "Re: PHitARMACY"

The Greatest Guitar In The World

2006-08-31T04:01:00.000-04:00

Before I forget it, I have a dream to record.
I dreamed this just before waking up this morning. I dreamed I was riding a bicycle and the guy across the hall from me in my Freshman dorm in 1978 was riding a bicycle, too. There was a growth of trees to the left and he said, "Fred. I'm going to show you the greatest guitar in the world."
We got off our bikes, put them in the grass and walked toward the thicket. In the middle of everything was an intricate stonework cage with curlicews. Within it was a gleaming instrument of the sort a metal maverick would play. Dave was fascinated and actually said, "Aww!"
I was amazed to be seeing the top-rated guitar stuck in a cage Michelangelo might have designed.
"This is ours!" said Dave, and he walked toward it. I began walking toward it, too.
In real life, Dave was from Long Island, although I met him at college in New England. One semester, before vacation, he said I should call him in Deer Park and go with him to the grounds of Pilgrim State Psychiatric in order to climb the outside of one of the many abandoned buildings. He convinced me it would be the moral equivalent of rock climbing.
"When's the best time?" I said. "Midnight?"
Dave's mod glasses almost popped off his nose. "Midnight? Climb one of those at midnight, and be snuffed by a junkie?"
He never mentioned climbing a decrepit building again.
But grabbing an electric guitar from a rennaissance stonework cage in broad daylight might have been up his alley.

Bookmooch [Dot] Com

2006-08-10T22:36:00.000-04:00

Folks, check out a new site by a person (not me) who loves books and believes word should be spread without a profit motive.
Bookmooch is a site devoted to the giving away of books. You list ten books you'd be happy to send to people who want them and you create a wishlist. This is not like ebay. This is like listening to speeches in Hyde Park. There's no fee.
I have a link to the site in my sidebar. (Would like a twist of lemon with that?)
I'll list it here as well:
http://www.bookmooch.com
I have written for free. I may as well send books for free and get some for free.
First, there was the word.
Last, there was the word.
Dollars have nothing to do with the Word.

Mediocrity

2006-08-08T01:12:00.000-04:00

"Is the glass half-full or half-empty?"
"A disgusting question. I do have an answer, however."
"What's the answer?"
"It's neither half-full nor half-empty. It's just a half-a-glass of water."
"You can't answer the question that way."
"I can't?"
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"Well, then, I won't answer."
"No?"
"No."
"Well, that's stupid."
"Life is stupid."
"No, it's not."
"Yes, it is."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"No, of course it's not. But a life lived having conversations like this is not worth living."
"Then what sort of conversations should we have?"
"Anything that's not a quiz."
"Is this a quiz?"
Bradley didn't answer.

Work Unprogress

2006-07-29T13:22:00.000-04:00

Two posts ago I put in the first paragraph of a story I've started. Here's that paragraph and more:

Available Light

He had funny teeth. He was a handsome fellow, but the stern quality of his eyes might have been explained by the worry that his crooked lowerteeth would be seen when he talked. The sternness gave him a look of concentration, however, and this worked in his favor. He was blond, bearded and smoked a pipe.

"Aha," he said as he walked. While sunset, seen from campus, was never spectacular, occasionally a pink streak could be seen between the branches of the trees or above the library. McCaffery's "Aha" was an accompaniment to his realization that it must now be after four-thirty. Ordinarily he stayed in his office between three-forty-five and four-thirty, but the conference with Edwin Wendt had been brief. Afterward, McCaffery went outside, walked past the Art building, into the Student Union, got a pouch of tobacco (rung up by a transplanted Tennesseean whose lilting voice lifted him out of New England) and walked outside again, where he noticed the streak of pink in the darkening sky.

The sky was darkening for Edwin Wendt, he thought. Coincidence would have it that when he'd bought the tobacco, Edwin was just walking away from the counter with a Shasta Cola and a Twinkie. He wasn't sure Edwin had taken note of his presence.

"If I was twenty years younger," said the Tennesseean.

"I'd still be pining for you," said McCaffery. He wondered how anyone could feel anything for Edwin Wendt.

"Well bless your heart," said the Tennessean. She handed him his tobacco.

Mcaffery smiled, put the pouch in the inside pocket of his jacket, nodded his head and left.

As he walked out of the Student Union, he saw Edwin walking toward the dormitories, drinking the Shasta the way a drunk would drain a beer. Ben Lehrman, walking toward McCaffery, nodded at McCaffery the way McCaffery had nodded at the Tennessean, and said, "They've driven you outside?"

"What do you mean?" said McCaffery.

Lehrman, with his right hand, gestured toward a cigarette in his left.

"Oh, my pipe!" McCaffery took the unlit pipe out of his mouth and held it out. "As long as I can still smoke in my office, I'll do it."

Lehrman held his cigarette aloft and said, "Lenore Reston coughs like an asthmatic whenever I pass her desk."

"'No surrender,' I say," said McCaffery. He took the pouch out of his pocket, opened it and placed a big pinch in his pipe. "I'd better practice doing this outside, I guess."

Lehrman took out his lighter.

After inhaling, McCaffery tilted his head in the direction Edwin Wendt had gone. He was no longer in sight. "My student conference left early to indulge himself in Coke and Twinkies."

"It's an apathetic bunch."

"This is not an apathetic kid."

"Speak, McCaffery."

"This was the most fully formed writer I've ever had."

"Who, Wendt?"

"You've got him?"

"Yes, but I only knew you meant him because of the Twinkies."

"You have Wendt?" McCaffery said.

Lehrman seemed to be conjuring a word and said, "Most unprepossessing."

"Maybe he doesn't care about History."

"He doesn't pay attention. But you say he can write?"

"Oh, he's ambitious."

"Him?"

"He."

"Get out of town."

"He told me today that he was proactive enough to test out of Expository in order to qualify for Creative Writing this semester."

"Creative Writing isn't offered to Freshmen?"

"One of the ironies of Cotton Mather College," said McCaffery. "The biggest bullshit course isn't available to those who need it most."

"My bullshit students drop the course after the first quiz."

"Mine stay through grad school," said McCaffery.

Lehrman's cigarette went out. "Damn this sea breeze," he said. He took out his lighter again and relit the cigarette. "You really prefer a pipe to a cancer stick, Bob?"

"It's cancer in a more elegant package," said McCaffery. "It makes me feel like a sea captain."

"Is that why you teach here?"

"It's Judy."

"Where would you rather be?"

"Nova Scotia."

"Judy'd love that."

"Also, they told me this was going to be my baby."

"You've got the enrollment."

"I can shape the Department. We haven't done badly."

Lehrman looked at McCaffery. "They're dumb, aren't they?"

"The students? The Administration?"

"All of them," said Lehrman.

McCaffery looked at his pipe. "It's still lit."

"I think your fellow Wendt has something psychological."

"Didn't you say you thought he was apathetic?"

"Well, in a profound way, which is different. He's got a complete inability to socialize. At the start of class, they're all talking. At the end they're all talking. Wendt just sits and stares."

"That's what writers do."

"You don't notice it?"

"In the Writing class, he battles the attentions of the bohemians."

"Bohemians? On this shit-kicking campus?"

"I've got a lot of girls in Creative Writing. They live to meet a boy who can say 'Apotheosis.'"

"I can't picture him being social in any situation."

"He's perhaps more comfortable in a writing environment."

Lehrman looked at McCaffery kindly. "How much bullshit have you absorbed?"

McCaffery puffed on the pipe. He took it out, put it back in and, holding it in his teeth, said, "He showed up at my office today, sat down cheerfully and when I said, 'Next semester I'd like you to focus on structure,' he said, 'Oh, I'm not taking Creative Writing next year.'"

Lehrman dropped his depleted cigarette under a bush. He took out another and lit it.

"'Nonsense,' I said. "I actually said, 'Nonsense.' That's the most galling thing. He made me speak like Sherlock Holmes."

"Well, with that pipe," said Lehrman.

"I was sure he wanted to write. Not the way one of these beret-wearing depressives wants to write. He was someone who knew he could write and wanted to."

"Well maybe he's just taking a break."

"I said, 'Get down to the Registrar's and sign up for the course before it's too late.' He said he wanted to focus on History."

"History?"

"Yes."

"But he is lost in History."

"I said, 'Is it me?'"

"Oh, no."

"Oh, Yes! He brought me to that, too. I said he might prefer to take Gianinni's course. He said he was not taking Creative Writing again. You the Fitzgerald character who wants 'a well-rounded education?' Well, he used that exact quote. He says he might take Creative Writing again Senior year."

"Do you think he is abandoning writing?"

"Well. Well, I said, 'Are you planning, at least, to write for THE MASTHEAD?' No, he said. 'AMBERGRIS?' Nope."

"Maybe he's afraid of running out of creative juices."

"At nineteen?"

"Okay. Maybe he's dropping out all together."

"No, he says he's focusing on other subjects. He should drop out of the whole school, if he's a real writer."

"What are the rest of them like?"

"Sincere."

"Oh, no."

"You know, when I said he should at least write for THE MASTHEAD, he said, 'A school newspaper is for candy-stripers.' I said, 'Yes.' Then the conversation went Freudian. He said, 'Looking at the newspaper you get a slap in the face.' I said, 'Yes. Yes. It is a slap in the face.' I don't think he knew I meant it personally."

"So, he is banal after all."

"Hmmm."

"It's finally happened."

"What?"

"It's happened."

"What's happened?"

"A student has blamed you for his success."

McCaffery took a silver rectangle from his pocket, slid it open to reveal a recessed circle in the middle, turned his pipe over the circle, tapped it, slid the rectangle closed and put it back in his pocket. "I should write, " he said.

Famous People I Have Met

2006-07-28T04:30:00.000-04:00

Patty Hearst (Bookstore appearance.) [And welcome, NSA, to my webpage!]

William F. Buckley (Bookstore appearance. Nobody showed up. He sat in front of three huge stacks of his book.)

George Plimpton (Bookstore appearance.)

Jean Marsh (Rose from UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS; creator of that series. A friend stopped her on street in London. She was in a big hurry. I began talking to, or at, her as soon as she was about to escape. I still feel like The Ugly American for delaying her. I think she might have had to pee.)

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (on the campaign trail in my hometown, circa 1976. I delayed him so he could sign a bumper sticker bearing his name.)

Louis Armstrong (1970. Got his autograph when he made a surprise appearance at a jazz concert at my local high school. He signed an autograph for everybody. I had the autograph for twenty years. Lost it when I moved from one room in the house to another.)

Pete Best. (Got autograph when he was at a Beatles convention. Lost it a week and a half later.)

Paul. Sir...Paul. (Book party, if you please!) (Addressed him as "Sir Paul," even though I am American. October, 2000.)

Phillip Bosco. (I was with a friend who recognized him on the street in Manhattan. Same friend who spotted Jean Marsh in London.)

Malcolm Forbes. (Random siting, Manhattan, 1989. Sent letter later, got reply with signature! I'm a Stalkerazzi, huh?)

And you, my readers. All of you are famous, of course.

It's a Start

2006-07-25T03:28:00.000-04:00

Last night I managed to write the first paragraph of a story. Today I kept trying to continue the story. I couldn't come up with anything. Anyway, here's the paragraph and, above it, the title of the story:

Available Light

He had funny teeth. He was a handsome fellow, but the stern quality of his eyes might have been explained by the worry that his crooked lower teeth would be seen when he talked. The sternness gave him a look of concentration, however, and this worked in his favor. He was blond, bearded and smoked a pipe.

Buddy Holly and Wings

2006-07-23T16:58:00.000-04:00

Run away if you must! I'm posting a review which says nice things about post-Beatles Paul. It's a take on his Wings bandmate Denny Laine's 1976 album HOLLY DAYS. I have swiped my own review from that big online book and CD store named after a river:

[Four Stars. WOULD HAVE BEEN A FIVE IF IT WEREN'T FOR THE DRUM MACHINE]

I have this on its original vinyl release from 1976. The back cover describes it better than I can. It says, in part: "In the highlands of Scotland there's a wood-lined, tin-roofed shack known as Rude Studio. Here Denny Laine and Paul McCartney got together to record some Buddy Holly songs. On the four track recorder Paul laid down the basic tracvks, overdubbing each instrument himself. Denny and Linda added a few licks and all three joined in on the vocals."
That's a quote, my Wingnut compatriots, and I find it accurate.
All I can add is that this is a really likeable album, especially if you know your Buddy Holly. Laine's vocals are styled on Holly's here and it works.
Buddy Holly's songwriting (and that of those who wrote songs Buddy chose to sing) was solid and this album captures their spirit.
I am not surprised the album is not well known, but I am surprised it is as little known as it is.
If you miss Wings, find this, order it and play it. (I found the vinyl entirely by accident in a used record store last week. It has to be the best purchase I've made in about five years.) Paul McCartney's instrumentation bears his signature. A few times the harmonies are unmistakably the three members of Wings. For the most part, the harmonies are fairly subdued, so that most casual listeners hearing this won't say "Isn't that Paul McCartney."
But it IS Buddy Holly's music and Buddy Holly is front-and-center here.
I do think the drum machine effect is unfortunate. There is plenty of actual drumming, but it is almost always accompanied by the unnecessarily mechanical drum machine sound. This was recorded in 1976 and drum machines were very popular, but the charm eludes me.
There are at least two entirely instrumental tracks. I like that. If you liked the guitar of "Crossroads Theme" from VENUS AND MARS, you'll like the sort of playing on HOLLY DAYS.
For a brief moment, a couple of voices are heard sped-up to about speed 78. Ah, well. But it's just for a brief moment. The rest of the album is good, casual, lo-fi roots rock.
It is definitely worth finding.

Lines Written Quickly

2006-07-21T15:16:00.000-04:00

I am to be at work in 45 minutes. It takes me twenty-five minutes to get there.
So, very briefly, what's on my mind is the fact that, if I were to write down everything I know, suspect or imagine about everybody I've encountered in my life, I'd have an epic. If I published it, I'd have to expect somebody to write everything he or she wants to say about me.
And so this entry is brief.
Until next entry,

Fred

Herb Business

2006-07-13T02:22:00.000-04:00

On January 4th, I posted on this blog an entry called HERB ALPERT ON ACID. The other day I noticed that a company called Silver Fox, having mistaken my posting for something other than the amorphous tone-poem it was, left the following in the comments field:

Our network has been looking for a Herb business like yours to list in our World Directory & our forum.

Hey, there is no cost and it will only take a few minutes for you to register!

Your Silver Fox Business Building Team helping build your Herb business!

____________________________________________________________________________________

Now, since "Acid" was in my title, when they say "Herb business," do they mean "Herb-as-in-Alpert" or "Herb-as-in-drug-less-powerful-than-acid?" The capitalization of the letter "H" in "Herb" makes me opt for the trumpeter. Now, if YOU want Herb Alpert on acid, get the newly re-released HERB ALPERT'S NINTH. Gone are the high-hat cymbals, in are the pastel tones of relaxed, sophisticated brass, with rose-petal bursts.
How 'bout that, eh?

http://imdb.com/user/ur2455157/comments

2006-07-03T15:56:00.000-04:00

Hey, Folks,

Click on the link which is the title of this entry and you'll get to read my sometimes felicitous, generally quirky, often clumsy movie reviews.
IMDB says I may "advertize" my reviews. Here's a cut-and-paste from an email I just got from them (a confirmation of the posting of a review.) I've reproduced the link again, in case the one in the title space above resists mouse-clicking:

http://imdb.com/user/ur2455157/comments

"Please do feel free to advertise this link and let your friends know
where
they can find your reviews.
Thanks for supporting IMDb!"

Enjoy or unjoy as necessary,

Fred

Hope I Can Trust You

2006-06-30T01:01:00.000-04:00

I was wondering what to write tonight when I opened an email which solved the problem. It's reproduced below, and underneath it is my take on it. Here goes:

Subject: Hope I can Trust You
From: Shadak Sherrif

As you read this, I don't want you to feel sorry
for me, because, I believe everyone will die someday.
My name is
SHADAK
SHERIFF a merchant in Dubai, in
the U.A.E.I have been
diagnosed
with
Esophageal cancer. It has defiled all forms of medical
treatment,
and right now. I have only about a few months to
live,
according to medical
experts. I have not particularly
Lived my life so
well, as I never
really cared for anyone (not even myself) but my
business.
Though I am
very rich, I was never generous, I was always
hostile to
people and
only focused on my business as that was the
only
thing I cared for But
now I regret all this as I
now know that there
is more to life than
just wanting to have make all the money in the
world.
I believe when
God gives me a second chance to come
to this
world I would live my
life
a different way from how I have lived it.
Now that God has called
me, I
have willed and given most of my
property and
assets to my
immediate
and extended family members as
well as a few
close friends.
I want God
to be merciful to me and
accept my soul so,
I have decided
to give alms
to charity
organizations, as I
Want this to be one of the
last good
deeds I do
on earth. So far, I have
distributed money to
some charity
organizations in the U.A.E, Algeria
and Malaysia. Now
that my health
has deteriorated so badly, I cannot
do this myself
anymore. I once
asked members of my family to close one
of my
accounts and
distribute
themoney which.
I have there to charity
organization in
Bulgaria and
Pakistan; they refused and kept the money
tothemselves.
Hence, I do
not trust them anymore, as they
seem not to be contended
with what I
have left for them.
The last of my money
which no one
knows of is the
hugecash deposit of eighteen million
dollars
$18,000,000,00
that I have with a finance company abroad. I
will
wantyou to help me go
there and collect this deposit and
dispatched it
to charity
organizations.I have set aside 10% for you
and for your
time. Please
get back to me as soon as possible so that
i can furnish
youwith the
Relevant documents and to get a proof of
myself to you.
My family are really working to see that this great
Dream of mine
reaming a thing of
Thought. Best regards as I wait
Your
quick
response.
Reply to this
Email in my personal mail : shadak.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
I'm leaving out his email address, because I'm sure a number of readers already have it and are now each safeguarding ten per cent of this dying man's hard-earned lucre.

What should I reply to Shadak Sheriff? Should I suggest to him that what's made in Dubai stay in Dubai? Should I compliment him on the poetry of his phrase, "reaming a thing of Thought?"
Or should I suggest that the Ugandan General's widow who emailed me last week has my bank account at her disposal?

I should certainly thank him for his bit of verse. But if I contact him, he may spend more time emailing me, and, from what I can tell, he barely has time to draw a breath, let alone a sum from my account.

Cirque Du So What

2006-06-27T04:11:00.000-04:00

The title of this entry is has nothing to do with the topic, which is still BAMBI and other Waltian products.

Two friends have emailed me about my latest entry. A Mr. Richard Feder, of Fort Lee, New Jersey writes (actually, it was Andy) that almost all of Disney's cartoons are available, with the exception of SONG OF THE SOUTH (Zip-ah-dee-do-DON'T!) and the probable exception of 'Der Fuhrer's Face." (Would this be because Disney doesn't own this? Was it commissioned by the government? I feel fairly sure there was a disc, about five years ago, of Disney's war effort stuff. Or was that Looney Toons material?)

A friend from Baltimore says he didn't remember the deaths in BAMBI. I can't say I didn't remember them because, having never seen the movie before last week, I didn't have anything to forget. There is a moment in LADY AND THE TRAMP, which I watched for the first time tonight, during which I thought an animal had died, but a couple of scenes later he came back with his leg in a cast. This is an example of Disney being willing to tease his audience about something serious and this surprised me.

I'm also surprised that Disney scrapped plans for a scene in CINDERELLA (which movie I saw for the first time last night) which would have rivalled anything in FANTASIA. The scene is sort of restored for the DVD. Storyboards are shown in succession, accompanied by the song Cinderella would have sung. She is wishing there were more than one of her and the storyboards show her becoming double, then triple, etc. In the actual movie there are no scenes of her actually performing the tasks her stepmother makes her perform. The movie is seriously marred by the same thing which wrecked the Fleischer's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: characters whose voices are simply highly sped-up voices. The mice, an almost constant presence in the movie, talk this way. The munchkins of THE WIZARD OF OZ, of course, talk this way, but they certainly don't dominate the movie. If they had, Rufus Wainwright wouldn't have been singing Judy Garland's set at Carnegie Hall last week. (I saw him at the Knitting Factory in 2000, and for his encore, he stood on the piano and sang "Over the Rainbow." His mother played piano.)

I watched ALICE IN WONDERLAND tonight and, although it was made the same year as CINDERELLA (1951), it was everything the other was not. When a song became boring, it ended. Hallucinogenic scenes were frankly so and the cuteness bordered on nightmare. It was fun. And Lewis Carroll deserves the Americanization, he being otherwise almost intolerable.

I'd have reported on the short "Lonesome Ghosts," but the DVD I borrowed was scratched and all I can say is it became clear very early that GHOSTBUSTERS took its premise from "Lonesome Ghosts." I'm going to watch it on VHS tomorrow. God bless VHS!

Bambi

2006-06-24T00:59:00.000-04:00

I rented a VHS of BAMBI recently. I've come to the conclusion that Disney's classics should be viewed on VHS. Without having seen any on DVD, let me say firmly I suspect the DVDs are so augmented as to distort the originals. I could be wrong. I wouldn't even be surprised if a typical Disney DVD of, say, CINDERELLA, offers the option of hearing an audio track resembling the one which went with the original release. But, I have a feeling the colors are now too bright. The filmic quality is gone. (I'm projecting here, but aren't MOVIES supposed to be projected?) I can swear that an ad I've seen for the new re-release of SLEEPING BEAUTY has different people doing the voices. I believe Disney issued a re-orchestrated FANTASIA. Disney's a strange company. It releases something in some tweaked form, takes it out of release, re-tweaks it and releases it again and then "restores" it. A lot of companies re-package old classics, but, somehow, Disney seems altogether more willing to break, as opposed to fix. The policy of keeping something OUT of circulation in order to maintain some bogus mystique annoys me, especially as time proves that the stuff done in Walt Disney's lifetime is, on a technical level, at least, world-class art. If Shakespeare had copyrighted THE TEMPEST, would some idiot own the rights now? Luckily, a lot of libraries and video shops purchased those "Limited Edition" re-releases in the mid-eighties, allowing people who know where to look to actually find the "Silly Symphonies" and other more obscure Disney works.
So, I watched BAMBI last night. I'd never seen it before. I know enough about Disney to know he really studied animals carefully before drawing them. BAMBI looks like a watercolor in a hunting lodge come to life. It is, as an impression of nature, stunning. The little animals are a double-threat. They move like actual little animals, but act and sound like children. If it's over-the-top, well, all cartoon kids can't act like Cartman from SOUTH PARK. I knew BAMBI's mother gets killed by hunters, but I was not prepared for the way it was done. There's a scene a little earlier where she tells Bambi to be very careful in an open field. In a slightly later scene she tells Bambi to run. We hear shots. She tells him "Man" has entered the forest. Later, she and Bambi are walking in the snow and shots ring out. All the deer, including a deer-in-chief, if you will are running away. Bambi's mother shouts at him to keep running and not look back. We follow Bambi as he runs and runs. He makes it to the little bit of underbrush where he and his mother live and he turns around and says "We made it. We made it. Mother? Mother?" It was here I expected to see the body of Bambi's mother. Instead, as Bambi walks through an increasingly thick
blizzard, he makes out the face of the patriarch of deers, who says to him, simply, "Your mother won't be coming back." A child below the age of six or so probably won't even notice that BAMBI's mother has died. Later, there's a female quail who panics as the hunter's fire their guns. She finally screams, "I can't take it anymore," flies up and a shot is heard. Her body quickly lands on the ground. Disney doesn't dwell on it and, as the other birds fly away there's a quick cut (if that's the term in animation) to a different scene. I expected BAMBI to be subdued about death, but I didn't expect it to rely as heavily as it did on the intelligence of the viewer. In a cartoon today, at the very least we'd see Bambi's mother dying. In the actual movie (which is from 1942), the last we see of her is the scene in where she's telling Bambi to run and not look back. The quail which gets shot shows no blood, and it is, as a character, very peripheral, being introduced just seconds before being shot. Again, a child might not even notice what's happening, but the death of the quail, for an adult, is pretty scary. When the quail starts saying she wants to get out of the thicket, the other birds are saying, "No, stay perfectly calm. Don't move." Already, movies about the Nazis were being made and certainly audiences would have seen a few movies which had scenes with people hiding from storm troopers. This is not so much a movie about man's destruction of the wild as a war movie about people dealing with war as a force of nature.
This is Disney's truly anthropomorphic flick, his one Aesop fable. It's pretty moving.

Nepomuk

2006-06-22T02:39:00.000-04:00

Herman Capelmeister did not want to hear what his son was telling him. The freckled face, colorless eyes and uncombed hair, dirty blond, he wanted very much to see. He was pleased at the voice. The words were clear. Clarity worked, of course. Herman Capelmeister had to interrupt, and now. "What in God's name does 'there for me' mean?"

Nepomuk looked relaxed. He smiled without really seeming amused, as if he were thirty instead of thirteen. "A peasant expression, father, I know." He leaned forward. "I talk to her on the phone at one in the morning."

"You know, the Preppy Murderer started out like you," said Herman Capelmeister.

"Do tell." Nepomuk took a cigarette from his sleeve.

"Neat trick," said Cantaloupe. "He doesn't light them, Herman."

"I know," said Herman Capelmeister. "I'll even point it out to the wait staff, if they get aroused."

Nepomuk, the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, said, "I fit in with females. That makes me an A-list faggot in this town."

"Never call yourself a faggot in front of your father, Neep."

"What I stress," said Herman Capelmeister, "Is this: These silly girls have persuaded you not that you're gay, but that you need to tell them everything you plan to do in that direction."

"They're just friends," said Cantaloupe.

"Pajama party gals. Thirteen year-old girls acting like middle-aged divorcees."

"Well, he lives with a middle-aged divorcee."

"One is enough," said Herman Capelmeister.

"He needs friends his own age."

"He doesn't need the future staff of 'W' micro-managing his adolescence."

"He's gay, Herman. He can't turn to the boys for support."

"Support. What the fuck is support at thirteen? He's supposed to be having a masturbation complex at this point, not a week-long marathon of Truth-or-Dare in the Penthouse apartment of some latch-key Barbie-doll with a copy of VOGUE."

"You workin' for Conde Nast, Dad?"

"Shut up. This isn't about you."

"What?"

"It's about your life. Your mother and I are planning it."

The busboy walked slowly toward the table. He poured water from a sweating picher.

"More bread," said Cantaloupe.

"Bread," said the busboy.

"God," said Nepomuk. "What Third World country are you running, Mom?"

"The whole United States is the Third World to your mother, Nepomuk," said Herman Capelmeister.

"Your father got crabs in Tijuana once," said Cantaloupe.

"Should have got 'em in Vegas, father," said Nepomuk. "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."

"Well, his crotch dropped them off in New Canaan."

"And the rest of me shook this one off in Manhattan," said Herman Capelmeister, pointing at Cantaloupe. "Maybe the gaggle of teen fag-hags is better for you than staying home with Mother. You don't need delousing after jumping on couches with them."

"My sentiments exactly," said Cantaloupe. "He needs to get away from me. Why won't you let him stay on Shelter Island?"

"Because I don't want to BE on Shelter Island."

"You're staying there, aren't you?"

"Yes, but I want to get over to the Pines a couple of times."

"Take him with you."

"I will NOT leave him alone weeks at a time on Shelter Island, dear!"

"Then stay on Shelter Island."

"Balls to Shelter Island!"

"Balls in the Pines."

"Bread," said the busboy, putting a wicker basket of hot bread on the table.

"Butter," said Nepomuk.

"At least he eats," said Herman Capelmeister. "The anorexics haven't talked him out of a good steak yet."

"What song is this?" said Cantaloupe.

"'Come Fly With Me,'" said Herman Capelmeister.

"Where?" said Cantaloupe.

"It's 'Fly Me To the Moon,'" said Nepomuk.

"'Fly me to Rangoon!'" sang Cantaloupe.

Herman Capelmeister said, "Oh! I heard him sing 'The Road to Mandalay' once."

"Sinatra?"

"Yes. It was ludicrous. 'On the road to Manda-lay-eeeee, where the flying fishes play.' Jesus! Kipling wouldn't have known whether to shit or go blind."

"I like Rufus Wainwright," said Nepomuk.

"Loved his 'Gap' ad," said Herman Capelmeister. "I'd fuck him."

"Da-aad!"

"Nepomuk, are you surprised?" said Cantaloupe.

"He's much more than a 'Gap' ad."

"Well, the Calvin Klein ads weren't much more than Marky Mark and his funky bunch."

"Your father's delving into pre-history, dear. You know he used to say gays should have their behind's tattooed?"

"I was a NAZI," said Herman Capelmeister.

"He voted for Reagan twice."

"Oh, barf!"

"Bush once. The first Bush."

"Bush 41," said Herman Capelmeister. "The fightin' 41st, as Colbert would say. Better Know a Dipshit!"

"And then you voted for Clinton the second time," said Cantaloupe. "When you began to agree with my politics, you began sleeping with men."

"And you know where Neep was conceived?" said Herman Capelmeister. "On the road to Tom Delay."

"On the road to Men-to-lay!" said Cantaloupe.

"Shhh..." said Nepomuk.

"What are you shushing me for?" said Cantaloupe.

"Yes, Nepomuk. Are you, perhaps, urging discretion on us?" said Herman Capelmeister.

"Ursula's parents are here."

"Ooooh," said Herman Capelmeister and Cantaloupe at the same time.

"You just be quiet," said Nepomuk.

"The boy's straight," said Herman Capelmeister.

"No, I'm not!" said Nepomuk.

"No, he's not," said Cantaloupe.

"No gay boy pretends to be gay at thirteen," said Herman Capelmeister.

"That's because I'm not pretending," said Nepomuk.

"My primary concern, from thirteen to fifteen, was to not be detected as gay," said Herman Capelmeister.

"And it was your primary concern at thirty!" said Cantaloupe.

"Why is Nepomuk concerned about what we say in front of a girl's parents?"

"He wants the respect of his friends."

"Balls!"

The waiter came and poured wine for Herman Capelmeister.

"Another Scotch for me!" said Cantaloupe as the waiter began to turn away.

"You're going to these pajama parties to have sex with Ursula."

"Oh, I can't BELIEVE you!" said Nepomuk.

"They'll hear!" Cantaloupe said.

"Do kids have sex any more?" said Herman Capelmeister. He took two gulps of wine. "What do you do, play MONOPOLY?"

An elderly couple in a corner looked over. "Parchesi," one of them said.

"I can't watch Nepomuk's every step," said Cantaloupe.

"You've got custody."

"I'm letting you have him this summer."

"I'm going to the Pines!"

"Then take him to the Pines!"

"He can't go to the fucking Pines!"

"Why not? You can."

"He'll become one of them!"

"One of who, Herman?"

"One of you, Dad?"

"Don't call me a faggot!"

"What?"

"He didn't call you a faggot, Herman."

"You're staying in the city this summer."

"Okay. Did I object?"

"Herman, I want to be alone this summer."

"You can't."

"I can."

"Who's going to take care of Nepomuk?"

"London Broil?" said the waiter.

"Nepomuk! Nepomuk!" Ursula's mother waved.

"Please, please, don't say anything embarrassing," said Nepomuk.

A woman in a yellow dress walked up to the table. "Mr. and Mrs. Capelmeister?" she said.

"Yes and no," said Cantaloupe.

"I'm Venitia Holland. Ursula's mother."

Herman Capelmeister shook her hand and then took a sip of wine.

"We finally meet," said Cantaloupe.

"Nepomuk may not have mentioned this, but Ursula and Jerry and I would love to have him at Rangeley this summer."

"Well, yes," said Herman Capelmeister, "As a matter of fact, he did."

"I--" said Cantaloupe. "Well. Yes, yes, he did mention something."

"You're inviting me?" said Nepomuk.

"I take that as a yes," said Venitia Holland. "If it's all right with Herman and Cantaloupe, of course."

Herman Capelmeister and Cantaloupe looked at each other.

"Swordfish," said the waiter.

"Scotch," said the busboy.

Herman Capelmeister said, "Check."

"Bottom's up, boys," Cantaloupe said.

"You know, I might stay up there after the summer," said Nepomuk. "Oh," shouted Nepomuk, who hadn't noticed Mrs. Holland had gone back to her table. "Tell Ursula I said 'Yes.'"

"You might stay there year 'round?" said Cantaloupe.

"Yes, well, there's a boarding school nearby."

"Spoken like a Capelmeister," said Herman Capelmeister. He drained his glass.

Cantaloupe downed her Scotch.

"Ursula's pregnant," said Nepomuk.

A Poet and I Know It

2006-06-19T03:33:00.000-04:00

This is from something I wrote to an email correspondent today:
"Partner" will come again to mean "business associate" soon. The one word which people of my orientation have added to their permanent collection is "gay."
Sometimes, a pundit will bemoan the fact that the word "gay" has been co-opted. If you look at it, though, "gay" used to be a marginalized word. The fierce drag-queens of old ripped it from its shelter, painted it pink and set it on fire. "Gay" no longer means "politely cheerful." (It NEVER meant "happy.") It was a word which, I think, would have completely vanished from usage if it hadn't been transmogrified at Stonewall.

5:17 a.m.

2006-06-17T05:17:00.000-04:00

It's 5:17 in the morning and it's way to late to be posting blog entries.
I entered the title of a 78 r.p.m. record I've had for many years into the database at the Barnes and Noble of my employ and found that the particular song I wanted, as recorded by the performer I was interested in, exists on CD. The song was "Ukelele Lady" (which Bette covers these days), a recording from 1926 by a fellow named Frank Crumit. I ordered the CD and the song sounds marvelous in its full-bodied CD restoration. This performer was a cross between Rudy Vallee and Cole Porter. Most of the tracks on the CD were recorded in the twenties, with him on banjo and somebody awfully good on fiddle. Frank Crumit had a huge hit with a bit of light comedy called "Abul Abulbul Amir," the sort of song you'd hear in a POPEYE cartoon from the Great Depression. The history of this song is interesting. A Trinity College (Dublin, for you Joyceans) student named Percy French (not to be confused with Percy Faith) was quite a wag, and, like Frank Crumit after him, he played a banjo and wrote funny songs. He was a watercolorist of certain renown and took a civil service job as a "drain inspector," apparently for an outrageous salary. (This makes me think of Bob Dylan's cryptic line from DESOLATION ROW: "He went on sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet." Of course, in the London of the early 60's, a "drainpipe" was a type of pant-leg, so this character is probably closer to "the sword-swallower" who dogs Mr. Jones, the straight-to-closeted hero of Bob's "Ballad of a Thin Man.")
Anyway, Frank Crumit had a Number 12 hit, on which chart I don't know, with "Abdul Abulbul Amir." The song involves a fight to the death between two soldiers, one Russian, one middle-eastern. Maybe Anderson Cooper should sing it at the top of his broadcast instead of the headlines. For the curious, a couple of the lyrics are:

"Vile infidel, know
you have trodden the toe
of Abdul Abulbul Amir"

and

"The bravest by far
in the ranks of the Czar
was Ivan Skavinsky Skavar."

What's Number Twelve on the U.S. charts today? I have no idea, but I bet the song doesn't have a line to match the poetry of this:

"A Muscovite maiden, a vigil she keeps,
alone 'neath the pale polar star,
And the name that she whispers so oft as she weeps,
Is Ivan Skavinsky Skavar!"

They Made It Snappy

2006-06-11T18:33:00.000-04:00

"Edward G. Who?"
"Robinson. You've never heard of Edward G. Robinson?"
"I've heard of Edvard Munch."
"You've never heard this voice?" I pretended to hold a cigar and began to make a grimacing face. In Edward G. Robinson's tone, I said, "Mother of mercy...Is this the end -- of Rico?"
My dinner companion looked at me. "What's that?" said my dinner companion.
"An imitation of Edward G. Robinson! Here," I said. I pretended to hold a cigar again and pointed at my chest with the imaginary cigar. "I'm the boss here, see?"
"What do you mean you're the boss?"
"It's what Edward G. Robinson always says."
"Who is Edward G. Robinson?"
"A thirties movie star."
"Would I recognize him?"
"I don't know. Since his voice is one of the most recognizable voices in movie history and you didn't know his voice, you might not recognize his face, either."
"What if your imitation of him wasn't any good?"
"That wouldn't matter because the lines are so famous most people would know who was famous for saying them. For example, if I suddenly say 'You dirty rat' in my regular voice, you'll still know who said it first."
"Who was it?"
"Oh, come on!"
"I don't know who said it."
"James Cagney."
My friend stared.
"Anyway," I said, "I've invited you for a reason."
"You mean this isn't all pointless?"
"You, my friend, are going to say something to the waiter in the voice of Rico from LITTLE CAESAR!"
"What's he sound like?"
"Edward G."
My friend looked dismayed.
"I know," I said. "I know. You can't imitate Edward G. Robinson."
"That's not what I was going to say."
"But you see," I said. "You'll want to do this."
"I won't want to do it!"
"Not only will you want to do it," I said, "You'll love it!"
"Why?" said my friend. "How?"
"How?" I said. "Why?"
"Yeah!"
"For money."
"Money?"
"That which is, of all evil, the root."
"What?"

[To Be Continued...]

Prohibitions

2006-06-07T22:47:00.000-04:00

H. L. Mencken once wrote to a friend (who had written something to the effect that he -- the friend -- detested "men who confess") that he agreed with him.

Another writer once wrote that dreams should not be described in works of fiction.

I wonder where this leaves me, I being a person with a somewhat violent urge to confess and a definite desire to report my dreams.

A few nights ago I dreamed I was in an antiques shop with three strangers who turned out to be thieves. In order to look at a plate I was asked to show one of the men my driver's license. I handed it to him and he put it in his pocket. The other men laughed. Desparate to get my license back I put a chair on a table, jumped on the table, stood on the chair and sang "Jug of This." I sang the wrong words at one point and stopped myself. Waving my hand, I said, "Wait, wait. It goes this way." I re-sang the line correctly, bowed, got off the chair, jumped off the table, took down the chair and looked at the men.
One of them clapped.
But I didn't get back my license.
The man who clapped broke the end off a bottle and walked toward me.

Wined and Cheesed

2006-05-31T12:48:00.000-04:00

I wonder if "wine and cheese" is still a phrase capable of turning an undergraduate Creative Writing major into a corner-sitting onanist. It certainly was in my day, when the prospect of sitting in one of those vertiginous amphitheatres watching some middle-aged drunk read from a copy of his fifteen-year-old chapbook from a podium in semi-darkness caused me to turn irreparably inward.

"There will be wine and cheese." That phrase has all the harrowing smily-faceness of the seventies. Forget the Brady Bunch. Don't bother with Watergate. Put Altamont aside. The seventies' was the time of Creative Writing and wine and cheese. It was the time for pretending the pot-addled sixties radical was a world-weary prize-fighter. It was the time to put a beige-suited bore up for a three-day weekend at the Holiday Inn. God knows the Department Chair had learned by '76 not to give the guy his phone number.

Wine and Cheese. Oh, yes. Oh, no.

The Literary Advisor

2006-05-10T05:19:00.000-04:00

Here's a story I wrote in 1978, when I was in twelfth grade. It was not a school assignment. I felt like writing it. I have taken it from a carbon copy because I can't find the original. I've put brackets around a line I may or may not have omitted from the final draft. (Carbon doesn't erase easily.) I've retained my poor spelling and punctuation. I've recently written an explanatory note. It appears below the story, after three asterisks.

The Literary Advisor

by Fred Wemyss

There was a very gigantic room with rows of desks throughout, which made room for only small crawlspaces, through which the Literary Advisor walked. Seemingly, the room teemed with writers scrawling or typing away, all ambitious to satisfy the Advisor Helmsley.

He was their idol. The image of the lonely observer, he was; noting every one of their moves and helping them. When he held up his nose and snorted it looked like a lack of hope; but not like disdain.

A writer in that room would write endlessly; hoping to perfect his work; feeling fearful and inferior. All the writers wanted to gratify Helmsley.

Helmsley walked along playfully; gliding. He saw one girl's work and said suddenly and very loud, "Your use of the phrase here 'blue patching' has," and he paused and raised his head, "texture."

The girl had trouble concentrating for the first few minutes after his flattering her, but her rigorous training helped her to a high level of concentration when she started work again.

At a point much farther down the room, Advisor Helmsley was standing and holding a writer's paper up closely to see. The man sat patiently with his hands folded, contentedly awaiting Mr. Helmsley's dramatic reading.

"People." Everyone looked up. "Please; pens and pencils down. Typewriters locked." The Advisor was holding the paper very carefully. Helmsley read:

"Spider walked along the balcony. Lavinia was on the rug on the lower level. Spider smelled the bouquet Lavinia held; and he flew off the balcony, and lowered himself on his string into that bouquet. Lavinia usually noticed things like..."

Helmsley smiled. "This is marvelous."

After the writers finished swooning, Mr. Helmsley gave advice quietly to individual writers; often advice on how to space lines and cross-out and improve.

The writers happily wrote away, in the usual line of things.

Helmsley picked up Bark's paper and saw the words, in quotation marks, "Spokane--The Town That Refreshes."

" 'Spokane. The Town That Refreshes?' Mr. Bark, I do hope you can continue with this." Bark was a literary genius. He had impressed his overlings all his life, and didn't have to practice. He had a literary authority which awed his peers and truly inspired Advisors. He didn't write anymore, though.

Helmsley said, "Please, read us this week's writings, Mr. Bark."

Bark took out a thick folder labeled with his name in heavy magic marker.

Helmsley was looking around the room smiling, with delighted eyes.

Everyone watched.

Bark pulled out his sheaf. He removed the top sheet and put it on the bottom. He took the new top sheet and put that on the bottom. Both of them were blank. Bark took a third sheet and placed it on a space on his desk, and plopped the stack onto it.

Mr. Helmsley had a disappointed, sorrowful expression on his face.

Bark took another top sheet and, lifting the stack, lightly put it underneath. He started flipping the sides of the stack.

He did this with a calm "I can't do anything about this either" expression.

"Do you--?" asked Helmsley.

But Bark started talking at the same moment. He was holding the paper with the one line he wrote that day. He read: " 'Spokane--The Town That Refreshes.' "

The writers were silent. [Mr. Helmsley asked Bark if that was all he had written. When Bark said it was,] Helmsley started to walk away, saying, "Well...", since he couldn't cope with any writer's downfall.

But, as he walked away, Bark stuck out his foot, sending Helmsley tripping. The genius Bark said, "Oh...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to trip you."

Advisor Helmsley smiled a bit and said, dusting off his pants, "Oh, it's alright."

Bark returned to his work--which consisted of thinking and sitting still--and Helmsley went around to help different writers quietly.

As time passed, Bark began to notice that Mr. Helmsley was looking winsome and melancholy; he heard him advising the writers in a detached voice. Bark's curiosity faded, though, and he continued concentrating on his future and observing the blank paper.

Silently, Helmsley walked up behind Bark. He slowly tapped him on the shoulder. He slipped a stapled short story onto Bark's desk as Bark turned his head.

Helmsley was smiling with a pleading expression.

Bark looked at the story on his desk, and, after an inaudible sigh, began to read it to the writers.

It was about a Painting and Drawing Advisor's activities and hopes.

Helmsley breathed in deeply every two or three sentences while the writers "hmmmed" ponderously.

Bark read: "At this point she felt she might approach this strapping supporter with the piece that was the pivoting spot of her life. The self-portrait she hid all..."

Helmsley's nostrils were in a continuous flare from this paragraph on, and they finally wavered back to normal during the closing sentence. he studied all the faces as Bark cleared his throat and laid the story down.

Helmsley glance at Bark and Bark said, "There it is." He paused. "What does everyone think of this story?"

The writers didn't say anything.

Helmsley spoke up. "I'd like you to say what you think of it, Mr.--"

"Well I'll tell you, sir. When I was reading the third paragraph, I couldn't help noticing the blinding compliment the narrator--oh, bestows on the heroine."

Helmsley did not move.

"The narrator pulls us along, then, into a fatty passage about her being great but unappreciated. The author has the amateurish habit of dismissing the main character's intolerable activities as proper in the first place. Whoever wrote this only reads his own stuff."

Another writer finally spoke. "Well, i felt sorry for the narrator--I mean the author himself--because I can see how he is struggling to write a lovable story."

Now there was a general buzz of discussion around the room, and Bark eyed Helmsley sinking down the side of an empty desk.

"Oh, Mr. Helmsley," he said, drowning out and quieting all the other writers, "I noticed--" (meanwhile, Helmsley was moving his body up a little straighter), "--about three split infinitives in the last paragraph." He shook the paper a little bit. "It is written: 'She flushed the razor down the toilet to hopelessly confuse...' Note: '...to slowly drain one's life.'...Here we go. Number Three: '...to dismayingly be found...' "

Helmsley seemed to be trying to talk, but his mouth moved open for no sound.

Bark asked all of the writers: "What is wrong with this story?" Then he said, "I will tell you."

Numbering the faults, Bark dissolved the story Helmsley had cautiously handed him ten minutes before.

Helmsley was rubbing his hair while Bark pronounced his observations.

The writers were listening intently and would raise their hands and say things to indicate their fascination with Bark's observations.

Helmsley was finally called on to state his opinion.

He stood up proudly, and said nothing for about ten seconds.

At the ninth second, another writer started talking: "I actually don't think he made much of an effort."

Helmsley closed his mouth.

The writer kept formulating opinions, and during a pause Bark cut in, saying, "Another fascinating point--" and he was sly "--would probably be offered up by Mr. Helmsley."

Helmsley was standing, and felt his feet teeter-tottering a bit. He eventually spoke. "I know the story is not well patterned, but--"

Bark stared.

Helmsley had taken three and a half months to write the story.

"I feel it has merit in some spots; meretricious merit."

Bark asked for an example.

Helmsley sat down and said, "I'm sort of tired." He waved his hand slightly in an Advisor's indication to go back to work.

Bark had a satisfied look in his eyes, and put a piece of paper in a typewriter he lifted from the rack of the desk next to him, and started typing away furiously. His title was "Spokane--The Town That Refreshes." He wrote a whole page in about seven minutes.

The other writers pondered and wrote sentences minutes apart.

Helmsley sat with his hand on his forehead.

Bark had another page written in another seven minutes. he double-spaced, too.

He had a ten-page story finished in a little over an hour, which turned out a few centuries later to save humanity.

Helmsley sat in ignored, profound triviality.

* * *

I wrote this in 1978, after watching WOR's re-run of THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT, the British TV movie of Quentin Crisp's autobiography. John Hurt played Quentin Crisp. I'd seen it when it was run the first time, a few months before, and found it very moving, especially at moments when Crisp seemed as if about to faint. The second time it was run, I watched it with my father. He kept pointing out that Crisp was making very good points. Dad knew me better than I knew myself. When I wrote "The Literary Advisor," Hurt's performance was on my mind. Mr. Helmsley, the Literary Advisor, is based on that performance. I was making fun of Helmsley, but I hoped he was the sympathetic figure and not Bark, who was based on what I feared I would become. I'd had a Creative Writing unit in twelfth-grade English. The teacher told us that she'd secretly turned in a story of her own a few years before and that the kids had ripped it apart, causing her to weep. She loved us and told us she wasn't going to do that to us. I'd also had some exposure to the Creative Writing mafia, when, in 1974, my father got me in free to the Hofstra Writer's Conference. A Newsday reporter wrote an article about the Conference with the headline "Would-Be Writers Get Aid For Egos." Sombody taped it to a classroom door and several hurt people discussed it in a question and answer session with an established writer. I hated the Newsday reporter and the people who complained about it. A few months after I wrote "The Literary Advisor" I was taking Creative Writing in college and became quite as snotty as Bark. I saw Quentin Crisp almost twenty years later in a diner. He was giving an interview to a fascinated young man and was anything but defeated.

H. L. Mencken On Mark Twain

2006-05-05T01:01:00.000-04:00

Today I'm giving this space over to an article written in 1917. It is by H. L. Mencken, one of the funniest writers who ever lived. This article is a serious one, but it is the work of one humorist writing about another. I just read Twain's HUCKLEBERRY FINN (which I first read in High School) and sought out Mencken's views on Twain. I found this on the internet. I certainly doubt there's a copyright on it. Here it is. It appeared originally in THE NEW YORK EVENING MAIL:

MARK TWAIN'S AMERICANISM

by H. L. MENCKEN

November 1, 1917

When Mark Twain died, in 1910, one of the magnificos who paid public tribute to him was William H. Taft, then President of the United States. "Mark Twain," said Dr. Taft, "gave real intellectual enjoyment to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come. He never wrote a line that a father could not read to a daughter."

The usual polite flubdub and not to be exposed, perhaps, to critical analysis. But it was, in a sense, typical of the general view at that time, and so it deserves to be remembered for the fatuous inaccuracy of the judgment in it. For Mark Twain dead is beginning to show far different and more brilliant colors than those he seemed to wear during life, and the one thing no sane critic would say of him to-day is that he was the harmless fireside jester, the mellow chautauquan, the amiable old grandpa of letters that he was once so widely thought to be.

The truth is that Mark was almost exactly the reverse. Instead of being a mere entertainer of the mob, he was in fact a literary artist of the very highest skill and sophistication, and, in all save his superficial aspect, quite unintelligible to Dr. Taft's millions. And instead of being a sort of Dr. Frank Crane in cap and bells, laboriously devoted to the obvious and the uplifting, he was a destructive satirist of the utmost pungency and relentlessness, and the most bitter critic of American platitude and delusion, whether social, political or religious, that ever lived.

Bit by bit, as his posthumous books appear, the true man emerges, and it needs but half an eye to see how little he resembles the Mark of national legend. Those books were written carefully and deliberately; Mark wrote them at the height of his fame; he put into them, without concealment, the fundamental ideas of his personal philosophy -- the ideas which colored his whole view of the world. Then he laid the manuscripts away, safe in the knowledge that they would not see the light until he was under six feet of earth. We know, by his own confession, why he hesitated to print them while he lived; he knew that fame was sweet and he feared that they might blast it. But beneath that timorousness there was an intellectual honesty that forced him to set down the truth. It was really comfort he wanted, not fame. He hesitated, a lazy man, to disturb his remaining days with combat and acrimony. But in the long run he wanted to set himself straight.

Two of these books, The Mysterious Stranger and What Is Man? are now published, and more may be expected to follow at intervals. The latter, in fact, was put into type during Mark's lifetime and

privately printed in a very limited edition. But it was never given to the public, and copies of the limited edition bring $40 or $50 at book auctions to-day. Even a pirated English edition brings a high premium. Now, however, the book is issued publicly by the Harpers, though without the preface in which Mark explained his reasons for so long withholding it.

The ideas in it are very simple, and reduced to elementals, two in number. The first is that man, save for a trace of volition that grows smaller and smaller the more it is analyzed, is a living machine -- that nine-tenths of his acts are purely reflex, and that moral responsibility, and with it religion, are thus mere delusions. The second is that the only genuine human motive, like the only genuine dog motive or fish motive or protoplasm motive is self interest -- that altruism, for all its seeming potency in human concerns, is no more than a specious appearance -- that the one unbroken effort of the organism is to promote its own comfort, welfare and survival.

Starting from this double basis, Mark undertakes an elaborate and extraordinarily penetrating examination of all the fine ideals and virtues that man boasts of, and reduces them, one after the other, to untenability and absurdity. There is no mere smartness in the thing. It is done, to be sure, with a sly and disarming humor, but at bottom it is done quite seriously and with the highest sort of argumentative skill. The parlor entertainer of Dr. Taft's eulogy completely disappears; in his place there arises a satirist with something of Rabelais's vast resourcefulness and dexterity in him, and all of Dean Swift's devastating ferocity. It is not only the most honest book that Mark ever did; it is, in some respects, the most artful and persuasive as a work of art. No wonder the pious critic of The New York Times, horrified by its doctrine, was forced to take refuge behind the theory that Mark intended it as a joke.

In The Mysterious Stranger there is a step further. What Is Man? analyzes the concept of man; The Mysterious Stranger boldly analyzes the concept of God. What, after all, is the actual character of this Being we are asked to reverence and obey? How is His mind revealed by His admitted acts? How does His observed conduct toward man square with those ideals of human conduct that He is said to prescribe, and whose violation He is said to punish with such appalling penalties?

These are the questions that Mark sets for himself. His answers are, in brief, a complete rejection of the whole Christian theory -- a rejection based upon a wholesale reductio ad absurdum. The thing is not mere mocking; it is not even irreverent; but the force of it is stupendous. I know of no agnostic document that shows a keener sense of essentials or a more deft hand for making use of the indubitable. A gigantic irony is in it. It glows with a profound conviction, almost a kind of passion. And the grotesque form of it -- a child's story -- only adds to the sardonic implacability of it.

As I say, there are more to come. Mark in his idle moments was forever at work upon some such riddling of the conventional philosophy, as he was forever railing at the conventional ethic in his private conversation. One of these pieces, highly characteristic, is described in Albert Bigelow Paine's biography. It is an elaborate history of the microbes inhabiting a man's veins. They divine a religion with the man as God; they perfect a dogma setting forth his desires as to their conduct; they engaged in a worship based upon the notion that he is immediately aware of their every act and jealous of their regard and enormously concerned about their welfare. In brief, a staggering satire upon the anthropocentric religion of man -- a typical return to the favorite theme of man's egoism and imbecility.

All this sort of thing, to be sure, has its dangers for Mark's fame. Let his executors print a few more of his unpublished works -- say, the microbe story and his sketch of life at the court of Elizabeth -- and Dr. Taft, I dare say, will withdraw his prominciamento that "he never wrote a line that a father could not read to his daughter." Already, indeed, the lady reviewers of the newspapers sound an alarm against him, and the old lavish praise of him begins to die down to whispers. In the end, perhaps, the Carnegie libraries will put him to the torture, and The Innocents Abroad will be sacrificed with What Is Man?

But that effort to dispose of him is nothing now. Nor will it succeed. While he lived he was several times labeled and relabeled, and always inaccurately and vainly. At the start the national guardians of letters sought to dismiss him loftily as a hollow buffoon, a brother to josh Billings and Petroleum V. Nasby. This enterprise failing, they made him a comic moralist, a sort of chautauquan in motley, a William Jennings Bryan armed with a slapstick. Foiled again, they promoted him to the rank of Thomas Bailey Aldrich and William Dean Howells, and issued an impertinent amnesty for the sins of his youth. Thus he passed from these scenes -- ratified at last, but somewhat heavily patronized.

Now the professors must overhaul him again, and this time, I suppose, they will undertake to pull him down a peg. They will succeed as little as they succeeded when they tried to read him out of meeting in the early '80s. The more they tackle him, in fact, the more it will become evident that he was a literary artist of the very first rank, and incomparably the greatest ever hatched in these states.

One reads with something akin to astonishment of his superstitious reverence for Emerson -- of how he stood silent and bare-headed before the great transcendentalist's house at Concord. One hears of him, with amazement, courting Whittier, Longfellow and Holmes. One is staggered by the news, reported by Traubel, that Walt Whitman thought "he mainly misses fire." The simple fact is that Huckleberry Finn is worth the whole work of Emerson with two-thirds of the work of Whitman thrown in for make-weight, and that one chapter of it is worth the whole work of Whittier, Longfellow and Holmes.

Mark was not only a great artist; he was pre-eminently a great American artist. No other writer that we have produced has ever been more extravagantly national. Whitman dreamed of an America that never was and never will be; Poe was a foreigner in every line he wrote; even Emerson was no more than an American spigot for European, and especially German, ideas. But Mark was wholly of the soil. His humor was American. His incurable Philistinism was American. His very English was American. Above all, he was an American in his curious mixture of sentimentality and cynicism, his mingling of romanticist and iconoclast.

English Traits might have been written by any one of half a dozen Germans. The tales of Poe, printed as translations from the French, would have deceived even Frenchmen. And Leaves of Grass might have been written in London quite as well as in Brooklyn. But in Huckleberry Finn, in A Connecticut Yankee and in most of the short sketches there is a quality that is unmistakably and over whelmingly national. They belong to our country and our time quite as obviously as the skyscraper or the quick lunch counter. They are as magnificently American as the Brooklyn Bridge or Tammany Hall.

Mark goes down the professorial gullet painfully. He has stuck more than once. He now seems fated to stick again. But these gaggings will not hurt him, nor even appreciably delay him. Soon or late the national mind will awake to the fact that a great man was among us -- that in the midst of all our puerile rages for dubious foreigners we produced an artist who was head and shoulders above all of them.

For More Options, Flush Pound

2006-04-30T01:12:00.000-04:00

I had to use the restroom one day at work, so in I went. I was staring at the political grafitti which had been crossed out, re-written, painted over, re-re-written, bleached, re-re-re-written and then expanded upon, when I heard the door open and a voice bellowing "Don't sign the contract!" It was an authoritative voice, designed to make people piss, so it helped me do what I was doing. The voice came closer and the man whose voice it was went up to the urinal next to mine.

"Don't talk to legal until I see the contract!" he said indignantly. Unzipping, he was silent a second. I moved away from him, feeling intimidated and the electric eye detected the shift, causing my toilet to flush. "What noise?" said the man. "I don't hear any noise."

I could hear a muffled voice on the other end of his phone making a noise of protest. "No, I'm not in a bathroom," said the man.

A loud, resonating noise similar to a Slurpee being finished sounded from the stall in the corner.

"What are you talking about?" said the man, walking away from his urinal. It flushed. He ran his hands under the sink and shouted "Keep those sharks out of the office!" He put his hands under the hand dryer. "What?" he said. "What?"

I finally finished and walked toward the sink, the urinal flushing in my wake. I washed my hands and waited for the man to finish his hand drying. The whirring stopped, but he placed his hands under the machine again, causing it to start a second time.

I stood with my hands dripping.

He said into the phone: "Show them the non-binding contract."

The fellow in the stall said, "Hey, anybody, can you see if there's paper in here somewhere?"

I looked in the unoccupied stall. I didn't see any toilet paper. "Um," I said, timidly, "I don't see any."

"Don't let the client see the contract!" shouted the businessman.

"There's no toilet paper?" shouted the occupant of the stall.

"Hang on, please," said the man on the cell phone. "Hey, stall boy, cut out the personal noises. I'm on the phone."

There was a silence, then an ashamed moan followed by the sound of a belt buckle scraping the floor. The stall door opened with a slam.

"I think I've gotta go," said the man. He was still drying his hands, but he was looking at the figure bounding toward him from the stall.

The cell phone man darted out of the bathroom. The other man ran after him.

I stuck my hands under the dryer. A man walked in saying, "Don't worry, I can talk. This is hands free."

An earpiece stick out of one of his ears.

"Nothing to wipe with," I said.

"What?" he said.

"Call for back-up," I said. The door shut behind me.

The Frustration of Sisyphus

2006-04-14T15:40:00.000-04:00

Mr. Hermner had finally broken a sweat. He was alone, in cut-off shorts, a white T-shirt and old sneakers. The leaves beneath the hedges were now, as a result of his toil, just to the right of the hedges. He wiped his brow after dropping the rake and went inside.

"Honey," he said to no one. "Where are the leaf bags?

By now, reader, you'll hate him as much as I, the narrator, do. I'll let you in on a little secret. Mr. Hermner is not married and he does not live with anyone. Whenever he gets home from work he says "Honey, I'm home."

Mr. Hermner found the leaf bags. He reached in the box, unrolled the spool until the perforation was visible, and tore off a bag. Outside, he opened the bag and, sticking his toe in the opening, pushed little palmfuls of leaves into it. He had to extract a thorny twig before closing the bag.

He had a hard time tying the bag because it was so full it wouldn't twist enough to allow room for a knot. He put his foot in the bag and pushed down the leaves, which kept coming right back up. When he was finished he put the bag at the curb.

He raked under the maple tree, bagged the leaves, tied the bag and put it by the curb.

In the kitchen he drank a glass of water and looked out the screen door.

The reader will have a moment of sympathy for Mr. Hermner, Mr. Hermner being tired.

How did Mr. Hermner come by this house, with its curb and its hedges and maple tree? If the reader is interested in that, the narrator must laugh and say, "I'm not."

By now, of course, the reader will loathe the author. Let me remind the reader that I'm the narrator, not the author. Please don't make your mind up about me yet.

Mr. Hermner paid rent. He worked a five-day week, which often turned into a six-day week, for people he vaguely mistrusted.

The narrator wishes he didn't have to focus on Hermner. The narrator would prefer another assignment.

After putting the two bags of leaves by the curb, Mr. Hermner wondered if he should bag a third. He decided he wouldn't. He took a shower, drove to a supermarket, bought a flank steak and some beer and drove home.

Shhh! The author's tired. Let's stand on his shoulder. He's looking at the manuscript. He doesn't know what to do with it. He's just staring. Okay, I'd better climb down and get back in place.

After putting the flank steak in the refrigerator, Mr. Hermner folded up the shopping bag and put it in the garbage. He went to the couch, lay down and fell asleep.

I think the author's fallen asleep. While we've got a chance, do you want to know what he was going to call this? Wait, wait, wait, I'll tell you later, he's awake.

Mr. Hermner rolled over.

He wanted to call it "The Sis of Mythyphus." It was supposed to be about a blocked writer whose sister does something. The whole thing was created to fit the title. Then he decided this was just ridiculous, so he sumply focused on the frustrated writer.

Mr. Hermner heard a sound in his dream. One arm shot out, adreniline filled his bones and he yielded to slumbers.

National Buffoon

2006-04-11T00:27:00.000-04:00

I was ringing sales at the bookstore today when a paranoid-looking guy put his purchase in front of me. I rang it up and didn't comment on his T-shirt, which had, in big white letters against a black background (next to a big white Statue of Liberty) the words "Welcome To America. Now Speak English!"
I bet he ordered it from a conservative talk show host. Now that the issue of illegal aliens is a big news item, he's wearing the shirt wherever he goes.
He looked at me suspiciously as my eyes scanned his T-Shirt.
I wonder if his great-grandfather broke into a sweat at Ellis Island while a short-tempered authority mis-spelled his name and stared at his daughter as if she were a leg of lamb.
I wonder if his great-great-great-great-great grandfather disembarked from the Mayflower, hewed the forests and constructed Plymouth.
Did his father's father's father's father shed his blood at Gettysburg?
Does he have a drop of African blood in him?
Does he have an ancester with a loin-cloth reading "Welcome to the New World. Now speak Ojibwe?"

Kitchen Sink

2006-04-04T19:13:00.000-04:00

Merriam-Webster, crazy gal that she is, says that "Variorum" is a noun meaning "an edition or text of a work containing notes by various persons or variant readings of the text."

This entry and the previous one form a variorum edition in progress of a story I'm writing. I have given my previous entry the title "Right, Then." The text of the present entry, which is called "Kitchen Sink," includes some of "Right, Then," but it departs from it and goes its own way. I hope Merriam approves.

"Kitchen Sink"

by

Frederick Wemyss

"Right, then, Fred, we're going to see Mister Klipper today."

"What's he?"

"A sharp gent, you might say, as is Mrs. Klipper."

Before Fred could react, his mother cut in. "I shouldn't think she's a gent."

Sissy said, "Are you taking him to get a haircut Daddy?"

"What if I don't want one?" said Fred.

"Well, that's where Mister and Mrs. Klipper come in. The Klippers is a sharp pair, they is."

Bryan came into the kitchen and ran his fingers through Fred's hair. "This is the kind o' hair gets you beat up at soccer matches."

"Sod soccer!" said Fred.

"Did you hear him, Mum?" said Sissy. "He does say 'sod'."

"Don't say 'sod'," said Mrs. Cogwheel.

"An' never say 'sod soccer'," said Bryan.

"Bryan!" said Sissy and Fred, Sissy because Bryan had used a terrible word and Fred because Brian dug his fingers harder into his scalp.

"That hurts," added Fred.

"You could use some shearing, too, my boy," said Mr. Cogwheel. "Come on then, both of you."

"Daddy," said Bryan mournfully.

"It looks like a rat's nest," said Mrs. Cogwheel.

"It's right short, it is!" said Bryan.

"Short compared to quite long," said Mr. Cogwheel.
"It ain't long."

"Long or short, it is a rat's nest," said Sissy.

"Shut up, Sissy!" Bryan said. He looked at his father. "You had long hair when you was a kid."

"I couldn't afford a haircut," said Mr. Cogwheel.

"Well, you think I can?" Bryan said.

"You can when I'm payin' for it. Come on, lads."

"Bugger all," said Bryan.

"Mummy, do you hear him?" said Sissy.

"He said 'Bugger', didn't he?" said Mrs. Cogwheel.

"Well, yeah, he said 'Bugger'!" Sissy said. She gasped, hearing herself, and covered her mouth.

"I'm asking the barber to cut all your tongues out," Mr. Cogwheel said.

Right, Then!

2006-04-01T15:21:00.000-05:00

"Right, then, Fred, we're going to see Mister Klipper today."

"What's he?"

"He's a sharp gent, you might say, as is Mrs. Klipper."

Lucy looked at her husband. "I shouldn't think Mrs. Klipper's a gent, sharp or not."

Sissy said, "Are you taking him to get his hair cut, Daddy?"

"What if I don't want my hair cut?" said Fred.

"Well, that's where Mister and Mrs. Klipper come in. The Klippers is a sharp pair, they is." Turning to his other sons, Mr. Cogwheel said, "And you lot, too. Come on."

Russell, the oldest, said, "But, Daddy, I ain't got anything saved."

"Then you won't object to my paying," said Mr. Cogwheel.

Russell said, "It's right short."

"Never short enough, lad. No guff, boys."

"Daddy, can we go on the Eye?" Kent was already putting on his coat.

Mrs. Cogwheel said, "Your father says no guff."

"That's not guff."

"You'll be an hour and a half at the barber with your hair such a mess."

"But we never go out for fun."

"You never go out for a haircut, either."

"Tommy Mapham gets his hair cut at home."

"Tommy Mapham's mother can't afford to pay for his haircuts."

"Yes, she can."

"Well, we can't afford to take you on holiday every time we go outside."

Impressions From When I Was Ten

2006-03-28T04:16:00.000-05:00

Here's a review I posted on IMDB yesterday of the 1970 movie GIMME SHELTER, which documents the Stones concert at Altamont:

I saw this movie in its first run in 1970. I was ten years old. I'll rent the DVD someday, but I think I can comment on the impression it made on me then. I remember being intrigued when Mick Jagger is in the editing room being shown footage of the stabbing. What stayed in my brain was that this person (Mick Jagger) was just as horrified by what happened at his concert as anybody else. As a kid, I equated celebrities with authorities, and seeing Jagger's expression of astonishment as he watched the footage was, as it were, an eye-opening experience. I went with two friends who were about eleven. When the mother of one of them picked us up afterwards (this being an era when an adult wouldn't have a second thought about leaving a group of children at a suburban movie theatre for a few hours) my friends described the movie in detail. They gave her minute details about the chaos, the murder and the ugliness. When I piped in to say I liked the part with the naked girls the car got quiet. My friends looked at me as if I'd stabbed the audience-member myself. Even at eleven years old, they got the message and knew the talking points. I was still in my Woodstock mindset. They were already children of Altamont. At the time I didn't much like the music. I'd still rather hear Gram Parsons sing "Wild Horses" than the Stones, even though they wrote it. I'm going to rent this and look for ol' Gram Parsons. He's listed in the credits.

Shouts Out To Lisa!

2006-03-25T00:47:00.000-05:00

Lisa's in the house! She checked out my webpage recently. She told me today at work. Thanks for saying my site is good. I'll try to maintain quality!

TIME TO PARSE PARSONS. I've been listening to lots of Gram Parsons today. Here's a lyric by him and (possibly) Chris Hillman. I say possibly, because when it comes to songs credited to Parsons and Hillman I don't know who wrote the words and who wrote the music or if they both wrote the words and music. This is hard enough to do with Lennon and McCartney and I know their stuff better than I should. Here's a lyric which lays out the Christian grounding of the apocalyptic song SIN CITY:

A friend came around,
Tried to clean up this town.
His ideas made some people mad.
He trusted his crowd,
So he spoke right out loud,
And they lost the best friend they had.

I have to do this in the next ten minutes because Bill Maher's coming on, so, very quickly, here's my analysis of this lyric:

"A friend came around" refers to Jesus, who is often called a "friend" in song. (One such song is an old church song called "What a Friend We Have in Jesus.") "Tried to clean up this town" refers to Jesus's efforts to persuade people to do good. "His ideas made some people mad." Jesus enraged the religious authorities in his day. "He trusted his crowd." Jesus trusted the Apostles (his crowd) to spread his word. He also trusted that the their selfishness would help lead to his crucifixion, which would, in its turn, save sinners. "So he spoke right out loud." Speak out loud he did, and he knew this would cause the authorities to destroy him. "And they lost the best friend they had." "They" being everybody on earth, the authorities, the believers, the Apostles, the non-believers and people who had never heard of him or what he had to say. He was lost and rose again.

I have no idea if Gram Parsons believed in Jesus, but he certainly sang a very sincere version of "I Like The Christian Life." I think he wanted to bridge gaps. The Byrds recorded over the vocal he'd done for that and sang it in a snarkier way, but Parsons's vocal, which has been restored and can be found on a bonus track from the Byrds's SWEETHEART OF THE RODEO, is sweet. He died at 27, a heroin addict. From pain, much art.

Thoughts of God

2006-03-19T23:12:00.000-05:00

One day, God was walking on the beach. It was early in the morning and he didn't see many people. The waves lapped his feet. Looking left, he admired the seamless horizon and the dipping of the gulls. Then, straight ahead, he saw a man in a backwards baseball cap and T-shirt, but no pants. God didn't say anything as he passed. "Pants MIGHT have covered that man's state of semi-arousal," thought God. He continued walking. He looked to his right and felt inspired by the cutting-edge architecture.

"Glass and blonde wood do match the seashore," thought God. He saw two men with baggy bathing suits, sunglasses, striped T-shirts and flip-flops. They were walking a pair of Corgis.

"That's nice," thought God. He noticed a swimming pool by one of the houses and heard laughter amid the splashing. Glasses tinkled.

"It's early for them to be drinking," he thought. He heard cheering in the distance, bellows of laughter and a chorus of voices saying "Awwwww!"

"Volleyball," thought God. The scent of sun lotion wafted his way as he passed. "Each of them naked," thought God. "Flaccid, however, from what I see. Nothing untoward." He decided to cross the ocean.

All was well over the waters of the deep and by the time he reached Chelsea God was feeling refreshed. He saw the happy faces of the tourists on the London Eye and thought of humming "Rule, Brittania."

It was getting dark. He stepped into a pub.

A football match was on a TV screen above the bar. Behind the bar, a man in a team T-shirt was hitting a woman across the face with the backs of his hands. He hit her right cheek with his left hand and her left cheek with his right. The woman gurgled sobbingly.

"You like that, do you, girl?" said the man. "You like that?"

God saw a little boy in the corner who was moving his eyes from the match to the couple and back again.

God opened the door and walked out. He got on a double-decker bus which let him off at the Thames. He splashed his feet, made his way toward the entrance to the ocean and walked back to Fire Island.

In the little woods between the hot spots he saw a T-shirt draped over a branch, a bathing suit over another and heard and saw two men, one bent over the other. "No love in the voices," thought God. He jumped into the air, out of the little woods and landed about twenty miles north. He went into the window of a house and watched a man typing on a computer. "Why don't you write about my vengeance?" he wanted to say. "Why don't you write about the floods I send, the wars and the pestilence?"

The writer turned and looked at God. "I don't think God works that way," said the writer aloud to himself.

God went back to that summer, ten years before, when the writer sat in the sand at the Fire Island Pines. The naked writer's member pointed at the member of another naked person across from him. God had observed and had thought "This is reckless!" As the two men left to get on the Ferry together, a man began shouting at the other naked men.

"I'm here with my kids!" he shouted. "I'm here with my kids! My kids saw!"

God thought about the angry man and the men denied acceptance and the little witnesses among the adults. He jumped forward into the future and stood again next to the writer.

The writer looked at his computer and thought about the man's kids. "I hope to God they didn't see me," he wrote.

God didn't tell him what he thought.

Angry Sky '68

2006-03-18T14:40:00.000-05:00

In second grade, he dreamed that a hangman's noose descended from an airplane hovering above the playground at recess. The noose was made of copper wire. The other kids had been cheering, but the noise of the plane took over and everybody looked up. When the noose came down it was just in front of his face. The only sound was the engine of the plane and the increasingly loud beating of a ladle on a cafeteria table as the lunch monitor shouted "Quiet!" over and over.

The day before, there'd been an assembly in the gym. A classmate of his, David Nicholls, had won the contest for best paper written about the assassination. His own paper hadn't won, much to his own surprise, because the teacher always said his stories were good. He didn't think what he'd written was good. It was called "The Sadness of Senator Kennedy," and he hadn't heard of him until the shooting happened. The paper which the teacher picked was called "Murder," and at the assembly, David Nicholls's eyes amazed him as he read. "Murder!" David Nicholls read. His eyes were beams of blinding fury.

He'd been surprised when his mother had told him Robert Kennedy was the brother of President Kennedy. "So two brothers from the same family got shot?" he said.

He was pretty sure David Nicholls had never heard of Senator Robert Kennedy before, either, but he knew that David Nicholls was cognizant of good and bad and knew that adults could do unforgivable things. "Murder!"

"Quiet!" the cafeteria lady shouted in his dream the next night, when all the children stood still, and the flag was half-mast and a noose was lowered over his head. "Quiet! Quiet!"

When he was four, he saw a Charlie Chaplin movie at the Thalia and asked his mother, "Will that man be shot?" He always thought famous people would be shot. When he was seven, he began answering the phone at home and when he was eight he picked up the phone and the neighbor said, "Fred, tell your mother and father to put on THE TODAY SHOW. Robert Kennedy's been shot."

He loved to turn on the TV, so he put it on first and saw the moaning man whose head was moving right and left and heard someone saying "Back the cameras up, back the cameras up." He went up to his parents' room and told them Mrs. Vaivoda had called and that she said "Robert Kennedy" had just been shot.

But David Nicholls wrote the best paper.
The assembly was going to be outside, but there was rain, so it was in the gym. But the dream had all the same people where they would have been if they'd been outside. It was quiet out in the open, with the noose hanging in the air and the plane waiting in a fleecy cloud.

"Quiet!" shouted the cafeteria lady, banging her spoon. The writer of the losing paper looked up and saw the means of his own execution.

The next year an indelible "69" was chalked on the wall, which everybody always saw at recess.

A Contest To Determine Where My Short Story Is Going

2006-03-16T14:59:00.000-05:00

I Announce A Contest:

If there are any readers of this little blog, and of http://fredwemyss.livejournal.com, they are hereby invited to read the item below, which is the beginning of a story I'm writing, and to put their interpretations in the comment field. On top of this, they can tell me where they THINK it's leading.

Contestants are encouraged to be individualistic. These questions, which may be disregarded with no pain to myself, may be helpful in formulating answers:

Who is who in the story?
Is it confusing?
If so, does the author seem to be TRYING to confuse the reader?
Or, conversely, does the author seem to be confused himself? That is, is it true that he has nothing up his sleeve?

Winners will see that I avoid their ideas completely, so as not to plagiarize. They also win my thanks!

Please bear in mind that I can't indent on either blog. New paragraphs will be preceded by a space. A new section will be represented by two spaces.

Here's the beginning of the story:

Big Tragedy

by

Frederick Wemyss

The world, as seen through teardrops, begins to resemble an impressionist painting. The yellow, green and brown of a park become the trembling, final vision of a dying artist. There he is, prone, the brush rolling away from his hand, his easel falling forward. His painting is part of the garden now.

"Oh, that nut job?," said Bendenberg. "When?"

"Sunday," said the woman at the other end.

"What of?" Bendenberg asked.

"Well, natural causes I guess. They found him on the ground."

"Where?"

"Kretzer Park."

"Was this nighttime?"

"No, this was about three in the afternoon."

"They just found him?"

"Isn't that weird?"

"There are so many people there on a Sunday."

"I know."

"Well," said Bendenberg. "Thanks for letting me know."

"You're welcome."

"Did he have any family?"

"We all do."

"That means no."

"Bye, Tom."

"Bye, Myrtle."

Bendenberg pressed the "End" button and snapped the little cell phone shut. He opened his office door and lifted the lid of the metal box with the number 27 on it. He saw an envelope with the Bigco logo, a postcard from the dentist depicting a giant, smiling molar, a letter from a credit card company he didn't use and a flyer from the Kretzer Park Museum. He went back inside and read the flyer. There was a number on it.

He snapped the cell phone open again.

Tyrone's Power

2006-03-11T00:35:00.000-05:00

I just ordered the DVD of NIGHTMARE ALLEY from the store of my employ. It came to my attention when I was watching the Biography Channel's millionth rerun of its life of Tyrone Power. I'd heard of the movie but had forgotten a mental note I'd once made to myself to get hold of it. The clip from it showed our star emoting to his core and I realized I had to get the movie as soon as possible. Zanuck didn't like the fact that this movie, which Power had lobbied to make, shows him lsing his good looks. Even though the point of the movie was that the main character was falling apart, Zanuck felt the movie audience would stop going to Tyrone Power movies because he was ugly at the end of one of his movies. Zanuck released the movie to as few theatres as he could and let it play for as minimal a run as possible. Zanuck probably resented being pushed by one of his own employees. Edmund Goulding directed it. It was 1946 or so. Goulding's massive hit, GRAND HOTEL, had been made about fourteen years earlier. Hollywood hates artistic movies, actors who become artistic and artists who decline. Zanuck, personifying Hollywood, squashed the movie. Tyrone Power went back to making second-rate swashbucklers, really did lose his looks and died about twelve years later at the age of 46. He'd been a huge star since the age of 23, but by the time he died in 1958, he might as well have been a Civil War vet. He seemed ancient. He was, in fact a vet. He was in some of the fiercest battles of World War Two, in the Pacific. A Pretty Boy made of steel, Tyrone Power had enlisted in the Marines. When he got back from the war he tried to make a movie of substance. That NIGHTMARE ALLEY was made at all is a definite sign of his strength. But Hollywood sapped something vital from Tyrone Power. The country owed some of its freedom to his actions in the Pacific. But he had a fatal heart attack filming one of those sword fights. Poor old George Sanders was the other actor doing take after take in the terrible heat that day. Poor old George Sanders, who killed himself six years later, leaving a note which said, "I leave you to your cesspools." Ah! Hollywood is glorious in its misery. And Tyrone Power fled it briefly, to join the anonymous soldiers whose sisters, girlfriends and mothers would much rather have seen him from a balcony in flickering sumptuousness, in love with every adoring pair of eyes.

Commentary Track

2006-03-08T03:04:00.000-05:00

Hi, this is Del Whitsun, and I directed LADIES, PLEASE!

And I'm Teilhard De Har Donn, who played Saccharine. Oh, oh! Snarl's Gate Films! Del, tell us how Snarl's Gate got involved in this.

Hobleigh Hummerbun saw my short at Moondown. He mentioned it to Tracy Skidaddle, who worked with my Mom on SIX MAIDS ON A MAIDENHEAD --

Your Mom was in that? Which one was -- ? Was she the one who kissed the dust bunny?

That was Sheila Shelaylah.

You mean from I FATHERED YOUR FORBEARS?

Yeah.

That was my baby sister's favorite show!

No kidding?

So your Mom worked with the neighbor from I FATHERED YOUR FORBEARS?

Yes, and Hobleigh had contacted Mom years before after she did SIX MAIDS and he almost signed her onto WINGS OF WOMBATS, but they just became air-kiss acquaintances and he called her after Moondown. They started talking about which was Mom's favorite film and she said she'd just seen some of my shorts --

I've only seen the top part.

Teilhard! So, later, Tracy Skidaddle mentioned my short.

Which short?

The one that won.

Which one won one what?

PRINT THE LEGEND won best short.

Okay? I haven't heard of it.

Well, what were you? Thirteen?

I was if it was 2000?

Okay, so it was 2001. You were thirteen for part of that, unless you were born on January 1st.

I was born on Bastille Day.

I don't know when that was.

It was before either of us was born.

So was the 4th of July.

Yes, originally. Oh! It's the Frisbee scene! I hated that dog!

Well that was Tina's dog.

Tina? Who? Tina Who?

Tina of key grip fame.

The hound was her dog?

Yes. We had to put tangerine fruit roll on the part of the Frisbee with the lettering so "Wham-O" wouldn't show.

Wham what?

We didn't want Wham-O to sue.

Who the fuck is Wham-O?

Wham-O ran Enron in the sixties...WHEN THIS TAKES PLACE!

So the dog was such a pain in the nads because you couldn't get it to bite the right side of the Frisbee?

Corbett Smills! What a stroke of luck.

Corbett liked that dog, didn't he?

He let him hump his leg.

That's disgusting. You know why I hated that dog? Do you know what it was about that dog I despised?

Corbett inhabited the Park Ranger part, I just want to say.

No pigmentation in the irises. Like a damn Wegman dog. A normal person doesn't trust those animals.

I wanted a Golden Retriever but we'd have had to sign a release and we were running out of light. Tina had Randy in the van.

Did she sign a release at some point?

She still hasn't. Don't tell Snarl's Gate! Oh! The End.

We've been talking all this time? Did we illuminate?

Well, Teilhard, it's been a pleasure. What's next for you?

Looping.

Anything else?

Just my thanks. Del's an auteur, movie fans.

Want to see my Director's cut?

Action!

Night At The Oprah

2006-03-03T02:52:00.000-05:00

Oprah's patented giant "O" has been scoured off the cover of James Frey's A MILLION LITTLE PIECES. Frey's apology to the retired crackheads who've never before cracked open a memoir has been included, along with, I think, an expression of contrition from Nan A. Talese.
Every memoir I've flipped through in the last decade has included a disclaimer on the copyright page to the effect that names have been changed, composite characters put forth and events altered. I noticed a week or so before the "scandal" broke that there was no disclaimer in Frey's book.
THAT'S the scandal. The publisher didn't cover the ass of the author. Oprah Winfrey would have been unable to stage Frey's show trial if the standard disclaimer had been present.
Oprah Winfrey has not improved the reading habits of the American people. She's merely updated the concept of the prestigious bookshelf. Everybody's onto the fact that a wall of leatherbound editions is a sign of the owner's desire to climb the social ladder. A paperback boxed set of Faulkner does the trick these days. If 3 per cent of the Oprah fans who bought that last summer got through 3 per cent of "Barn Burning," I'll still believe they couldn't understand what they were reading.
Oprah reminds me of a teacher who turns on the kid who suddenly shows ambition. She hasn't helped any writer one bit.
I used to say Jonathan Franzen, in pooh-poohing THE CORRECTION's induction into Oprah's Book Club, had become the prig he always pretended to be. But now I see that he did what an artist must do, which is to distance himself from the great promoter of fad diets, simplistic psychology and televised punishment.

Sinlessness

2006-02-28T14:52:00.000-05:00

I deleted this entry a few days ago, thinking its length was responsible for a glitch which prevented updating and which caused my site to go blank. I'm re-posting it. By the way, I think the humorous bit at the end ruins the effect. I'm in good company, though. Twain tacked on a lengthy bit at the end of HUCKLEBERRY FINN which undercut his masterwork.
Humbly yours,

Fred Wemyss

SINLESSNESS

by Frederick Wemyss

"What do you think?" said Eve, holding the apple in her hand.
"Bite it, bite it!" said the snake, but Eve just kept walking toward Adam.
"The snake says I should bite this," said Eve.
Adam looked up from the pear patte he was making. "Isn't he droll?" Adam said.
"You think so," said Eve. "I think so. But the snake takes himself" (and here she leaned in toward her mate and whispered loudly) "very seriously!"
Both Adam and Eve laughed. Eve threw the apple hard. It smashed against the apple tree and Adam and Eve heard the snake slithering away in the rocks and leaves.
"Do you think pear-paste wrapped in fig leaves would taste good?" said Adam, after plucking another apple and throwing it at the snake's rattle (which he hit.)
"Well," said Eve, "There's nothing says it wouldn't."
With that, Eve tore some fig leaves off the fig tree and handed them to Adam. Adam, using a clam shell, scraped the mashed pears off the flat surface of the boulder he was using for a table. He put dollops of pulverized pear in the fig leaves and rolled two treats.
"Eve," said Adam, as he and Eve took bites of the tasty treats, "Do you realize we are unparallelled chefs?"
"Absolutely," said Eve. She grinned. "You know, the snake can't even eat this stuff. He has to eat flies!"
"Loser," said Adam.
"Isn't he?" said Eve.
They laughed and laughed, shaking their heads.
"What should we do with the two extra fig leaves I picked?" said Eve.
Adam snatched one up from the table, let it flutter to the ground and kneeled on it. "It would make a great prayer rug," he said.
Eve took the other fig leaf from the table. She held it out to the side and Adam charged. "O-ley," said Eve, "O-ley!"
Then they ran all over the Garden of Eden, snapping the fig leaves at each other after dipping them in the little spring. Every animal they passed was mystified.
Suddenly the snake hissed at them from between a deer's antlers. "Apples," he said. "Apples."
"None for me," said Adam.
"Me neither," said Eve.
Adam snapped his fig leaf on the snake's head, which stunned the snake for a second. Adam and Eve ran to the top of a rock.
"He has no sense of humor," said Adam.
"I know," said Eve. "And this THING he has with the forbidden fruit--"
"You know what's ironic?" said Adam. "He couldn't eat forbidden fruit if he wanted to, but he desparately wants you to have it."
"As if I'm going to eat forbidden fruit!" said Eve.
Both Adam and Eve raised their arms up and shook their heads.
"I think he's a little afraid of me," said Adam. "He thinks he'll persuade you to bite an apple and that you'll get me to try one."
"What a skunk," said Eve.
"You know what?" said Adam.
"What?" said Eve.
"I've had a little plan for a while."
"Oh, don't tell me," said Eve.
"You know what it is, I bet," said Adam.
"I bet I do! said Eve.
Without a word, Adam and Eve set about their happy task.
They stood up, looked left, looked right, saw the snake coiled up in his favorite palm frond and tip-toed past. Snickering, they crossed a stream and walked into a little forest.
With jagged tools made from rocks, vines and wood, Adam and Eve spent several hours making a boat. They tied the boat to a maple tree and placed it in the stream.
"It floats," said Adam.
Eve tested the rope. "It's secure," she said.
They picked up a giant shovel they'd crafted. They walked across the stream again, tip-toed up the hill past the snake and didn't stop until they reached the apple tree.
With patience, devotion and strength, Adam and Eve dug up the apple tree and carried it, roots and all, down the hill past the serpent, who still slept on the palm frond. With their burden they entered the forest and reached the stream. They placed the tree in the boat.
Adam tipped the boat with his hands. The boat rocked and the tree rocked with it. "It's snug," Adam said.
Eve cut the rope and the craft drifted down the stream.
Adam and Eve ran along the banks as the stream widened. They ran past rocks, mountains and beasts. Great fish swam beside the boat. Birds followed its course from above. Adam and Eve kept up with the boat until the river was so wide they could not even see each other. But from the bank Adam chose, he could see the branches of the tree sticking out from the boat in the vast body of water, and from the bank Eve chose, she could see the other side of the boat and the branches sticking out.
When the boat went over the edge of the falls, leaving nothing behind but the pinkest sunset Adam and Eve had ever seen, Adam began walking back and Eve began walking back. By the time they could see each other on opposite sides of the river the moon was up, and by the time they reached the place from which they'd launched the boat which took away the apple tree and all its fruit, the moon was beamed lustre on their embrace.
They lay under the palm frond that night. It was not as low to the ground as it had been earlier, the snake having vacated it, but its breadth was enough to shield the lovers from any rains. Adam and Eve slept so well they didn't notice if there had been rain or not, but when they woke, all the creatures of Eden were around them. Adam and Eve felt tremendous love for all Creation.
Next, they were aware of a slithering sound.
"Oh, him," Adam and Eve said at the same time. The various beasts and bugs jumped as the snake darted under their feet. Back and forth he went, his tongue slipping in and out. "Where is it?" he said. "Where is it?"
Adam, sitting on a log with Eve, said, "He doesn't even stop to hear the answer."
"Good," said Eve.
All day they sat on the log, wiggling their toes in a shallow pool a rhinocerous dug for them with his horn. They listened to a giraffe chewing the top leaves of an oak and patted the little chicadees which had alighted beside them on the log. And they watched the long, twisting entity which had tried to tempt them to eat apples traverse Eden inch by inch, up and down, back and forth, every which way until he started up Eve's leg.
"You're a pest," said Adam, gripping the snake under the jaw. He held the snake in front of him, its mouth opening wide and its tongue protruding. "What do you think, Eve?" said Adam.
Eve stuck her hand in the snake's mouth and as he started snapping it shut she forced her other hand in and soon was ripping the snake in two, all the way down to its whirling rattle.
"An excellent response, my dear," said Adam, and they cooked the tempter over a fire built for them by lightning bugs.
"Are you hungry?" Adam said, skewering a piece of burnt snake.
"Not for him," said Eve.
"Me, neither," said Adam.
Adam threw the piece of snake back on the fire and he and Eve watched the snake burn until he was nothing but smoke.
"Well," said Eve, "That's done."
"Adam?" said a voice. "Eve!" the voice added.
Adam and Eve looked up with a sense of glee. "Well, hello, Lord," they said. They got off the log. Adam saluted. Eve curtsied.
"Why do you curtsy?" said God, "When you have no dress to lift?"
"What?" said Eve.
"Adam," said the Lord. "Must you salute with more than just your hand?"
"What?" said Adam.
"I wouldn't look down if I were you!" said the Lord.
Adam and Eve looked down, first at themselves and then at each other. They gasped.
As the two grabbed fig leaves off the nearby fig tree, the Lord said, "How dare you eat of the apple?"
Covering his loins with a leaf, Adam said, "I didn't eat an apple."
Covering herself, Eve said, "I did not eat an apple."
"Neither of you can make it any better by lying," said the Lord.
Adam and Eve looked around at their friends the woodland creatures and felt preyed upon.
"Lying is wrong," of course," said Adam.
"Yes," said Eve. "It's wrong."
They both said, "But we haven't lied."
"Did I not command thee both not to eat of the fruit of the apple tree?" the Lord asked.
"Yes," said Eve.
"What?" said God.
"No," said Adam. "I mean, yes, you didn't NOT command us--"
"Yes," said Eve, covering her breasts with her forearm, "I mean, 'No, you didn't NOT command--"
"Okay," said God, instantly materializing in front of Adam and Eve. "Stop looking up! I'm right here in front of you."
Adam and Eve looked at God.
God paced three feet to the right, retraced his steps, kept going on another three feet, retraced those three feet worth of steps, turned to face Adam and Eve and said:
"I speak in metaphors."
"We know that," said Adam.
"We know that," said Eve.
"And yet you took what I said literally."
"When?" said Eve.
"When I said not to heed the serpent."
"What about when you said not to eat of the fruit of the--?" said Adam.
"Yes," God said, "You literally thought I meant you couldn't eat apples."
"Well, wasn't that good?" said Adam.
"Yes and no," said the Lord.
Adam saw a bit of Eve's left nipple and had to hold his fig leaf with both hands.
God went on: "Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury."
"What?" said the couple.
"Metaphor! Pretend you're on trial."
"AREN'T we on trial?" said Eve.
"You've been tried, judged and found guilty," said God.
"So we're on trial," said Adam.
"Trial's over. You're punishment began the moment you dug up the tree."
"But that was the happiest moment of our lives," said Adam.
"No it wasn't," said Eve. "The happiest moment of our lives was when I ripped the snake in two."
"Adam," said God, "Were you not the first to stick the shovel under the apple tree, Eve merely following suit?"
"Yes, Lord."
"And you thought you both thought it up at the same time."
"Yes," said Adam.
"Well, you didn't. You were happier about it than she was, because it was YOUR idea. Now, Eve, when Adam had the snake by the neck--"
"Snakes have necks?"
"The part under his head!"
"Okay, Lord."
"When he had his hand gripping the little viper's windpipe...Are you going to question 'windpipe?'"
"No."
"Okay, you thought he wanted you to kill the snake."
"Yes."
"Well, he didn't. He just wanted you to slap the snake's face."
"But when I ripped his face open, it was the happiest moment of our lives."
"'Fraid not, Toots. It was the happiest moment of YOUR life. Adam was a little nauseated. But he put a brave face on it."
"You're lying!" said Adam and Eve.
"No," said God. "Adam thinks I'm lying about what Eve thought and Eve thinks I'm lying about what Adam thought, but Adam knows I'm telling you exactly what he thought and Eve knows I'm telling you exactly what she thought. Answer me: On the night of the day you dug the tree up and shipped it into God knows where -- I being that God who does indeed know where -- Did you not, on that night, which was the night before you killed the serpent -- Did you not have sexual intercourse?"
"No!" said Adam and Eve.
"Why do you lie?"
"We're not lying."
"Yes, you are."
"No."
"Yes."
"What's wrong with sexual intercourse?" said Adam, puffing his chest.
"Yes," said Eve, her chin sticking out, "What's wrong with it?"
God smiled.
"Yes!" Adam exclaimed. "I had relations with her!"
"Yes!" said Eve. "I had relations with him!"
"So?" asked God.
Adam and Eve looked at each other, then at their feet and then at God.
"And yet neither of you says that was the happiest moment of your lives! Interesting."
"Why shouldn't it have been the happiest moment of our lives?" said Eve.
"Yes," said Adam, "Why shouldn't it have been?"
"I should ask you two that. Now," said God. "That was the first time you two did that."
"And the only time!" said Adam.
"So far!" said God. "You could have done it any time before."
"So we were obediant before having intercourse, but not afterward?" said Eve.
"What interests me is that you didn't have sexual union before uprooting and disposing of the apple tree."
"Don't dispose of the apple tree, with anyone else but me," sang Adam sarcastically.
"Bet you didn't know that song until you tried to get rid of temptation," said the Lord. "Did you?"
"I can't remember," said Adam.
"I can assure you, mortal, that you didn't. But now that you've eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, you know a little bit about everything. Even the future."
"But we didn't eat the apple."
"You didn't eat it, but you couldn't leave well enough alone. You wouldn't have destroyed the tree if you felt strong enough to resist its offerings. And once the source of temptation was seemingly removed from your universe you destroyed the creature I told you to ignore, which was doubly foolish because, in your mind, the thing he would have tried to tempt you to eat, that is, the apple, was absent."
"So what does this have to do with Eve and me attaining orgasm with each other?"
"Well, Adam, while you told yourself that you and Eve thought up the dispatching of the apple-tree, it was your idea, which you got her to carry out with you. Feeling, then, that you had power over her, you then felt she would yield to you sexually. Eve, when you did indeed yield to Adam sexually, you felt this gave you power over him and that he would let you destroy the snake, who, with the apple tree gone, could be an annoyance only, as opposed to the threat he was before the tree was removed. So, your night of mutual orgasm was not, as it should have been, a night of mutual giving, but actually a nocturne of enacted bargaining."
"Well, if you know so much--" said Adam.
"Yes," said Eve, "If you know so much--"
And together they said, "Make another snake and we won't listen to him and create another apple tree and we won't eat from it. We'll show you how much you know about us."
"I know something you don't know," said God.
"No you don't," said Adam and Eve.
Suddenly they no longer saw God standing in front of them.
"Where'd he go?" they said. "What does he know?"
A grove of apple trees was there now. Snakes slithered everywhere.
A voice boomed, "To show you I know everything, I've restored the apple tree tenfold and the snake a thousandfold. And if you want to see me, look in places you doubt exist. In nine months, less a day, you'll know what I know now that you don't now know."

"And then we'll know everything?" said Eve hopefully.
"And then we'll know everything?" said Adam, looking at a cloud which had just evaporated.
Amidst the snakes and apples and Adam and Eve, the Lord maintained his silence.
The day the baby was born Adam knew the truth. "Eve," he said, as the newborn suckled at her breast. "He's only a few hours old but I know what God knows!"
"Oh?" said Eve. She burped the baby.
"Yes, Eve. Remember looking at the boat going off into oblivion off the edge of the water-fall?"
"Yes," Eve said.
"Well, we were at the top of the waterfall, right?"
"Yes."
"And that was the edge of Eden."
"I assume so, yes."
"And we were looking West, because the sunset faced us."
"Yes."
"Well, I think we were looking Southwest."
Eve put the baby in the cradle. "That's what God knows?"
"No. Now, we weren't physically removed from anyplace, but we were metaphorically removed from our innocent Eden because God put up all those apple trees and installed the snakes."
"Obviously."
"Well, don't you see? That was our honeymoon. That was Niagara Falls!"
"Thrilling."
"That's not the point, Evie."
"No?"
"No! The direction we were looking. We were on the North side!"
"And?"
"We're Canadian!"
"Well, sort of pre-Canadian, yes."
"No, Eve! It's good news! Given the locale! We'll NEVER be responsible for Bush!"

One Paragraph

2006-02-27T21:18:00.000-05:00

Since I can't indent on my blog I'm going to do as Daniel Defoe, at least as he is represented in the Norton Critical Edition of MOLL FLANDERS, by refusing to indent. From now on, my essays and stories will each come in a solid block. The only clue the reader will have as to which character is talking will be such indicators as direct attribution and the sense of the wording. An example of paragraphless dialogue is: "Harry, where are we?" "I'm not sure, Larry." I bet you can guess which character said which sentence. Larry said the first sentence and Harry said the second one, that is, Larry said, "Harry, where are we?" and Harry said, "I'm not sure, Larry." MOLL FLANDERS is like that. You get very nervous reading MOLL FLANDERS. Of course, if you have no sense of paragraphing, reading MOLL FLANDERS won't make you nervous, but who would even attempt to read such a book as MOLL FLANDERS who hasn't been raised reading books and stories featuring indentation? Everybody, therefore, gets claustrophobic reading MOLL FLANDERS. Reading a novel which is one three-hundred-forty-eight-page paragraph is like driving on a bridge with no guard-rail. Subtract the element of fear in the latter case and it is similar to reading a single-paragraphed novel in that one is wondering how much more of it he can take. Even though the driver and the reader both know it will end, the feeling of something irreversible happening informs the undertaking. Three-quarters of the way across the bridge you're wondering if you're going to make one false move and go skittering off the edge into the rocks below. Three-quarters of the way through a one-paragraph epic you're saying, "My god, this is one giant paragraph!" It's a lot more horrifying than you might believe. I know I'm not alone. I read MOLL FLANDERS in my Junior year of college and mentioned it to my brother. He said, "Wasn't it disturbing?" "Not the content," I said, and then we both said, "It's one paragraph." We had been traumatized. But, inasmuch as I haven't been able to make a blog entry which retains the indentations I put in it before posting, I'm surrendering to the technology. There will be no spaces between divergent thoughts. Spaces merely imply that something is "Part One" and the next thing is "Part Two." Spaces don't come up to the snuff of indentation. One solid paragraph will be my boat down the river Net.

THE SHOKAN -- (NaNoWriMo, 2005)

2006-02-26T01:16:00.000-05:00

This is as far as I got in my attempt at writing a 50,000 word novel in the space of a month last year. Each November is National Novel Writing Month, as the web-page I'm about to list will tell you.
http://www.NaNoWriMo.org
Check the site out.
I wrote 8,000 and some words.

Anyway, here's what I wrote. A lot of it is almost incomprehensible, but if you wade through it, a little of what I have tried to convey comes through. The word tally is included just above the story:

Word Count So Far
8246 / 50000 words Novel Excerpt
(10,000 character limit)

The Shokan

By Frederick Wemyss

THE RACOON ATE the raw hamburger meat. It held the chunk between its paws.
"Don't get too close," the scientist said. His sons peered over the edge of the porch at the raccoon. "Who wants another hamburger?"
Each of the three boys said they wanted more.
"I'll make you another one if you finish the one you have, Bob," said the scientist.
"Daddy, I want another," said Fred.
"But you have almost a whole hamburger left," said the scientist.
"But I want another," said Fred. He was four.
Frank, who was eight, said, "I'll have another."
"Do you want onions?"
"Yes, please."
"Can I have onions?," said Fred.
"I'll give you more onions." The scientist took the paper plate with Fred's hamburger on it and set it on the picnic bench near the grill. He cut some more onion slices and put the onions on top of the hamburger.
"I'm finished," said Bob, running toward the grill.
"All right," the scientist said. "Would you like to make your hamburger this time?"
"Yes!" Bob shouted.
His father handed him a chunk of ground round. The little six-year-old, as the raccoon had with his paws, held the chunk in his hands. He pushed his hands together hard. He showed his father the patty.
"That patty's very thin," said the scientist. "I'll have to peel it off your hands." He did this. "Do you want onions, Bobby?"
The boy nodded three times.
The scientist took a handul of the onions he'd chopped, put them on the patty and rolled the patty and the onions into a ball. "You made it a little too flat to mix onions in, so I'm making this again." He held out the ball. "Here. Hit that with the palm of your hand."
The boy hit the patty the scientist held out, flattening it a little.
"There," said the scientist. He put the hamburger on the grill.
"Can I feed the raccoon?" Frank asked.
The scientist looked over his shoulder. "Throw him a little, but stay away from him. We've already fed him."
The purple darkness of the sky blended perfectly with the mountain now. The scientist said the word "Walpurgisnacht," and felt the warmth of the grill. "Frank," he said.
"Yes, Daddy?"
"What did Thomas Mann call one of those?"
"You mean what's the German for 'raccoon?'"
"No. That," said the scientist. With his left hand, which held a two-pronged fork, he made a sweeping gesture.
"Der Zauberberg!" said Frank.
"What would raccoon be?" said his father.
Frank said, "I don't know."
"I'll ask you another," said his father. "What would a magic raccoon be?"
"Der bergs. Der bergs whatever the word for raccoon is."
"Zauber is magic. Raccoon is almost the same in German."
"Der Zauberracoon?"
"The raccoon is under the house!" shouted Fred.
"He's gone to bed," said the scientist.
"He's under the porch," said Bob.
"Leave him be," said the scientist. "It will be time for your bed soon."
"How does he know when it's time to go to sleep?" said Bob.
The scientist flipped over the burger. "He doesn't know, actually."
"But it always goes to sleep at the same time."
"Always," said the scientist.
"He's an animal," said Frank.
"A raccoon is a very intelligent animal, but he doesn't plan anything."
"But he knows we're always out here when it gets dark."
A coal burst in the grill.
"No," said the scientist. "He doesn't know that. He's used to it. First the smell drew him. It's probably drawn alot of little animals who are sitting out there.
But he'd have never drawn near if we hadn't thrown food for him. Remember the first few days? He took the food and went away. Now he is habituated to this."
"What does habituated mean?" said Frank.
"He's gotten used to a pattern. He doesn't calculate our return. He can't help coming here."
Headlights shown on the house and moved across it. The scientist put the fork under the burger and lifted it. "Get a bun, Frank," he said.
"Who's here?" said Frank.
The gravel crunched as the car climbed up the hill.
The scientist took a bun from the bag and put it on the hamburger. "Take your burger, Frank."
The boy took the hamburger. He ate a bite.
Fred peered under the porch.
Bob put more onions on his hamburger.
The car door slammed. "Wemyss," said an authoritative voice.
"Damn!" shouted the scientist. "Doggy-damn! It's Whitsun! I thought it was a carload of Birchers!"
"It's a carload of booze, Wemyss. Help me get it out of the trunk!"
"But who is the gargoyle in the back?"
"That's me, Wemyss," said the person in the back, leaning forward and sticking his head out the front window.
"Chambliss! I thought as much! Come on in."
"You know how much I'd like to, Wemyss, but Archer will be wearing out the carpet if we don't get there in time for his mother's dinner."
"You're going dressed like that?"
"Oh, we're not going, Wemyss. But waiting for us is Archer's excuse for delaying being there. He'll let us in and then take the car. You'll see the lot of us tomorrow."
"I wouldn't expect otherwise," said Wemyss.
"Well, Wemyss," said Whitsun, returning from the porch. "Don't trip over the box of scotch."
"You're not bringing any to Archer's?"
"It's tea and warm milk there tonight. It's his mother's birthday. Unfortunately, he has to make a speech."
"He has to be at the Great Chalet by 9:00," said Chambliss, still leaning forward in the back seat.
"Isn't that late for an old lady's birthday party?"
"That's it exactly."
Chambliss said, "We've got a book for you, Wemyss."
"That's right," said Whitsun. "Joy ran halfway down Riverside Drive and handed it to us at the traffic light."
"JOSEPH UND SEINE BRUDER!" said the scientist. He recited the opening lines in German. "Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?"
"Is that what you said to the German prisoners, Wemyss?" Whitsun said.
"I was the candy kid," said the scientist.
"Daddy!"
The scientist looked at his third son.
"Can I give Raccoon my hamburger?"
"He ate already, Fred."
"Is that how well you cook, Wemyss?" said Archer.
"Wemyss, we're going." Whitsun got in the car. "We'll try to bring Chambliss tomorrow if he doesn't stay in bed all afternoon."
The scientist said, "If he can't sleep after a supper with the D. A. R., he's hopeless."
"He's hopeless if he can't sleep during it," said Whitsun. The car backed slowly down the hill.
"What's the D. A. R.?" said Frank, who had been standing there the whole time.
"Chambliss's mother and friends."
"But what's it stand for?"
"Diamonds And Rubies."
"'A' never stands for 'and' in an acronym."
"You're too smart for me, Frank."
"Daddy!
"Okay. It's Daughters of the American Revolution."
Frank said, "It should be Great-granddaughters of the American Revolution."
"How old do you think she'd be if she were born in 1776?" said the scientist.
"Two-hundred and eighty-eight," said Frank.
"No," said the scientist. "But you're partially right."
"One-hundred! One-hundred and eighty-eight."
"Say one-hundred-eighty-eight, not 'and' eighty-eight."
"Okay."
"Okay, boys," said the scientist. "It's bedtime."

IN OUR STUDY OF WEMYSS'S "THE SHOKAN," we need a little prehistory. While Wemyss's effect was to reveal the story through cumulative detail leading to one explosion, we do not have his leisure.
It helps to know that at the opening of the story, we have Wemyss's father, referred to only as "the scientist," cooking hamburgers for his three young sons. It is summertime, evening has come, and all are enjoying the nightly return of a little raccoon.
One ought to know that in real life the raccoon had a name. Wemyss, of course, could not remember it when writing "The Shokan," so his way of incorporating the fact that the Wemysses held such affection in their hearts as to give the raccoon a name, is to have his own counterpart, the four-year-old Fred, refer to the raccoon as "Raccoon."
Wemyss vociferously denied that the Wemysses called the little creature "Ricky," which is the sort of name only Scout leaders would give a raccoon, but nor was Wemyss at all sure the name was any other name at all. This would seem to indicate the animal had no name, but what we mean to say is Wemyss forgot the name he was certain his father, his brothers and he himself used in reference to the raccoon.
Wemyss takes a liberty, in fact, in having only Fred (the four-year-old) use a proper name for the raccoon. The father (still, at this point, called "The scientist" or, in relation to either of the three boys, "his father) refers to the woodland visitor as "the raccoon" and so do the older boys (Frank, eight years old and Bob, six.) In this way the father and the two elder brothers are given, somehow, a knowledge of the world which Fred Wemyss, the character, does not have. In reality, of course, he (the author) is fictionalizing a summer evening a father spends with his three children, the children being, indeed, not merely the sons of their father, but what society recognizes as people of innocence, that is, children as such. So, only "the scientist," in real life, had knowledge of the world, and the three boys, eight, six and four, had, more or less, one to the other, an equal degree of innocence. Wemyss the author of "The Shokan", of course, gives the character representing himself an almost superhuman innocence, while Frank and Bob, his brothers, are earthbound. They do not call the raccoon by name, as if he were a pet, even though, in reality, that is exactly what they did.

BRAINBITER WAS RAISED high in the air, light striking its edges so that Brainbiter himself felt bravest of all double-headed axes purchased that morning at the Elephant Store in Ashokan, New York. With a backdrop of fleecy clouds and patches of sky the color of an as-yet-unhatched robin's egg, Brainbiter took joy in being the most useful of inanimate objects. "Sing of Brainbiter," Brainbiter fairly sang. "Hoist Brainbiter!"
"Crack!" With the precision of a surgeon, Brainbiter cut to the heart of a fallen birch branch.
"Further back, Frank," the scientist said. "Stay on the porch!" he shouted to Bob and Fred. He put his foot on the branch, rolled it and raised the axe again. "There's always the possibility this could fly off the handle," he said in a softer voice.
"You could sue the store if that happened," said Frank.
"Crack!" said Brainbiter.
"Frank," said the scientist, "Add this to the stack."
In all, five logs were cut that day, from one and a half branches!
Brainbiter stood at attention against the porch wall afterward, for the rest of the afternoon, into the twilight, into the early evening and right up until the time he had to say, "Who goes there?" Then something knocked him down!
"Raccoon's on the porch!" shouted Fred.
Raccoon looked back at Brainbiter and waddled away.
"Well let's make sure make sure the door's shut," said the scientiist. "We don't want him going inside. Frank, go shut that door."
"Can I throw the raccoon some hamburger?" said Bob.
"I have been forgotten," said Brainbiter as the boys threw ground round at Raccoon.
Raccoon licked his paws.

"DEEP IS THE WELL OF THE PAST," read the scientist. The Coleman Lantern on the little uneven table shed harsh light on the words and the tome cast a great shadow on the checkered table-cloth. The scientist had read the sentence three times that night. First, he stole a glance at it just before he put Bob and Fred to bed and then as he opened the bottle of Balentine. He recited the line outloud to Frank in German and then Frank went to bed. He poured the ale into one of the copper mugs and sipped from the cup. He licked the foam from his upper lip. He put the mug down, thought about the day and took another sip.
He read the first line again.
He wondered if Mann had been in Germany when he wrote the words or if he'd already begun his exile.
He thought of the ruined hospital where some other G.I.s and he had had to chase a mental patient from a tree and inject him. He thought of the other mental patients who helped hold that one down.
He thought of Christmas Eve, 1946, when the entire population of the little German city packed a little church to the rafters. He thought of the German prisoner he'd sometimes talked to, who had no idea, when he asked him, that his, the prisoner's name, Paul Baumer, was the same as that of the main character of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. He remembered thinking the population of that little German city needed to pray on Christmas Eve in 1946. "Deep is the well of the past," he read.
In the next two hours the scientist read sixty-five pages. He rubbed his eyes and the lamp died.

WE DO NOT WISH TO DIGRESS any further, or, at least, any further than necessary. We have dwelt on the fact that the raccoon was called by a pet name, even though it was not a pet, and that Wemyss distorts the picture of the actual reality by having only the youngest of the three sons call the raccoon by a name. This leads us to another little creature which plays its part in this adventure. Wemyss was faithful to reality here. He reports that there was a rabbit all the Wemysses called Gunnar. He was Frank's charge. A screened-in area for the rabbit to run in had been built, one assumes by the scientist. This structure ran the short length of the lawn and, turning a right angle, its long length also. Wemyss's memory may have been playing tricks on him, however, so we may have to assume, again, that the truth has been misused and that, actually, the captive was confined to a length of ground which did not turn and which did not run even the short length of the lawn. One may doubt, indeed, that the rabbit had the freedom to run, inasmuch as the running was an event. Frank would shout, "Gunnar's running!" One may say, "Well, perhaps whenever the boy noticed the rabbit running he would draw attention to the fact." And yet Fred Wemyss always insisted that these times were always immediately preceded by a feeding of the rabbit. And yet one must concede that rabbits, unlike dogs and cats, do not race toward a bowl of food the moment it is set before them -- and we know cats are even reluctant in this respect -- and that a rabbit's taste of water, when distributed by human hands, is always from a little upside-down bottle with a little bead of water acessible only from the bent tube in which a rabbit-tongue is inserted. This causes us to doubt that there were so-called feeding times. We do know the rabbit ran within its confines, but was it free to run the length of the confines at all times? Wemyss never says.

IN THE SUMMERS OF 1962, 1963 AND 1964, my parents rented a nice old house in Ashokan, New York, near, but, I believe, not quite in, the Catskill mountains. The rest of the year we lived in an apartment in New York City.
I am the youngest of three children, all brothers. In 1962 I was two, my brother Bob was four and our brother Frank was six. I am forty-five years old now.
In 1962 my father was thirty-nine and my mother was thirty-five.
My father was drafted into the army during World War Two. He served and remained stationed in Europe until about a year after the war ended. His time in the army interrupted his time in college. When he went back home he went back to college. By the time he and my mother met he was in graduate school and she was in college. They married in 1951, three years after they met. Frank wasn't born until November of '55, so, while he and my brothers, being children of World War Two generation parents, can be called Baby Boomers, many of the landmarks associated with the lives of the Baby Boomer generation don't apply to us. Elvis Presley hit the scene before Frank was born. Frank probably doesn't have much of a memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis and certainly Lucy and Ricky's baby was born without Frank noticing. We didn't have a TV until 1965. We didn't even have one when Kennedy was shot. That was earlier, anyway.
When I was in elementary school on Long Island, the parents of the other children seemed younger than mine, although, when I think of it, all my friends had a father who'd been in the second world war. The meaner kids seemed to have parents who'd grown up at the drive-in. I didn't get along with kids whose parents were ten years younger than mine. Those were the kids with Mattel toys and stingrays.
After we moved to Long Island, which was in 1965, summer would approach and I'd say to my father, "Can we go to the Shokan?"
He'd say "No," as if he hadn't liked the place.
Then my mother would add, "We have the house here!"
I hated Long Island.
Well into my thirties, a friend of my parents asked me if I remembered Ashokan.
"I remember it vividly," I said. I told her I'd always wished we'd gone back after 1964.
She said, "Well, you couldn't."
She and I were smoking a cigarette. It was a party for another friend of my parents. We hadn't seen most of the people there in years. She was delighted to see me smoking on the porch and had come outside. She took a drag of her particular cigarette and said, "The landlord told your father the partying was too much."
"What?"
"He wouldn't rent to him again."
So, my father'd liked the Shokan after all.

THE NAVEL-GAZING of the Baby Boomer is in full force in Frederick Wemyss's THE SHOKAN. One only has to realize it takes place near Woodstock, New York to realize we're going to be victimized yet again by the Fattest Generation and told, in so many granola-encrusted words that we missed out. I, for one, begin to suspect the World War Two generation suffered as much, if not more, at the hands of their spawn the Boomers than even we have. Thanks, Baby Boomers, for the all-consuming egotism, exhibitionism and whining. And thanks for using all my Social Security. And no, you can't have my understanding. That bitter possession is MINE! [TIME-OUT review, 12-23-05]

THE CUMULATIVE EFFECT of this one is of a trapeze-artist falling off the rope and swooping toward a nervous-breakdown instead of a trampoline, only to be scooped up by another Flying Walenda for a session of standing-on-shoulders while swinging back and forth above the stage Madison Square Garden. [Customer review at Amazon.com.]

"I HATE THIS book."
"Why don't you get Cliff's Notes?"
"They don't make them for this."
"That sucks."
"Yeah."
"My sister read it."
"Did she like it?"
"I don't know."

"OH, HEY, YOUR BROTHER says you read THE SHOKAN."
"Oh, yeah, I read it.
"Did you like it?"
"Yeah."
"What's it about?"
"Why don't you get the Cliff's Notes?"
"They don't make them."
"That sucks."
"Yeah."
"Well, I don't think you'd like it."
"Well of course I don't like it."
"Can't you read something else?"
"I can read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD."
"Why don't you read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, then?"
"Because it sucks."
"No, it doesn't."
"I can't read three-hundred pages."
"Well, can't you get the Cliff's Notes?"
"The teacher said we couldn't use them.
"Wait. My brother said you were looking for Cliff's Notes for THE SHOKAN."
"Yeah, but the teacher didn't say we couldn't use Cliff's Notes for THE SHOKAN."
"So, use them."
"I said, they don't make them."
"Why don't you read THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA?"
"Because I read that last month."
"You read THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA?"
"Well, I actually read the Cliff's Notes."
"But I thought you weren't allowed to use Cliff's Notes."
"That was before she stopped us from using therm."
"Why don't you use the Cliff's Notes for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and just say you read the book?"
"Because she can tell."
"Oh, come on!"
"Did YOU use Cliff's Notes for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?"
"No. I liked TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD."
"Have you ever used Cliff's Notes?"
"No. But my brother does."
"So, does he say that when he had Ms. Wycherley she couldn't tell if he was using Cliff's Notes?"
"No. She failed him for using Cliff's Notes."
"So she can tell."
"Ellen uses Cliff's Notes and nobody can catch her."
"But Ellen's a brain."
"And you're not."
"That sucks."
"Yeah."

WHAT IS VERY STRANGE IS THAT, while set in the summertime, THE SHOKAN is a Christmas story. The visitors with the box of booze are the Magii, the eldest and youngest brother (Frank and Fred), are the shepherds, Raccoon and Gunnar are the barnyard animals, the scientist and his wife, cradling their child at the moment of the arrival of the Magii, are Joseph and Mary, who have just learned that they are being evicted and Bob, of course, his head crowned in blood, represents Jesus Christ, whom Herod could not kill.

I CAN'T TELL a story. I can remember everything about Ashokan but I can't put it on paper. I remember everybody who came up there to visit. I remember the neighbors, I remember the Elephant Store, I remember the Big Deep, I remember going to the Great Chalet, I remember the shallow pool at the great Chalet and the big Totem pole outside. While Frank and Bob and my father swam in the big pool behind the Great Chalet my mother and one of the other women in their circle of friends would take me to the front of the Big Chalet and hold me while I waded in what they called "the shallow pool." The word 'shallow" and the word "Chalet" evoke the same memories of bright sunlight moving in little waves over splashing water. I remember the little bat the children knocked down in mid-air with a stick and a cat which held the bat in it's mouth. I remember the Daddy Long-legs in the outhouse. I remember Jennifer running with me near the flowers and our mothers telling us not to go near because the bees might sting us. I remember putting my pinky near a flower and a bee stung that pinky and I remember Jennifer atnding by the charcoal grill with me and my father telling us not to put our fingers in the grill and I put my pinky against a bright red piece of charcoal and burned that pinky. It didn't hurt as much as the bee sting. I think it was the same day. I remember my grandmother being there with my aunt and me running on the lawn with my sweater and my grandmother saying that if I was too hot I shouldn't wear my sweater and I shouted back "But then I'll be too cold!" I remember being in the car with Dad as he drove forever up and down hills the time he rented the TV. It was getting dark and he pulled into a gravel parking lot and said, "Come on." We went inside a building with gadgets. Fans, bicycle chains, flypaper, sandpaper and screwdrivers were all over the surfaces of big metal tables. A man said he had one TV left and took a TV with orange paneling and white trim from a wooden shelf. I remember the white cord dangling from the TV as my father walked to the car with it and the drive back up and down hills in the twilight. I remember asking if I could watch cartoons when we got back. The next day I kept switching the station to cartoons when he went out of the room. He'd look at me chastisingly and switch it back to almost complete static and I could see flickering images which kept jumping. My father would react to the TV. He'd laugh. Then he'd be reading and not watching. Suddenly he'd watch again. "Now don't change the channel," he'd say. He'd go to the kitchen and I'd switch the channel again. "No, no," he'd say when he came back and switch it back. I remember all of my time at Ashokan was compelling and I can't express it.

"WHY WOULDN'T YOUR FATHER let you watch cartoons?" said Elise.
"Well, it was the '64 convention."
"He was watching a convention?"
"Dad loved conventions."
"Nobody watches conventions. They're the most notoriously low-rated programs on television."
"Well, Dad never watched the high-rated ones."
"But you wanted to watch cartoons."
"But he rented the TV to watch the convention."
"So who was nominated? Eisenhower?"
"Eisenhower?"
"Well I don't remember. I wasn't alive."
"Well it was Johnson versus Goldwater."
"Johnson's so repulsive."
"You don't automatically think that if it's 1964, Kennedy's been dead for six months so it must be Johnson?"
"Well maybe it was the Republican convention!"
"Well, then, wouldn't you automatically assume it was Goldwater if it was 1964?"
"Don't minimize me."
"What?"
"I was born in 1967."
"But you know enough about Johnson to say, 'Johnson's so repulsive.'"
"I don't have to know exactly when he was president to know what he was."
"I acknowledge that."
"You don't acknowledge that!"
"Of course I do."
"Oh. That's Melissa Etheridge."
"What?"
"That song."
"This song?"
"Shhh. I wanna be her."

"I DON'T GET the reference to the Magii. If it's only two people bearing booze they can't symbolize the three wise men."
"It's a later scene. Three friends of the Wemyss's arrive just after Bob gets back from the hospital."
"But this guy says his head is crowned in blood."
"It's not crowned in blood at the exact moment they arrive, but earlier it is."
"And the mother isn't in the scene where he falls out of the tree."
"No, but she's in the part where he comes home and the Magii arrive with bottles of licquor. In fact, the critic missed an opportunity to say that the bandage around Bob Wemyss's head is a halo."
"I don't see any Christian metaphor."
"No, but Dr. Sherman does, so you'd better discuss the Christian imagery."
"Maybe I should challenge that."
"Why?"

"OKAY, HERE'S WHAT I WANT in the preview. Show the oldest boy running to the porch screaming 'Daddy! Bob fell out of the tree fort!' Have him scream 'Daddy' again. Have the father sitting on the porch reading this German book and sipping beer. Cut to the middle boy from the scene a second earlier where he's saying 'I can climb as high as that branch.' Cut to the older boy racing through the woods. Cut to the youngest boy standing there looking up. Cut to the father saying earlier, in the scene with the Coleman light, 'Deep is the well of the past,' and juxtapose it with him looking up from the same book on the porch as the eldest son runs toward him. 'Daddy!' the son says. 'Bob is hurt.' Cut to the youngest boy standing in the woods next to the oldest boy who is saying, 'Stay here! Stay right here!' Cut to the youngest boy looking down. He starts to run. 'Stay!' shouts the oldest boy. 'We have to know where Bob is!' Cut to the father saying 'Get some band-aids.' Cut to the oldest boy tearing at the book in his father's hands. 'Frank!' says the father. Show the youngest boy looking right down into the camera with eyes that become little tunnels which become wells. Have the father's voice during this saying 'Deep is the well of the past.' Show Bob's face, with the weird grin and the river of blood on his forehead. Have the father's voice: 'Should we not call it bottomless?' Cut to the oldest boy screaming as the father pulls the book back, 'Bob might be dead!' Then little shots of the raccoon at feeding time, the friends bringing the cases of booze, the woman racing along Riverside Drive with the copy of the book. What is it, JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN? Show that bit with the headlights crawling over the porch from the first raccoon scene. Show the hand reaching for the branch. Sweeping violins as the car races up the hill. Show the father pushing the youngest boy against the passenger door with one hand as he steers the wheel with the other. Show the car weaving wildly up the hill. 'How is he?' the father says as this is shown. Show the eldest boy sitting in the back seat pulling a sheet upwards. Show the youngest boy spinning around in the front seat so he can look in the back and have him shout, 'He looks like Frankenstein!' Show the car just missing a tree. Cut to the father holding the axe and saying 'This could fly off the handle.' Cut to the father as seen from the front of the car, gripping the youngest boy's shoulder. Cut to the father carrying the boy into the hospital. Play bells in the background and give the father a dazed look. Cut to black. Play the bells. Have a narrator's voice. Yes, I know there's no narration in the movie but put it here. The narrator says 'We never went back after '64.' Show the father adjusting the antenna on the rented TV and him banging on the TV. The TV shows Lyndon Johnson. Show a black screen and the words THE SHOKAN. Then have the youngest boy in the woods again, staring down. Then he's in the car, turning toward the father. 'He's laughing,' he says. Then, I guess, show the father's eyes with guns coming out."

WHAT DOES THIS TELL US about America? Yes. Yes. You.
Me? Um...I see it's set in 1964.
Why is 1964 significant?
Significant?
What happened in America in 1964?
The Cuban Missile Crisis?
No, that was in 1962.
Woodstock?
No. That was 1969.
The Red Scare.
No. That was the late '40s and early '50s. What does this book say about America?
Nothing.
Johnny's answering the question.
Yeah, but it doesn't say anything about America.
Johnny, do you agree with that?
I don't know.
Okay, Jimmy. Why do you say THE SHOKAN says nothing about America?
Well, because this book is elitist.
Elitist?
Yeah. It masquerades as a novel about a little rural summer when it's actually about an upper-class professor on vacation and the friends who went to college with him getting drunk.
What about the references to World War Two?
Well, it says the professor's in the middle of college when he gets drafted so we can assume he didn't see the army as an escape route from poverty.
And if he had been poor and had joined the army to escape poverty this would have said something about America?
Yes. It would have represented the American experience.
What if he had been poor and not joined the army?
Everybody joined the army in World War Two.
Everybody except this professor, it seems.
He represents the upper-class experience.
And that experience is not the American experience.
The majority of Americans were poor in 1941.
The majority of soldiers in the U.S. army in the Second World War were drafted.
There was more volunteering in that war than any other.
Excepting the Civil War and the Revolutionary War you're possibly right. Of course, Desert Storm and our current war feature armies of 100 per cent volunteers.
But this book isn't about World War Two. It just has characters who were in it.
What about the children in THE SHOKAN? How do they reflect America.
They don't reflect America.
Why don't they reflect America.
Because they're privileged.
Johnny, what do you think?
What do I think?
How do the children in this novel reflect the American experience?
I don't know.
All right. In 1964, in the summer that is, America was looking forward to the November election. The president was Lyndon B. Johnson, a machine politician par excellence, who, unfortunately for him, was only standing in presidential shoes that summer because the president for whom he had served as Vice-president had been shot the previous November. You know that man. Just about two years before the novel takes place, the United States had had the Bejeezus scared out of it when it was discovered that the Soviets had installed missiles with nuclear weapons in their satellite state, a Caribbean island called Cuba. JFK -- the president -- that guy. The one from the video, made a speech threatening to invade Cuba if the missiles weren't removed. For ten days the world was bracing for a nuclear catastrophe. Translation: the end of the world. Mutual Assured destruction and all that. The upshot is Kruschev -- the bald guy from the tape with the arguments with Nixon? No? You don't know that? Okay, the Soviet premier -- No, not the premiere of THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN -- I've lost you, I'm certain -- Russia backed down. Kennedy won the showdown. The missiles were removed. One year later he was dead. A Texas politician was now president. You've heard of Texas? The nation of which the USA is a satellite state? That's a joke, sons. The Texas politician, as president, vows to carry out the policies of his martyred predecessor, even though he can't really stand these policies. Because he is steeped in backroom politicking, he is far more effective in doing what his predecessor tried to do than his predecessor actually was. Sweeping civil rights reforms are effected by this man, meaning that, for the first time in American history, the votes of black citizens counted. If JFK is revered as a civil rights president, LBJ is ignored as the enforcer of civil rights reform. In any case, LBJ also pushed what he perceived to be Kennedy's desire to aid South Vietnam in its defensive war against the Commist North Vietnam. You have heard of Vietnam?
You've got it all wrong, professor. JFK was beginning to pull out of Vietnam. The CIA and Johnson had him killed and went to town with Vietnam. More blacks were drafted than whites.
A disproportionate number, yes.
So Johnson, taking the credit for Civil rights, stuck it to the blacks, actually.
Johnson is the head in the hands president.
What?
He is a cipher.
What?
Anyway, class, what does THE SHOKAN say about America?
Hey, is this on the test?

DR. BOLAND spread marmalade on her toast and had a sip of orange juice. She looked out the window at the the ceramic cat which had been positioned so as to appear to be climbing the tree.
When Dr. Boland was finished with her toast and orange juice she rinsed the glass, put it in the sink and threw the napkin away. She took the piece of paper with the directions on it, read it and put it in her purse. She went to the porch door and made sure it was locked. She went to the closet and took a sweater off a hanger. She put it on. She took her hat from the little stand by the telephone. She took her white gloves from the drawer which held the address book and put them on. She glanced down the hallway toward the kitchen, looked at the living room and walked to the front door. She opened it and stepped into the vestibule. She looked at the umbrella stand. She considered and then took her umbrella. After closing the front door she opened the very front door.
On the stoop she opened the little metal mailbox by the door. It was empty. She shut the door, put the key in the lock, turned it, tested the handle, put the key in her purse, closed her purse and walked down the steps.
She walked along the sidewalk and then up her driveway. She unlocked the garage, pulled the door upward and and then pushed it further up. She got into her car, started it, backed out of the garage, stopped the car, put it in neutral and put on the emergency brake, got out, pulled the garage door down, locked it, got back in her car and drove to Kate's.
When she pulled up, she saw a white-gloved hand part a lace curtain in a second-storey window, as it always did.
"Good morning, Lucy," said Kate when she got in the car.
"Good morning, Kate."
"Now I'm just going to stop at Mr. Benson's and have the oil checked."
"And are you getting gas too?"
Dr. Boland pulled out. "No, it's almost full."
"You don't want to run out of gas, you know."
"Oh, I know, but it was full yesterday afternoon. But, you know, I think I'll get the tires checked."
"Oh, are they low?"
"Well, I don't think so, but driving into the mountains, you know."
"Yes, you need air in the tires on gravel roads."
"Oh, I know."
"Oh, yes."
"You remember Bob Finchenhurst."
"Finchenhurst. Wasn't it Finchenhorn?"
"I don't think so."
"I don't think I remember him."
"Of course you do. He was married to Mamie Finchenhurst."
"Who was she before?"
"Gwendolyn Punker's daughter."
"Mamie Punker married Bob Finchenhorn?"
"Well, the Bob and Mamie I knew were Bob and Mamie Finchenhurst."
"I don't remember them."
"Well his tires were low in the Poconos."
"What?"
"In the Poconos."
"I thought you said 'low in the Poconos.'"
"I did say 'low in the Poconos.'"
"What's that describe?"
"What's what describe?"
"Low in the Poconos. I don't know an expression, 'Low in the Poconos.'"
"In the Poconos, which is a range of mountains, Bob Finchenhurst had low tires."
"How do you come to know he had low tires?"
"Mr. Benson told me."
"Mr. Benson told you Bob Finchenhorn had low tires?"
"Yes."
"Well, why would he tell you that?"
"Because Bob Finchenhurst, whose name is Bob Finchenhurst and not Bob Finchenhorn, hit a rock and the front tire burst and he was stuck all day."
"Oh."
"If he'd had full tires the front tire might not have burst."
"Is it true that low tires are more likely to explode than full tires?"
"Yes. I think so."
Dr. Boland pulled into the gas station.
"Hello, Dr. Boland," said Mr. Benson. "Check your tires?"

ONE OF THE FIRST things a person awakening to the bankruptcy of the liberal agenda will notice is that in any artistic representation, be it a movie, a play, a painting or a novel (a case in point would be Wemyss's desultory THE SHOKAN) good people are almost entirely absent. One may counter that there don't seem to be any good people in KING LEAR. But THE SHOKAN is hardly KING LEAR. And Cordelia's goodness has no corresponding --
Oh, put it down, Fred. "The National Review" doesn't like you. You should be happy.
But it's as if I were completely ignorant of the struggle between good and evil.
Well, what's the good in reading what conservatives say about your book?
I wanna be loved by them. Poo-poo-pa-doo. Also, they turn out to have been right about a lot of things. For example, the Russians say Alger Hiss was guilty.
Excuse me, I'm moving. I'M NOT WITH THIS PERSON!
Maybe "National Review" is right about me, Tony.
I'm sure they are. Why don't you apply for work there?
Can't we all just get along?

"GIT ALONG, little doh geeze," sang the scientist. "Oh, ride along slow. 'Cause the fiery in the snuffy are rarin' to go." He kissed Bob and Fred goodnight.
As he sat down at the checkered table he heard Bob say, "You didn't sing 'The Wild Colonial Boy.'"
"Yes, I did," said the scientist.
"No. You sang 'Ned Kelly.'"
The scientist got up from the table and stood in the doorway. He leaned in. "You got me!" he said.
Bob and Fred sat up in the bed and the scientist sat on the edge. "Just this song and then it's time to sleep," he said.
"Okay."
"There WAS a wild Colonial boy, Jack Duggan WAS his name. He was born and RAISED in IRE-land in a place called CASTLE Maine. He WAS his father's only SON, his mother's PRIDE and joy, and dearly DID his PARents love the WILD colonial boy. At the early age of SIXteen years he left his NATIVE home. And TO Australia's sunny shore he was inCLINED to roam. He robbed the RICH, he HELPED the POOR, he SHOT James MACavoy. A terror TO Australia WAS the WILD--"
"Daddy? Who was James Macavoy?" said Fred.
"A terror to Australia WAS the WILD Colonial boy."
"But why did he shoot James Macavoy?"
"One morning on the PRAI-air-ree as Jack he rode along -- "
"Is Jackie Jack Duggan?"
"A-listening TOO the mockingbird a-singing a cheerful song, up stepped a band of troopers, Kelly, Davis AND Fitzroy. And they set OUT to CAPTURE him, the WILD Colonial boy. Surrender now Jack DUGGAN! You see we're three to one. SURRENDER in -- "
"What's 'three-to-one?'"
"SURRENDER in the King's high name, you are a PLUNDERING son!"
"Was James Macavoy famous?"
"FRED," said Bob.
"James Macavoy was probably known when the song was written," said the scientist. "I'll fight but not -- "
"No!" said Bob. "He drew two pistols from his belt and proudly -- "
"He drew two pistols from his belt," sang the scientist, "And proudly waved them high! I'll fight but NOT surrender cried the WILD colonial boy! He fired a shot at KELLY, which brought him TOO the ground. And turning ROUND to Davis he received a FATAL wound! A bullet pierced his proud young HEART, from the pistol OF Fitzroy. And that was how they CAPTURED him, the WILD colonial boy! Goodnight, boys. Go to sleep."
The scientist took his seat at the checkered table just past the doorway and opened his copy of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS.
The boys watched him reading.
Bob whispered to Fred, "James Macavoy shot Ned Kelly."
"But it says 'A rope and a rafter the sun in the east,'" said Fred.
"They hung his dead body."
"Daddy?" said Frank from the front porch.
The scientist looked up from his book. "Yes?"
"Can you sing Ned Kelly?"
"I already sang it."
"You only sang it to Bob and Fred."
"But couldn't you hear it? Well," said the scientist after a pause. He got up and went to the porch. "Ned Kelly was born in RAMshackle hut! He battled since he was a KID."
The three boys listened.

ONE NEVER GETS A SENSE, in Wemyss, that people date. There are no conversations at a cafe table with a blonde, dancing on the beach is never depicted and there are no cuddling sessions. Take the 'e' off that 'blonde' and I'll still feel warm as I read such a scene, which I never will because I'm reading Wemyss. Is his entire world made up of people who sit and read? Don't they go to Disneyworld? Do none of them play Twister? Don't they watch THE SOPRANOS? How come they don't go to the mall? When are we going to the mall?

AND DR. WEMYSS took vacation in the mountains and with him were his sons, Frank, Bob and Fred called Fred. Of these Frank was the eldest. The youngest, called Fred, was Fred, and Bob was of the middle. Now Dr. Wemyss had a wife and a goodly wife but she was in search of a Teaching Certificate and stayed in the apartment which was of the metropolis on the Mondays, the Tuesdays, the Thursdays and EVEN the Fridays, but on the first morning of the weekend, which was the Saturday in the morning, she betook herself to the mountains, which were the mountains where her husband and Frank, Bob and Fred called Fred did abide during the week and there she met them on the Saturdays and Sundays of the three consecutive summers of the 1962, the 1963 and the 1964 which was called 1964..

ONE REASON I'm jumping around so much is I'm writing this very quickly. This is one part of the novel I'm not writing as a form of parody. I have visited a website called www.NaNoWrimo.org. It's the website for what is called National Novel Writing Month. On November third I was shelving stray books at the Barnes and Noble which employs me and I saw a book called NO PLOT, NO PROBLEM. I never read instructional books about writing. But I flipped through it, gritting my teeth angrily at first. Then I found I was amused. The book began talking about the history of a group of west coast writers, each member of which challenged the other members each to write a 50,000-word novel in the space of a month. After the first couple of years word spread and now, ten or so years after this handful of writers began doing this, each November writers all over the world attempt the writing of a 50,000-word novel. Last year, which was 2004, there were something like six-thousand people signed onto the website and the year before there were three-thousand. This is an explosion. I logged on November 3rd and, as of today, which is November 28th, I have a little over 7,000 words. I doubt I'll reach the goal by the 30th, but a writer may post a ten-thousand word excerpt on the site and I think I'll manage to do that. Each time I write part of THE SHOKAN I upload what I've written. It is on the webpage for anybody to see. Simultaneously, the page counts the number of words. The book says that THE GREAT GATSBY is about 50,000 words. Literally I could type whatever is in my head and finish 50,000 words quickly, but the idea is to write a 50,000 novel you'd want to write in the space of a month. I haven't been so determined to write fiction since I was a freshman in college taking Creative Writing. NaNoWriMo is a source of contacts among writers. I've read some of the postings on the message boards and I am brought back to the atmosphere of that Creative Writing course, when I felt a kinship with other writers, or, more accurately, other writers of fiction. Last month I watched a documentary about a man about my age who lives in New Jersey. He sought the writer of a novel he'd read in his teens. Through the course of the documentary he tracks this author, who wrote a novel called THE STONES OF SUMMER. He tracked him to Iowa. The novelist had been part of the Iowa Writers Conference. I hadn't thought about the Creative Writing Mafia in many years, but, at my college, some of the figures one associates with it came to read. Frank Conroy (who is in the documentary) read at my college and I remember being very excited that somebody who thought the way I did about writing had managed to write something I cared about. A few days after watching the documentary I was shelving the strays and there was NO PLOT, NO PROBLEM. So, here I am, attempting to write a novel. The Creative Writing course I took gave me a goal. I loved it.

AND SO WE MUST close shop. Tomorrow is November 30th, 2005, which means that National Novel Writing Month will end in less than twenty-four hours. I have two notebooks, about a third of each of which contains some of the stuff above and some stuff intended to be put above but which I didn't think would work. One thing finally dawned on me today during my lunch-break when, after a coffee and a cookie, I started to write a little more of this story. This thing that dawned on me is that I want to tell a story about the time Jennifer (who's mentioned above) and I took the croquet mallets belonging to my parents -- or perhaps to our landlords -- and dropped them down the two outhouse holes. There's the story which will convey that sunny, happy time when consequence meant so little to me that when my father and Jennifer's father held us upside down over the outhouse holes and had us grab the croquet mallets one by one, I had no sense of being punished. I imagine no punishment was meant. A lesson, perhaps, was in this, but with our father's holding our ankles and swinging us in the direction of any given dung-caked croquet mallet, I had another moment of laughter with the little girl who shared with me the codeword which we were saying over and over again as we swung and which sounded itself like the lilt of laughter, with which I close:
Heee-aaah!

--Frederick Wemyss, Huntington, New York, November, 2005

The Eyes Have HAD IT

2006-02-24T03:14:00.000-05:00

For several months I've been meaning to document (and for about ten years I've been noticing the phenomenom of) book jackets which feature a face from the cheekbones down. This might be appropriate for the cover of a book about anonymity, and, in the first few intstances I observed, circa 1996, the dust jackets were the jackets of books with more or less bizarre content.
Now, however, it is very common to see part of a face on the cover of a book. MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, before its cover was replaced with the full face of the beautiful actress from the movie, featured the left side of the face of a geisha of old. I gather the picture was taken in 1925 or so. Certainly the entire photograph exists, but the jacket only shows part of the face. This jacket at least showed ONE eye, and the other eye could be seen if one looked at the binding, but many, MANY books have covers which are almost menacing in their segmenting of the human face.
Tonight I saw one in the store where I work. I was shelving in the music section. I picked a hefty tome off the cart. It was a book called MOZART'S WOMEN. It's a standard biography of the women in the life of an artist. So what's on the cover? A nice 18th century oil-painting of a high-falutin' gal in a great, billowy dress. But the upper edge of the jacket, where, in the old days, a little space above the head of the person depicted would have been shown, is the exact area where the bridge of the subject's nose is shown. Why, in the name of the demi-hemi-semi-quaver, is one of Mozart's women shown only from just below her eyes when the rest of her body is shown? Not only do we see the feet, we get a nice bit of the oriental rug the feet stand upon.
As soon as I saw the book I wrote the title down on a Post-it. I'm going to note such books whenever I see them and compare the contents to the jackets. I bet 90 per cent of these books are standard stories without monstrous themes. Mozart, for example, didn't date serial killers. The entire face of at least one Mozart female should be on a cover of a book about Mozart's lovers.
Have a look at the new books the next time you visit a book store. You'll see a lot of the lower-two-thirds of people's heads. But not a lot of eyes.

Your Suicide Note

2006-02-21T15:43:00.000-05:00

For those who don't have time, I suggest checking out CLIFF'S SUICIDE NOTES for a thumbnail sketch that really nails this sketch of 'do's and 'dont's of suicide notes. Barnes and Noble has it by the exit.

So, if you've read this far, you're really pre-meditating this. No "I don't want to live" hastily scrawled on toilet paper for you. No final statement sent in bulk email which will be relegated to the majority of Trash bins unread. You want to send a formal suicide note Certified Mail!

I bet you wanted to send it Return Receipt Requested, too, but that shows that, like any other person who writes a high-quality suicide note, you haven't thought this out as completely as possible. It is enough to send your note through Certified Mail. Unless you're having the Return Receipt sent to a surviving party, requesting a Return Receipt is just an indication of residual sarcasm, unless you plan actually to live through your suicide attempt, in which case you need another manual. (But I don't think they've written THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO SUICIDE yet!)

THIS IS NOT A SUICIDE MANUAL! This is about writing the best suicide note you can. If you want to hang yourself, shoot yourself or cause your own death by a means nobody has ever used before, that's your project! Do not confuse your note with the suicide it highlights.

AND DON'T WORRY! Every artist, whether admitting it or not, wonders what the critics will say. You know and I know you can't change what people will say about your note. Some people might say "It was beautiful." Others might say "It was touching." Most people will say "Oh! I want to see the note!" They're your audience!

BUT, YOU'RE WRITING IT FOR YOURSELF, NOT FOR THEM! Your suicide note should express your thoughts, not what you want others to think. Believe it or not, most suicide notes are written to impress the living. But your note won't be like most suicide notes. You're going to express yourself from the center of your being to your extremities. If you jones for proper grammar, this book will help prepare you to write a stylistically flawless farewell address. If rhapsody carries you, we'll help carry your final reveries in the space between pen and paper. If yours is a comic mood, we'll carve your deathnote into a one-liner.

YOUR SUICIDE NOTE is available to you if you pay first. Why no Trial Offer? BECAUSE WE TAKE YOU EXTREMELY SERIOUSLY!

Send $19.95 plus $3.99 shipping and I can't take it, I just can't GOODBYE

[Paypal is not responsible for unshipped product.]

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A History of Violence

2006-02-18T03:37:00.000-05:00

Here's my IMDB review of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.

A History of Cinema, 9 October 2005
10/10
Author: Fred (thurberdrawing@yahoo.com) from Long Island, USA

THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS. I'm writing this comment not only because I thought this was a very good movie but also because its detractors seem to have misunderstood it. To misunderstand a movie or a book or a song is different from finding it good or bad. I've seen movies I have not understood and have withheld judgment until I've gained perspective on them. Many of the reviewers here clearly have bumped into a work too difficult for them to grasp and their reaction has been to express astonishment that anybody has found satisfaction in it. So, let me say this: The opening scene showing two extremely violent men committing their crime is, in itself, absolutely realistic. It's stark. It's neither exaggerated nor underplayed. The rest of the movie is deliberately off-center, because what the viewer is supposed to be thinking throughout the whole thing is "Will this movie return to the soulless violence of the first scene?" The crime at the start of the movie is unmatched. Gruesome things happen later, some of them rather comic, some silly, and some shocking, the most shocking ones being a slap, a moment where someone vomits as a result of emotion. Masks are torn off. But everything in this movie stems from the first scene, even though the plot itself doesn't relate to it. The main characters don't seem to know that the crime in the first scene has happened, but the mood its sets informs everything they do, if only because the person watching the movie always has this scene in the back of his mind. The first scene traumatizes the viewer. It softens him up, if you will. THIS is the world we live in, Cronenberg is saying. It's as if TAXI DRIVER had started with the climax. If this is a funny idea, then I suggest Cronenberg expected people to laugh at inappropriate moments, which is what has happened at many theatres, as a glance at three or four reviews here will show. People were laughing at the showing I saw, but I think they LIKED laughing at these inappropriate moments. This movie invites that type of laughter. We're supposed to find it funny. But there's one scene nobody laughs at. That's the first one. That's the one that's supposed to stick in your head and make you say "This world shouldn't be this way." I'm going to list a few things that show Cronenberg did a lot of things on purpose in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE: When the cop comes to the house to question Tom/Joey about whether or not he's in the witness protection program we see children's building blocks on a shelf on the wall. They're two blocks with the letters "E" and "T." Tom (or Tom/Joey, if you will) is an alien in his own land and runs the risk of being driven from his home. I won't argue about this obvious reference to E.T. But it is only one of several flags Cronenberg has set up as a way of saying "There's precedence for what I'm doing, here." It doesn't matter if you're rooting for Tom or not. You can't deny he's the classic fish-out-of-water whose at the center of many, many movies: THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, THE WRONG MAN, RAINMAN, FORREST GUMP, and, of course, E.T. are all variations on the theme of the stranger at risk. Apple pie and coffee play a conspicuous part in this movie--a reference to the obsession with apple-pie and coffee in TWIN PEAKS. PULP FICTION informs the proceedings, with the prevalence of diners and wise guys. The family threatened? There's precedent: THE DESPERATE HOURS, CAPE FEAR, STRAW DOGS, THE BIRDS. The family threatening? THE GODFATHER. If it's played over-the-top (the scene with the brother) or below the radar (the son) it's because Tom's dual nature is being highlighted by his ridiculously bad brother and his milk-and-cookies son. Tom/Joey is his own SHANE, disrupting and protecting his own family. If you want something MORE grisly than this, but which influenced it, take a look at THE UNFORGIVEN (an update of SHANE.) References to other movies don't make a great movie, but they do indicate that things can be put in place for a reason. I don't think a frame of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE is wasted. It's entertaining, thoughtful and chilling.

Beh Diestaul

2006-02-17T15:24:00.000-05:00

Beh Diestaul

[I used to speak a nonsensical language with the guy across the hall in my college dormitory. I even began to write in this language. But this is the only thing I wrote in it.]

Beh Diestaul

Eh leh-faul ti powsenry pe liesenbraumel ke heh towlama si nah shymer gowl. Lyma fe myla si rowstama. Perters cha lyme ky dipe.

Lau rimoa ti derstina lihne. Marfolo by todo sky tow di faul gor Yowsha. Yowsha stoul da Marfolo ropa rowma sirv, xekaniphaupa, bestiedlemower Saranga. Yalah, sopel la wep.

"Marfolo, Yalah, fenmiche; Wheh sine tine sos fababas?"

"So blee das, Yalah Yowsha di."

Ke te Blada harangas, Sarangas, Chochos de bes da Yowsha ka Marfolo, tes fenmashas; fenmashe!

Faul!; Ki laflayder:

Si opaepae, re Bladas iiune,

Aye-eee Yolly Golly Dolly Wah

Eee-Schnah!

Si Frautzenburgurs Yah

Eee Chautzenkurgers Yah

Aye-eee Yolly Golly Dolly Wah

Eee-Schnah!

Tzah nabb bel tando joblabohe yie diestaul Phlafs!

[While a lot of the words in "Beh Diestaul" sound like words from English ("harangas" might be "harangue," "laflayder" might be "laugh later") only the part which is a poem is actually meant to be a borrowing from any language. I took "Aye-eee" from "Doonesbury" (picture large handwritten letters which say, AAIIEEE!, which, in its turn, is Garry Trudeau's variation on Charles M. Schulz's AUGHHHH!) "Frautzenburgurs" certainly attempts to get mileage out of "burgers." The poem is a little bit of cheating. The rest of "Beh Diestaul" is more in earnest. It has a certain rhythm. "Yalah, sopel la wep," tends to get a laugh if the piece is being read aloud, whereas the poem does not.]

In Which, As Best I Can, I Re-tell HAMLET

2006-02-08T12:26:00.000-05:00

By Fred Wemyss

Things were uncomfortable at court. Claudius just knew it. He himself was rather comfortable, but he couldn't help but notice that Gertrude was rather less comfortable than he. In fact, he sensed that she was being made uncomfortable. Also, as a matter of fact, Claudius felt sure he knew who it was who was making her uncomfortable.

"Hamlet," he said, in an accepting voice, put on more for the benefit, or, rather, the neutralizing of his Queen, than for any effect it might have on the sullen Prince. "Hamlet, my sometime nephew and now my son ..."

Hamlet looked at him with the glint in his eyes which Claudius had come to conclude was going to be there from now on, whenever their eyes should meet.

"Hamlet!," continued Claudius, "How goes it with you?"

[Wemyss's interpretation ends here. Exeunt Omnes.]

In Which I Try To Be Funny

2006-02-02T12:59:00.000-05:00

When I was in ninth grade, my English teacher wrote on the back of one of the papers I'd submitted, "I think all you're learning is how to be funny." She gave me a good grade, but I took her advice and tried, for the rest of my time in school, not to be funny. How sad that I succeeded!
I should have reacted as any normal adolescent would have, by continuing to stick hilarious asides in my essays and wisecracks in the margins. Unfortunately, I behaved as the majority of adolescents would have. In short, I behaved as would the abnormal adolescents. I tried to be earnest in everything I wrote afterwards. By the time I tried to foist humor upon what readers I had twenty years later, I'd completely lost comic timing.
Mark Twain always tried to be funny and wound up the master of pathos. If you're funny, you stand the chance of catching the reader off guard and winning him over before your lack of form makes him stop reading. A novel stands a better chance of being read through to the end if something funny is described at the start.
America's deepest novel didn't have a humorous beginning. The work which commenced with the words "Call me Ishmael" was the first flop for its author, who'd had a string of bestsellers. Many people returned the book immediately. Herman Melville's next book sold poorly and the next two helped bankrupt his publisher. Now, if MOBY-DICK had begun "Call me Ishmael and I'll call you Ishkabobble," the saga of the white whale might have turned a dime. This is not to say humorous situations don't occur in the book. Queequeg and Ishmael have a slapstick encounter involving a quilt, a hatchet and a bed, but it happens only after the most primal opening chapter in the history of the novel. Even an audience of shills can't whistle and clap to phrases such as "growing grim about the mouth." Melville donned motley just a little too late in the story. No, his book didn't turn a dime. The greatest book in American literature turned its author into a pauper. But the second-greatest book to come out of America was another in a string of hits for its author. Mark Twain made money off HUCKLEBERRY FINN, but, just to show he had more in common with Melville than many acknowledge, I'll mention that HUCKLEBERRY FINN didn't make as much as the publishers expected.
If you want to read a funny, profound book about a Mississippi steamer, the name of its author is a punchline, because it's not the name you might expect me to cite. The book is THE CONFIDENCE-MAN, and after it was published, it would be more than thirty years before another one was written by its author, Herman Melville.
Post-script: If you've read BILLY BUDD, Melville didn't expect you to do that. It wasn't published until he'd been dead almost a generation.

See Michael Cyril Creighton at Galapagos Art Space February 7th

2006-01-25T00:25:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine, Mike Creighton, a very funny actor/comedian, will be hosting a show at Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg on February 7th. I'm posting his announcement below. It's for a very good cause, which he notes. You'll like him.

By the way, you can see this announcement and his hilarious meditations at:
http://perpetuallynauseous.blogspot.com

Fred

MCC (finally) Has His Way (with Women)
Tues. Feb. 7th @ 8:00pm
Galapagos Art Space, 70 north six street, williamsburg.
Price: $10 at the door.
50% of the proceeds will go to The Nicole duFresne Memorial Scholarship @ Emerson College***.

Comedian/Performer Michael Cyril Creighton has always admired the allure of the "funny female." As a child, during recess, he would walk around with the lunch mother discussing the merits of Carol Burnett, Phyllis Diller and the Ladies of Laugh-In, paying particular attention to Ruth Buzzi and Joanne Worley. He has spent 2 1/2 decades praying for Mattel to make a Madeline Kahn Fashion Doll.

Feb. 7th he hosts an evening of comedy, featuring some of his current favorites:

Desiree Burch
Pat Candaras
Claudia Cogan
Michelle Collins
MEAT
Becky Yamamoto
and Musical Guest: Erin & Her Cello.

***Nicole duFresne, an Emerson College Alumni, was a fearless and ferocious performer who was murdered last year on the Lower East Side. Emerson has started a scholarship in her name, which will be given to a young woman in the performing arts with a distinct voice and artistic vision. It is my understanding that the scholarship is approx. $6,000 away from being endowed, so even if you can't make the show, please do donate. Donations can be made online at https://www.emerson.edu/alumni/giving/

Other MCC things, more details to come soon:

Jan 27th, 10:30pm- Rage of Aquarius. The Annual Desiree Burch Birthday Performance Extravaganza. Email for details

Feb. 3, 10, 17, 24 @ 8:00pm- SEQUINS FOR SATAN, a new play by Rachel Shukert at Galapagos Art Space

Feb. 21st- Ritalin Reading Series @ Mo Pitkins, 8:30pm.

March 12th@ 8:00pm @ galapagos: GET INSIDE: A Benefit for the World Premiere of RIP ME OPEN

April 10- After School Comedy Show. 7:30, Petes Candy Store

April 7, 14, 21, 28 @ 8:00pm- RIP ME OPEN, a new play created collaboratively by Desiree Burch, Michael Cyril Creighton, Brian Mullan and OBIE Award Winning playwright, Kyle Jarrow.

In Touch, Us and People MUST Sue Brad, Angelina and Jennifer...

2006-01-24T06:47:00.000-05:00

I haven't paid to see a movie featuring Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston in the last half-decade. I bet most of the world hasn't either. I think it's high time this haggard trio started paying US, PEOPLE and IN TOUCH for the all the PR they've been getting. They're certainly not generating the public's interest on their own. Each day, at the book store of my employ, I re-shelve, many times over, stacks of magazines showing the faces of Brad, Angelina and Jennifer. These magazines are left in corners, on windowsills and on every available surface in our cafe. The three faces appear, piled up next to a stack of self-help books, a spilled Grande Cappuccino and a forgotten Scrabble square. While Jennifer, Brad and Angelina may not make a penny from the magazines which exist because of them, each one of them is getting the attention he or she signed on for when he or she first pretended to be casual in front of a camera. Since they've got America's undivided attention, they may as well pay US, PEOPLE and IN TOUCH, and if they don't, US, PEOPLE and IN TOUCH should sue them. After all, nobody actually buys In TOUCH, US or PEOPLE. They just sit in the cafes of monolithic book outlets, reading magazines about Brad, Angelina and Jennifer and then stacking them on the tables before waddling to the diet section. Somebody has to make money and since what Brad, Angelina and Jennifer have always needed is not money, but attention, US, PEOPLE and IN TOUCH should sue them until they're forced to work at monolithic book outlets, cleaning up after people who sit around for entire afternoons skimming through magazines about young has beens.

Saturday Night Asleep

2006-01-14T23:56:00.000-05:00

Saturday Night Asleep
[CORRECTION: In this entry I have misidentified Scarlett Johansson as Iris Johansen. Iris Johansen, whose last name I suspect I've spelled wrong in this correction as well as in the entry, is a romance writer. I work at a book store, so I see her name a lot. I also confuse Scarlett Johansson with Charlize Theron, but that's only when I see pictures of them side by side. I love Charlize. I suspect I'd love Scarlett Johansson, but I don't know if I do, because I only watched the first four minutes or so of the SNL episode she hosted last Saturday, which is what this entry is about, and I'm not sure I've seen any movies with her--with her on the screen that is. If she's been in the audience I haven't known it. I also really like "Scarlet Tide," which is on the soundtrack to COLD MOUNTAIN and is sung by Allison Kraus, whose name I'm also mis-spelling and who is also, as are Scarlett and Charlize, blonde, which Elvis Costello, who wrote the song, is not, unless ol' Declan (which is his real first name) has been dyeing it brown, which is a thing I've read Charlize Theron has sometimes done. Or maybe Scarlett Johansson has done it. I don't know, but, since I just read Internet Move Database's biographies of both Scarlett Johansson and Charlize Theron just now, which I did in order to get the spellings of their names right, I can definitely say one of the two actresses has, at one time or another, dyed her hair brown, because the fact was in the trivia section of the biography relating to the particular actress who has done this. Apparently it's very rare for a blonde actress to do this, gentlemen and gentlewomen generally preferring blondes. But--to the point: I really doubt Declan McManus dyes his hair. --Fred Wemyss, January 19th, 2005]

It's 11:55 p.m. as I begin to write. Tonight's episode of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE has been on for a half-hour. It may be on everywhere in the world, but it's not on in my house. The worst Sunday morning feeling you can have is to wake up knowing you watched an entire SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE the night before. Tonight's innovation was that the opening was a cartoon. An animated Pat Robertson got to say "Live from New York, it's SATURDAY NIGHT." The opening clocked in at less than a minute, which has to be a record. It takes planning to create an animated cartoon, and clearly Robert Smigel planned on demonstrating that brevity is the soul of wit. The credits were, of course, tedious, but it is always great to hear Don Pardo reading the names. It was a treat to hear him, with his game-show announcer's perfect pronunciation, uttering the words, "Death Cab For Cutie." The opening saxophone is still the least inticing entertainment lure on the air, and it was especially reedy when the hostess was brought on. It was Iris Johansen, and I'm sure I've seen her in a lot of things. She came on stage and then Amy Poehler came up on stage dressed just like her. They spoke dialogue indicating the fear of things going wrong which every post-credit-roll segment on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE has as its main joke. I shut it off. I'm more curious than usual about how the musical guest will be, if only because I think the Barnes and Noble where I work plays the Death Cab overhead, between Coldplay and Ryan Adams. I need to see the faces behind the earnestness. But the cast-member wearing the same dress as the hostess bit polished me off. Once you've seen Rosemary Clooney and the other gal in WHITE CHRISTMAS sing "Sisters" in matching dresses, no post-Generation-X duo thrown together by commercial fate can charm you, especially when you hear that same bellowing laugh of some NBC Exec in the audience you've heard guffawing since just after Chevy Chase quit. To everything there is a season. SNL had a season and a half around the time of the Ford administration. When the scientists break the time barrier and Fatty Arbuckle gets to host, I'll uncork the champagne for him. But until then, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE is dead to me. At least until next week, when I'm sure I'll take a peak and be as annoyed at myself as I am now.

Hard-boiled

2006-01-09T03:09:00.000-05:00

Here's a reply I wrote to a post on a friend's blog. It was too long to fit as a reply, so I've posted it here. My friend had written about co-creating stories and drawings with a friend in his middle-school years. They stopped talking to each other. This reminded me of something, and I wrote this:
When I was in the seventh grade I began a whirlwind friendship with a classmate named Kevin. We discovered we each wrote short stories. The other kids din't know this about Kevin. They didn't know he took piano lessons either. He read hard-boiled detective novels from the 1940s and stayed up late watching old movies. We challenged each other, just before summer started, to write a detective story. I wasn't used to detective stories. I never read them. I only read funny writers. But Kevin was steeped in Dashiel Hammet. So he was supposed to come to my house and give me his story and I'd give him mine. His father worked in the city so he was dropped off at my house at 7 a.m. the first Saturday after the school-year ended. We spent the day walking around Greenlawn. We took a bus to Huntington and watched a tape of the Marx Brothers at the Huntington Library. We got the bus back to Greenlawn, walked to my house and I almost gave him my story. I'd stayed up the entire night writing it on typewriter my mother had given me. It was built in 1926! The story was 11 pages, single-spaced and was about a detective named Sylvester J. Iaganarella and his sidekick, Account. I finished it at 6:45 and went outside to wait for Kevin's father to drop him off at the corner. I don't know why I didn't just say they could pull up in the driveway. Well, I do know why. I had a crush on Kevin. Any other friend of mine would have been allowed to just knock on the front door. But my appointment with Kevin was secret. I don't think he knew it was secret. Anyway, I think I told him the driveway would be hard to find so we met at the corner of Oldfield Road and Tilden Lane. So, after our long day walking around and taking the bus to see the Marx Brothers videoptape at the library, we went to my house and I took hold of my eleven-page. single-space near novella and waved it in front of Kevin. "I can't show you this. But you can see this." I showed him a story I'd written in class that year. I didn't offer it to him to read, but I turned the manuscript over and showed him the praise Mrs. Doon, our teacher, had written. Kevin looked disgusted. His perception of me was crystallized then, I think. He considered me an egotist. The first thing that morning after he'd been dropped off he handed me his story. It was about a rough-and-tumble detective, miles away from my Sherlock Holmes knock-off. His detective stumbled home drunk and knocked a lamp over. Mine tossed off punning remarks to his assistant. Anyway, before Kevin's father drove his weary way from whatever semi-urban headquarters he'd toiled in that day and picked him up (again, at the corner of Tilden Lane and Oldfield) Kevin and I had promised to co-write a story about a mysterious figure. Kevin wanted to call it THE JANITOR. I daresay he envisioned some sort of lurid, three-in-the-morning study in psychology, while I wanted to write whatever Kevin might dictate. But he dictated nothing. We saw each other throughout the summer, Kevin getting increasingly short-tempered with me. It became pretty obvious what he had been prepared for was a friendship and I wanted some acknowledgement of longing. The first day back at school, after two weeks of Kevin not answering my calls (I learned early, but still haven't quite taken the lesson) I was walking out of my driveway, the school being a block away. A car which was sitting there honked. I looked and saw the driver wave at me. I saw a red-haired person in the back. I thought, "Oh! Sue from two doors down is being driven to work by her father and I'm being waved in." In to the car I went. I smiled at the driver, and then I turned to look at the person in the back seat. It wasn't Sue. It was Kevin, whose father looked, I realized then, a whole lot like Sue's father. The car drove on. I was too afraid to start a conversation. Kevin wasn't starting one. Why had they been sitting in the car outside my driveway. (I bet now that Kevin was trying to get his father to drop him off somewhat before the school so he wouldn't be seen being dropped off by a parent instead of on the bus like all the other kids.) We drove the block or so to the school. I actually managed to utter the words "Thank you," to Kevin's father as I got out. Kevin and I walked toward the door of the school. I was beginning to say, "I didn't know that was you in the car," when Kevin ran ahead quickly. Just before he went in he turned to me without looking at me. "Don't talk to me," he said and walked inside. From the first day of eight-grade until half-way through eleventh grade we never spoke a word to each other. (Except for the day after the day in ninth grade when I passed him in the hall talking to David Schwartz (who is now curator of the Americna Museum of the Moving Image.) I went up to Kevin, stopped, and punched him in the stomach. The next day Kevin went up to me, and, in spoken prose worthy of Dashiel Hammett, told me just what he thought I was. It's what I thought I was, too.

Herb Alpert On Acid

2006-01-04T15:19:00.000-05:00

Let me stress this: I am in no way affiliated with Herb Alpert or with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. In this context, please do not equate Herb Alpert, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass or Herb Alpert and TJB with anyone or entities other than Herb Alpert, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass and/or Herb Alpert and TJB. Remember, too, that I have no connection with A&M Records, Alpert and Moss and/or Almo Music. Please, please do not forget that the music of Herb Alpert and his TJB is embedded in my brain. I am definitely affiliated with this brain of mine.

Let's get down to business: Picture a skinny child of eight. This is a profile shot. In the lower right of the frame is a tiny record player of the type parents give to their children when they begin to fear their child will start using their record player. "Now you have your own record player, Jimmy." (Or, as the case may be, "Now you have your own record player, Sue.") The parent and/or parents would also add "You like the Tijuana Brass, don't you? I/We got you a Tijuana Brass record." Entering the frame, the eight-year-old kneels in front of his new record player, rips the cellophane off of the record cover and takes a full thirty seconds in an effort to get the hole in the record over the spindle on the turntable. The spindle is the rejecting kind, and, even though the record is finally on the spindle, the child can't get it to slide more than a third of the way down, because it is blocked by the jutting portion of the spindle, which is designed to recede when a new record is supposed to drop down after the previous one in the stack has been played. "God damn it, do this," says the parent and forces the record onto the turntable.

Come back in six months and take the record out of the jacket (and try to find the inner sleeve, which is likely to be trapped beneath the leg of the bed and partly concealed by a throw-rug) and inspect the hole at the center of the record. The label around the hole will have craggly, somewhat circular lines made by the spindle during various attempts by the child to get the record over it. You can tell which is his favorite side of the record by the comparative number of swirls on the opposite side of the label. (Side two's label is more marked than the one on side one, so side one is the favorite.)

Look at the picture again. The child is putting the needle on. He's better at this now than ninety-nine percent of adults, not because he's careful with records, but because this record has an important beginning and he always has to hear this part. Okay, this picture isn't silent anymore:

A crashing, resonating percussive boom as a crowd cheers "Ole," and immediately, the braying of high brass. "Ba-daaah! Ba-da-ba-da-buh-bah-da-ba-daah! Ba-dah! Ba-dah! Ba-daaah!" The boy props the album cover against the dresser and watches the still picture on this cover. See the confident look of the man raising his glass to toast those listening to his record. Note the relaxed quality of the confident man. He is sitting. The chair he's sitting in could be used by a matador if he wanted to taunt a bull. The crowd cheers as a bass guitar which sounds as if spurs are attached to it proceeds, in pensive purposefulness, toward the center of the ring.

[I wrote this a few months ago and never got up to the part about psychedelic TJB]

January 3rd

2006-01-03T20:12:00.000-05:00

January 3rd is here again.
Come on, Harry. Come on, Sven.
Sing the songs you once preferred.
Bring back January 3rd.

January 2nd ain't enough.
January 4th is rough.
Only one date pleases me:
A Firstmonth day called "3."

Won't it be a rousing night
Once we've lost the 3rd Day's light?
It's not even near absurd.
Hey! It's January 3rd!

Somebody Done Changed That Lock On My Door

2005-12-23T21:45:00.000-05:00

Well, the lock isn't actually changed, because there previously had been no lock at all, but today I managed to put a sliding lock on the first-floor bathroom door.
This is all the more remarkable because I had to do it twice. Mechanically inept as I am, I went to the hardware store and bought a little lock and a screwdriver. I spent half an hour trying to screw the screws in. They were all tilted at various angles and wouldn't go in any further. The lock was loose. Especially traumatic for me was trying to match an overlayed piece to the holes below. I went to another hardware store and got a ratchet, a vice-grip (which I thought I might need for pulling the screws out, inasmuch as the tops of the screws were stripped) and another screwdriver. These new items seemed tough. I noticed another lock and looked at it. It didn't have a piece which had to sit on top of another piece. I bought it, too. When I got home I took my new screwdriver and easily removed the twisted, bent lock. Then I studied the ratchet. It had six or seven different types of screws in little compartments in the handle, and each of these had a different type of screw on either end. I removed the screw the manufacturer had put in the top, turned the bottom of the handle so as to leave an opening under a screw that I needed and removed that. I put it in the slot at the top of the ratchet. I put it down and took the new lock and held it against the door. I marked the door where the screws would be and placed the tip of the first screw where it was going to go. I took the ratchet, and, using it as a screwdriver, inserted it in the tip of the screw. I began turning the ratchet clockwise. The handle spun, but, it was spinning around the part which I'd been hoping would turn as well. But, having seen my childhood friend Stephen use ratchets in our high school days (which is the reason I even know of the existence of ratchets) I pushed the little corrugated, oval-shaped button on the handle forward and began to turn the handle clockwise again. This time the insert spun as well and, in five minutes, I had each screw screwed in completely and the lock was up. I had to re-adjust the position of the part the bolt slid into, because the bolt just missed it, but that only took sixty seconds. So, the recent problem with my bathroom door, which is that it doesn't close all the way because the semi-triangular piece of medal which sticks out doesn't stick all the way out after the door is closed, is compensated for by the fact that I there's a sliding lock which somebody rattling the doorknob in an attempt to get the door to shut may notice. This means many of the people visiting on Christmas will be able to relax in the bathroom and not worry that somebody will waltz in unannounced.

Stumble Trickney

2005-12-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

1) I hurt my left calf last night.
2) I've been stumbling around as if I have a trick knee.
3) There's a poet named Trumbel Stickney, whose work I haven't seen anywhere except in the 1953 edition of THE OXFORD BOOK OF AMERICAN VERSE.
4) I feel compelled to say that with my new limp I should call myself Stumble Trickney, but:
5) I can only call myself this after telling people there is a poet named Trumbel Stickney.

If my calf keeps hurting I'll have to walkney with a stickney.

Ang Lee and Annie

2005-12-15T00:49:00.000-05:00

I got on the Long Island Railroad train tonight and saw BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN at Loew's Lincoln Center. Hearing that the transit strike might take place in another 36 hours inspired me to do this today. I just don't want to see it with a Long Island crowd. The New York City audience loved it. I think it will be a popular movie, but I don't want to be in an audience of people who find that what is being depicted is alien, no matter how they feel by the time the end credits roll.
SPOILERS, SPOILERS, OVER THE BOUNDING MAIN:
Larry McMurtry has thrown in a little humor, which helps in the translation from E. Annie Proulx's short story to the screen. The story has been opened up, but only in ways relating to things implied in the story. All the key ingredients of the story remain.
When I heard a few months ago that "Brokeback Mountain" was not only being made into a movie, but that Ang Lee was going to be the director, I got the collection WYOMING STORIES from the library and read the story. I had a memory of it appearing in THE NEW YORKER about nine years ago and that I had begun to read it and somehow had put it down and not continued. I gather now that a different story, winding up in the same collection, was in that issue of THE NEW YORKER and that "Brokeback Mountain" appeared in Esquire. In any case, I'd been aware that Proulx had written a story about gay cowboys (and I have to ask the various writers who have said it isn't about gay cowboys, "What do you mean?") and I'd always meant to read it. When I did get a hold of it and read it I mentioned it in passing at a meeting of my book group. To my surprise, when somebody then suggested we read it, the group almost automatically decided to count it as a candidate for our next selection. I always talk about other things I've read, but this time the group was so interested it selected a book (or story within a book) which I hadn't even been suggesting we read. I'm very glad I got to read it before seeing the movie. In the movie, there was a flashback which I'm not sure I'd have perceived as a flashback, even with the face of a character suddenly shown as much older in the scene just after the flashback.
There is a SHAMELESS use of the phrase "the ice storm" in a bit of dialogue. THE ICE STORM, of course, is Ang Lee's absolutely great adaptation of another American literary work, this one a novel also called THE ICE STORM, by Rick Moody. I consider that movie just devastating. The dialogue about an ice storm may be in Annie Proulx's story, but, if you will, sometimes Hitchcock just has to make a more subtle cameo. Nevertheless, Ang Lee has earned the right to refer to himself and it may be that, like McMurtry, Ang Lee felt the story needed some levity.
Maybe I'm not so glad I read "Brokeback Mountain" before seeing BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. I find I'm not sure how I feel about it. I can certainly say that I think Ang Lee tipped us off too early about what Randy Quaid's character was doing. The short story does it in a short and sweet (short and bittersweet) way. The audience laughed when they discovered what he was up to, but when I read the story I gasped. Of course, as I write this I'm thinking of a very intelligent decision Lee made in his camera use here. I won't give it away, but he avoids a cinematic cliche (most often seen in movies circa 1935-65) while simultaneously tipping us off that something unusual is happening. He updates a cliche, if you will.
There's a scene in Mexico which demonstrates Ang Lee's obsession with detail. We're in a border town and we hear a girl shouting "Chicles," "Chicles." When I was eleven my family was in Nuevo Laredo, just below the Texas border and there were old women selling little, cellophane-wrapped 4-packs of Chiclets gum. They kept murmuring "Chicles," "Chicles." How many people actually know that in Mexico, you hear the word "Chicles" being repeated as you walk along? Ang Lee is at least one person who knows. I'm sure Larry McMurtry could be the person who suggested the detail, but Ang Lee would be the director who asked. I've read that when he made THE ICE-STORM he asked anybody on the set who'd been about twelve or thirteen in 1974 how their bedrooms had been decorated then. Ang Lee is from Taiwan, but THE ICE STORM so perfectly captures the Watergate-era America that I remember that I find it frighteningly real. It took somebody from an entirely different culture to see tragedy in what most Americans see merely as an embarrassment.
Anyway, he has now taken a great short story and turned it into something a lot of people are going to see. The publisher has issued the story as a book in itself. There are actually a lot of books which remain alive because great directors have chosen to film them: THE MALTESE FALCON is a case in point. It should be reiterated more often that, more often than not, books adapted for the screen are good books.
And a high proportion of good movies come from books.

Fool's Names

2005-12-14T02:31:00.000-05:00

My grandmother (my maternal grandmother is the correct one of the two possibilities here) used to say this to me:

"Fool's names, like fool's faces: Often found in public places."

I notice my name is absolutely huge at the top of the screen.

My grandmother would have noticed, too.

Welcome, Andrew's Readership!

2005-12-13T02:34:00.000-05:00

Found yourself at a strange new blog? This is probably because you read one of Andrew's postings at his live journal on December 13th, 2005 -- in particular, the one in which he suggests a visit here.
Thanks for the mention, Andrew!
Tomorrow I'm going to post about the Ticketmaster Entertainment Rewards scam, which I've just reported to my credit card company. I bought an incredibly cheap McCartney ticket online and MY Entertainment Reward has been to get a little fee from a company I thought had only been sending me spam. And Ticketmaster is either unaware that its services are being used to serve the people at Entertainment Rewards or it is part of the whole thing.
To get the deal on THIS deal, check out:

http://www.entertainmentrewardscam.com

Well, I've gone ahead and posted about Entertainment Rewards, anyway...
If you look at my previous entry, you'll see me tackle the Governator.

Bandwidth Filler

2005-12-12T20:25:00.001-05:00

Well, here I am filling bandwidth. Someone out there is being squeezed out of internet space because I'm here posting vapid musings and trivial thoughts.
Well, Schwarzenegger has passed on staying the execution. I have no comment on that but I will say this in response to a TV commentator who suggested tonight that this will have political meaning for Schwarzenegger. I have to agree that it will. It will help him win the Republican nomination in 2008. Between now and that steamy summer the political hacks will work to get an amendment to the Constitution allowing a person not born into U.S. citizenship to become president. When the Republicans pushed to have Gray Davis removed they had higher hopes than installing a Republican as Governor of California. They wanted more than an advocate for the cause. With the Bush dynasty lame-ducked as of the re-election of Dub-a-yah, they needed a shoe-in for the next election.
It's going to be Ah-nold.
Sorry.

Richard Pryor

2005-12-11T13:48:00.000-05:00

I was looking for something to watch on TV yesterday and noticed that one channel was doing a few minutes on Richard Pryor. It became clear that this was an obituary.
He hosted one of the funniest episodes of the original SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Two years later Jackson Browne had a song about his (Jackson Browne's) tour bus. He lists the creature comforts his band has: "We've got Country and Western on the bus, R & B, we've got disco, and eight-tracks and cassettes in stereo, we've got time to think of the ones we love while the miles roll away -- and we've got Richard Pryor on the video..."
It was a long road.