Vigorously contemplating everything at once

You probably think I spend more time with Doris' cat than I do this blog, but not after the cat shit in the corner of my bedroom last Saturday, wasn't that a day to remember.

Had a nice visit with the folks, who took me to the Grand Canyon last week. Dad drove and Mom let me ride shotgun. We got rained on, but seeing the canyon floating in the blue bursting clouds like some eternal sky fortress is a never-ending visual pleasure under any meteorological circumstances, I bet. Go there when its snowing, someone said. Okay!

There's pretty authentic looking skeletons on porches smoking corn-cob pipes and skeletons in front yards half-buried in fresh dirt. Neighbors taking Halloween so serious they're stealing last year's cadavers from the mausoleum.

I didn't subject my parents to music that would give them headaches like I did the time we drove New Zealand's South Island listening to Television's blow-up on scratchy cassette. Music fit right into the landscape this time: Look Blue Go Purple, lots of Mum Smokes and Dungen 4. We had a really good time together. I wish they'd visit more often and not just because they bought me groceries either.

Been eating Mom's tortellini soup recipe. Though I think I overcooked the sausage a little. I had it again last night, been alternating between that and salads. I whipped up some salmon spread too. I should go buy a thing of pickles.

Been listening to the Ancients 2 and White Woods on repeat all day. Thanks to Steve from Sensory Projects for sending them over.

Made commitments with three beers and then been cheating on the one beer with the other two and then rotating and repeating the pattern: Kiltlifter, Trout Stout and the Marzen that is Beaver St Brewery's Oktoberfest beer. I better get down there, there's only a few more days left of that tasty sucker.

Great stuff McGuane

INTERVIEWER

One of the legends that grew out of your work on The Missouri Breaks was that you wrote the script and then Marlon Brando showed up wanting to change everything. Supposedly you two holed up for a week in a motel to thrash things out. Any truth to that story?

McGUANE

None. The closest thing there was to that story is that Brando did have ways he wanted to do that film: he wanted to be an Indian and he had two pet wolves that he wanted to be in the movie; moreover, he wanted these wolves to kill the girl’s father, wanted them to jump up on the girl’s father’s horse and eat him. So I was told to go out to Los Angeles and see Brando and get the wolf stuff stopped. I went out there and Brando was at home and I spent a couple of days with him. I had a wonderful time but we never talked about the movie at all. We just talked about literature. You know, he’s a very erudite guy and really smart, a kind of crazy-connections smart. At the time he was reading a history of the Jesuits in Minnesota and a book about Louis Leakey’s skulls and the prehominids in Africa. He’d get up in the morning and dress, gather all of his books together, and then get back in bed with his clothes on and read all day. He’s on the verge of being downright scholarly. So that’s what we did there, and when he eventually went off and did the movie he wasn’t an Indian. I still don’t know what he was. He was this kind of tubby Irish killer. I know many people hated that goofy, wild humor he injected into the movie but I appreciated it.

read the whole interview here

I Love Fiction

Three chapters submitted, generally well-received, sometimes bemusedly, as in this example:

“While I really enjoyed your writing my main critique is that I didn't really know what was going on. I sort of feel like someone who goes to class and doesn't comprehend a word the professor is saying but then leaves and goes, “I like that teacher's voice! It sounds nice! Also, the teacher is wearing a nice sweater!”

Today I'm off to the computer lab to make sure undergrads don't steal anything. That's my job. I'll take along some Keats and make some comparisons to the band Deerhoof. After that I will attend a grad organization meeting and get some tips on how to get Thomas McGuane here to talk.

Later still I will go to Beaver St Brewery, order hummus and drink my fill of happy hour caramel-hinted Oktoberfest ltd. ed. My fill is two, as past experience has proven that three is me repugnantly going overboard.

Biscuits & Gravy

My only sister who is also my favorite one incidentally said “biscuits and gravy don't make much sense to me after yoga! Did it happen?” Yes I told her, it did happen, I am a man of my word. I had two big ones, they came right out of the oven and were put on a large plate. The bowl of gravy was separate and I had a side egg overeasy and a sausage patty and a link combo besides. These were all washed down with several cups of diner coffee. My belly ached by the time I had cleaned my plate. All in all a good diner (off Milton before you hit the underpass, next to the Antiques and Collectables where I found a first edition True Grit last week). I was doing my homework while eating so it's all a good thing. In other news, Jesse found a photo of me kneeling beside a pigpen in a Richard Meltzer book I gave him. What a guy.