By the time I get to Marble Canyon

self-portrait at marble canyon

I bought a camera, a first. Also I think tecate is my favorite beer.

What happened yesterday

Not in Del Taco for a change. Long bike ride. Life is good, I'm out at Lower Lake Mary under a tree, could be better if I wasn't sitting on a bed of pine needles. Thorny and the thin fabric on my bathing trunks leaves something to be desired. I take a call from Belster. She's the toast of the town in New York City and is prepared to do whatever it takes in order to never leave, even if this means marrying me. I talk her sore head through the aftermath of her night last night and she later texts me to say that she made it to the Kushner play.

Pig Ankle Strut

The motto here at TM of The H is It's All True and this post is dedicated to the nautical navigation of Orson Welles. I suppose I should continue where this entry first started and that was at a Del Taco on Friday the 20th of May sometime after one in the afternoon. I had ordered two crunchy fish tacos and the cashier told me to cut the coupon out seeing as I had brought the entire page of coupons with me. I asked her for a pair of scissors she begrudgingly got the implement from a room beyond my vision. I then sat down at my regular table. The restaurant was busier than it had been previously yet I took little notice of the patrons. By the time I realized I did not have a pen, my food was ready. I asked for a pen as I collected my food and this is where the story ceases to be interesting. What matters though is that it is all true and my name is Orson Welles. I ate my disappointing tacos and never really got inspired to write anything down because I worried that the surly cashier was going to ask for her pen back any minute.

I reconfigured my room when I was down with a cold this week and as I shifted my bed the leg snapped. I washed my American quilt to help ease the pain of sleeping on a broken bed. Corwin and I went to Walnut Canyon yesterday and walked around Navajo dwellings built into the rock face. Lots of steep maneuvering. My quadriceps were all a-quiver. Then we drove to Mormon Lake to look at a potential site of summer employment for my fellow colleague (groundskeeper). He envisaged the place as a Crystal Lake or Meatballs camp community and I concurred. I convinced him to have a beer in the bar and it was redneck genius. One guy ordered a double jager and then a water as an after thought and when he finished his jager he spilled the water all over the bar next to me. What this says to me is the guy couldn't handle his water. It was only four o' clock. Two guys came stumbling in asking how the heck do you get out of this place when the door and windows showing daylight were right in front of them. Song of the day is Red Krayola's Pig Ankle Strut and once again I am Orson Welles.

Love to love Love

I'm at Del Taco blogging into my notebook. Later I will have an underpaid monkey upload the content into a computer terminal. The reason I am here is not because I was hungry, an earlier cinnamon-flavored Toast-em Pop-up took care of that, no, there was a buy one-get one free coupon in the mail and damn it all to heck if I ain't gonna use it. Now I have finished my burritos there's a hailstorm sweeping the hillside. Surely it's been a month of no precipitation and today's got me trapped in an empty Del Taco. A cool part about getting stuck in here is the gravitas it gives to the US Psychedelic mix I'm listening to. Constructed by my man in Wales, the inestimable Steve Hanson aka Steveski, The Ess, Steve Aitch, there's a sweet sequence involving the 60s LA band Love that makes you think Love is all you ever want or need.

Clarkenator was here a couple weeks back. I'll write more about the great time we had once the accompanying visuals have been processed. In other news, getting giddily beered up the other night allowed me to procure a gay cowboy leather bracelet with a horseshoe pendant from a tea shop in town.

Richard Wright

As I absentmindedly reminded H over the course of several obnoxious emails, I'm researching Richard Wright (1908-1960), America's black Dostoevsky. It's quite fun. I love his work (so grim). For my idea to be anything other than crap, I need to place him in the context of Naturalism, the modernist movement that unflinchingly described bowel movements and root canals with oddly-inspired enthusiasm. The appeal for me then is obvious. The language is superb. Research is amusing too.

Here's a nice bit from Malcolm Cowley: "In their effort to achieve bigness at any cost, the Naturalists were likely to undertake projects that went beyond their physical or imaginative powers, or in which they discovered too late that they weren't
really interested."

More Cowley: "Jack London wrote fifty books in seventeen years. "I have no unfinished stories," London told an interviewer five years before his death. "Invariably I complete everyone I start. If it's good, I sign it and send it out. If it isn't good, I sign it and send it out.""

Wright himself was heavily edited. The work as he intended didn't come out until decades later or long after his death.

Cat in the Snow

I let the cat out in the snow after I got up late. If I didn't let her out, she'd whine and that's real annoying to me. Trouble is there was enough snow out there to bury a cat. I made a percolator of coffee and drank it on the couch reading Trout Fishing in America and worrying about the cat. It took me a long time to read it even though there wasn't a whole lot of it left to read. Every now and then I got up and whistled for the cat. She didn't answer so I went back to reading.

When I finished reading Trout Fishing in America I thought about the books I read this year that weren't school books, thinking that this would keep me from worrying about the cat in the snow.

I read Jonathan Lethem who did the blurb for David's Go-Betweens' book. His Chronic City is fantastic. I read Boomerang by Barry Hannah. A blazing blend of non-fiction and fiction.

A sign of a good book is if you're reading it when you head to the john and you keep reading it after the john and this is one of those. Barry getting mistaken for John Ritter in LA compelled me to write about Three's Company and how that served as my foundation for the life my sister was living in LA. I got real sad when John Ritter died. He was for me what Jack Lemmon, I suspect, was for other people. I aborted the piece in the end, but I may return to it when i have a better idea of it.

Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence is essential reading for sons and mothers of sons and to a lesser extent, lovers.

Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan cuts loose with sentences of mind-blowing perversity. I often reach for it when I'm having trouble making sentences work they way I want them to. I have a couple groovy titles in progress too and they are Reinhart's Women by Thomas Berger and Never Die by Barry Hannah. Both killer reads.

I worried a lot about the cat being buried in ten inches of snow. I tried leaving the door open a crack in case I didn't hear her miaow but it got too cold.

I went for a walk in my new coat. The walk began with a search party in the backyard that did not yield a cat, not even a miaow. It was a good wet snowy walk in my new coat. I listened to the new Vivian Girls CD that I ordered last night on impulse after I had a few bold whiskies and thought to hell with my bank account. After my walk, I found the cat under the neighbor's boat. She didn't miaow. She even tried to run away from me.

I came home carrying the cat and watched this and nearly cried because I was there.



Now Splendor in the grass is on got to go.

Something I wrote at the bar before my friends showed up

I'm here killing time at Beaver St Brews and Cues, having my first gin and tonic of the year and waiting for the Final Four basketball to start. One of my favorite Pavement albums is Brighten the Corners an irresistible rock album that heralds Spring rather well I'd say and I can see from inside this bar that there's sun going on outside it. Cool. Not only that but I rode my bike here and the weather was ginny. I've opted to listen to my ipod while I wait for my friends to show up. I don't want to say anything else. I had fish for lunch. There I said it. I covered it in chili garlic sauce and baked it in tinfoil for twenty minutes. Then I melted cheese over it and whacked it in a tortilla. Goodbye.

My new coat!

Remember when I said that I had lost the pad to my earphones when I was at the pub back in early March? Well the other day when I was looking for my replacement set, I found the pad that I had thought I had left at the pub in the couch cushion. Still I haven't found what I did with that wily old replacement set. Now they're probably at the pub!

Today I bought an olive green herringbone parka/overcoat that I have had my eye on since Christmas vacation. I've been waiting patiently for it to go on sale and today it was 25% off, which was good enough for me! I paid the kind of price that I wanted to but forget to take into consideration the thirteen dollars of tax I had to pay on top of it. Oh well!

The other day my Mom sent me a bag of nuts and some spare headphones.

Not only that but shortbread cookies and the Fall Peel sessions box set. Who, Nelly! Have ye heard rebellious jukebox? Me neither until the other day and now I am quite familiar with it because I cannot stop playing it.

I took my coat for a walk tonight and part way into it, I smelt something horrid which could only mean one thing: there's a skunk about.

The thing about Flagstaff neighborhoods: they're awfully dark. The reason for this has to do with the stars. An ordination was passed some time ago that limits any light source that could be a hindrance to stargazers. What this means for me on my walk in my new coat is that the chances of me seeing the skunk sneak up and attack and ruin my new coat is not very likely. Don't the stars look pretty though!

Here's a picture of my new coat that survived a skunk attack!

Almost, but not quite

Today would have been perfect had I not lost another headphone pad at the pub. I know I shouldn't have taken them there last night, but I would have lost them some other way, some other time anyway. I go through more of these rubber headphone covers. It actually degrades my quality of life in a sick way when this happens.

It's Spring Break and the weather has gotten really nice for it. It's supposed to be 75 on Tuesday, which is a good excuse for everyone to go outside and get drunk. I wore my straw hat to the supermarket, listening to Hawkwind on my underperforming headphones.

Only a few pages into D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, but I'm sincerely gagging for more. I will report if these feelings of mine change any time soon. On deck is Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, Mcguane's pick for the one book he'd wished he'd written.

Apparently there are black widow spiders living in older homes. The reason I say this is because I haven't seen a spider here, nor any insects whatsoever. Possible reasons for this is one, the house is new-ish; two, a lot of bugs probably can't be bothered getting up to this elevation; and three is that they are just avoiding me, in which case that just makes me feel unwanted. In other news, I heard a woodpecker pecking a tree in our backyard this morning.

I did well at the supermarket spending less than ten dollars on milk and bread and fruit, yogurt and I forget what else. I did a lot better a few days earlier, claiming a bottle of Chivas Regal 18 from a discount shopping trolley. Of course I hadn't planned on buying booze and thus didn't have my passport. The store manager Tim with the silver goatee didn't accept my Australian driver's license but said he would keep the bottle on his desk for when I returned with proof that I was as old as he suspected.

Best Dressed – Adams, Worst – Bigelow, and much more

A lot of JC Penney during the ad breaks, the reliance on their women's line was not encouraging for guys like me who dress exclusively in menswear. Deduct two points.

ABC put the freakishly tall Robin Roberts on the red carpet, making actors such as Mark Ruffalo look freakishly small when she chatted to them.

The Mistress was acutely pithy in her observations:

* gwyneth paltrow is looking like marcia brady circa Hawaii episode.
* Mila Kunis looks like she's had some hooch.
* Marisa Tomei is puffy and menopausal.


A good year for dresses, mostly. Oprah was wearing water wings. Amy Adams looked the most beautiful in a dress that matched her eyes. Kathyrn Bigelow looked like an unshapely man trapped in a Christmas stocking.

The guy who won best director stole part of his speech from the woman who won best foreign film.

Earlobes jangled on Natalie Portman from the weight of her earrings as she collected her well-deserved win for Black Swan. Sitting behind her, Darren Aronofsky's World War I fighter pilot moustache twinkled charismatically.

Scarlet Johannson and Matthew McConaughey have never looked more clapped-out. A guest I had over, Jon felt that he should have at least washed his greasy hair. His wife Emily thought that maybe Scarlet experienced some haggard sex prior to the get-together.

New Hollywood trend identified: British and American men collaborations, they were everywhere yesterday.

“This is hurting my ears,” said I during the Mandy Moore song.

I give this mediocre awards show 10/10

Almond Roca Shoegaze

What can I say, I sat on a bar stool and caught my finger between the cushion and then I sat on my finger and didn't realize it until I started scooting in. I cursed loudly for I had the full weight of my tush on it and Johan whose looking a lot less like Udo Kier these days and more like George Michael circa Faith on account of the well-manicured beard and brown tinted shades he wears at night, was in the stool next to me, his hands up safe, told me to tell the barmaid to give you a free Ouzo shot, but I let it go and I won't hold it against. I'll be back. I like the local Greek grill, hazardous as it may be.

Reading Hemingway's My Old Man and thinking of my young Pappy during sentences evocative of childhood bliss like this one: “He'd ask me questions about things and some of the things I'd say he'd laugh.” The story has to do with corruption at the horse races. Led me to come up with a good lyric for a hard rock band: “they'd just as soon use the horse hooves and hide then keep the horses alive.” I resisted the decadence and abstained from eating Almond Roca last night. It was a Valentine's gift from my Valentine, my Mother. She also sent me some Vaseline intensive dry skin repair because she reads my blog. On Valentine's I listened to this excellent mash-up my good friend Steve from Wales sent me featuring My Bloody Valentine. Having not listened to this band in yonks really sends you into orbit.

Bought Peet's Columbian blend Coffee because that's what they drink in Chronic City. I went to bed at 8.30pm last night, so I could get up early and drink a bunch of it and I have had a large percolator full of it and it's now 10.21am and I'm not totally convinced by it and think I'll go back to bed.

The Waste Land

Fighting a cold, but gonna come out on top, unlike my battle with the Belster over Black Swan, I'll eke a decision there, but it won't be until the eleventh round and the exhumation of Tennessee Williams.

Good Super Bowl last night, my first in twelve years. Alternated between sudafed and Papa John's pizza. Subjected to far too many putrid commercials.

Drank and partied to some pub rock Friday night. I was somewhat flat, but the energy in the room was good. Corwin needed to get out of town the next day and given that I never get out of town I emerged from the hideaway and accompanied him west on 66. First we went to Target to get some masking tape for his new tattoo. I impulsively bought a 12 pack of Irish Spring and a creme cleanser that subsequently turned my face into The Waste Land.

Spare a minute to talk about facial cosmetics? Winter here is cruel to be kind on my skin. I am desperate for lip balm. I tried to do right with this clearance cleanser I got at Target and it is horrendous, no wonder it was on clearance.

We drove to Williams, a first for me and him, less weird for me since he's from Phoenix (he played the boy in Poltergeist). We ate lunch at Jessica's Greek Family Restaurant. I was reminded of Destroyer's Song for America, which we listened to on the way. “Wrote a song for America they told me it was clever, Jessica's on vacation to the dark side of town forever.”

It was just me and him at a booth in the restaurant and some member of Jessica's family that was not Jessica because I asked if she was Jessica and she said no Jessica is in Chicago. We both drank ice tea. I ordered a hot meatloaf sandwich covered in gravy. It was alright, though I can't imagine ever getting a craving for it again. Alright back to T.s. Eliot's She Wolves of the Waste Land.

I love the American low-life

Biking to the campus post office Monday I crashed into a skateboarder. I was listening to Gang of Four on my headphones real loud and didn't know what hit me. I yowled, ejected myself and rolled across the path. He didn't lose his feet and was there to pick me up (but not dust me off). The next morning before my first day of work I opened the fridge and saw a gnat circling my Caesar salad kit and tried to backhand it. Punnet of blueberries exploded across the linoleum. To be safe, I spent the rest of the week listening to Destroyer's new album. My only complaint is that at fifty minutes it's too short! Watched The Asphalt Jungle last night for probably the fifth time. I love the American low-life. His stomach hemorrhaging, Sterling Hayden, pulls his iv out and stumbles from the small town doctor's house and into the night. As the car peals out, the doctor says, “He won't get very far that's for sure. He hasn't got enough blood left in him to keep a chicken alive!”

Mix I made for the greats

(layout by the acclaimed luke fraser)

Been meaning to blog for awhile and determined to do it well. Carla, Jesse, two greats who inspire reasons to live — not that I needed one, but if I did, I would now have one and it's them — are getting married this weekend and I want to see them so bad! I hope the course of events in my life that follows allows this to happen sooner rather than later. If I counted up all the heart-stopping moments I've had with them (The Mother and the Whore, Malkmus, to name but two) then the beat of my heart would never stop, which is essentially the eternal idea.
Have you seen the Angela Carter-esque Black Swan? Well you should, why, because it's good. Barbara Hershey does a great Piper Laurie in Carrie and Natalie Portman does a great Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion. I liked True Grit too, heckuva film and I aspire towards Matt Damon's look.
I'm manning the front desk of Beaver Street Elementary School in case you walk in and see me there in my cranberry hoodie looking bewildered. It's the temporary home of the Liberal Arts Building, while they remove asbestos and install sprinkler heads in the actual building. I was asked to test the water pressure of the drinking fountains the other day and came back with an unnecessarily-descriptive full report.

Year in Reading

I read more than usual this year because I was out of work for most of it. Also, it occurs to me that the paucity of books by women probably has something to do with my inability in understanding them. I'd say the top 17 are among the finest books I've read and it's not until 34 that I start pulling my hair out. In school I read a shitload of Angela Carter, fell in love with her despite her many unnerving qualities. Julian Barnes I learned to despise. Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway is astonishing particularly when there's an expert telling you what you've just read. Carter's Shadowdance and The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman are brilliant. I would not hesitate recommending those to anyone, but I would have them brace themselves.

Number in brackets are in order of appreciation. Little blurb on each below.

A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley (8)
Palimpsest by Gore Vidal (23)
Gallatin Canyon by Thomas McGuane (13)
Speak, Memory by Nabokov (24)
Pale Fire by Nabokov (aborted)
Bushwhacked Piano by McGuane
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (aborted)
Airships by Barry Hannah (9)
Emerald Blue by Gerald Murnane (29)
Gringos by Charles Portis (10)
Robert Lowell by Ian Hamilton (27)
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (34)
The Feud by Thomas Berger (12)
Wise Blood by Flannery O Connor (11)
Eustace Chisholm and the Works by James Purdy (5)
Vital Parts by Thomas Berger (1)
Treasure Island by RL Stevenson (32)
Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O Connor (7)
Nobody's Angel by McGuane (31)
Seize the Day by Bellow (35)
A Separate Peace by John Knowles (26)
Nothing but Blue skies by McGuane (19)
Watchmen by Alan Moore (31)
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow (2)
Americana by Don Delillo (37)
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (21)
Third Policeman by Flann O' Brien (25)
Life of Johnson by Boswell (33)
Glory by Nabokov (36)
Being Invisible by Berger (14)
Going Places by Leonard Michaels (6)
Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (15)
Bat out of Hell by Barry Hannah (20)
Who is afraid of Teddy Villanova by Thomas Berger (17)
Off to the side by Jim Harrison (24)
Mysteries by Knut Hamsum (13)
Tennis Handsome by Barry Hannah (2)
Best Friends by Berger (28)
Bushwhacked Piano by McGuane
Kangaroo by DH Lawrence (16)
Driving on the Rim by McGuane (18)
Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham (30)
Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark (22)


A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley
Not so much a shaggy dog story as a story about a shaggy dog, or a guy whose beard shares the same coloring as a sheepdog. Deserves a place alongside On the Road or whatever the establishment is calling the Great American Novel these days.

Palimpsest by Gore Vidal
Sublime memoir from someone who was in the moment in the 20th century. There's a reason Hollywood makes Forrest Gump instead of Palimpsest: no class.

Gallatin Canyon by Thomas McGuane
McGuane does Chekhov; excellent story collection from a few years back.

Speak, Memory by Nabokov
I recall this memoir is great on memory, but I forget the specifics.

Pale Fire by Nabokov (aborted)
Second attempt and probably last at this irritating ridiculous spectacle.

Bushwhacked Piano by McGuane
I usually reach for the Bushwhacked Piano after a bad reading experience. It's my favorite novel and I read it once a year. This year I read it twice.

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (aborted)
Only read half due to personal trauma.

Airships by Barry Hannah
I read Barry for the pure pleasures of his wild man prose, or as Thomas McGuane once put it, 'the inventions of his moon-landing English." Short stories. See also Tennis Handsome.

Emerald Blue by Gerald Murnane
Murnane's a bit cerebral and at the time, I was in a mental fog, so the circumstances weren't great, but much to admire here.

Gringos by Charles Portis
Aw, one of my heroes. Once the snow melts I'd like to get down and see True Grit. Mind boggles as to what kind of movie would be made of this. Archaeologist/ bounty hunter in Mexico, not far from the US border, but far enough to be in the jungle surrounded by a ragtag bunch of eccentric ragamuffins: hippies, UFO chasers and others, all likely wanted for something. Did I say it was hilarious?

Robert Lowell by Ian Hamilton
Grueling, but I got through it and well worth the gruel all things considered.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Earlier this year, I wrote, “she writes well on grief, but there’s almost an overdose of Lorrie going on here. All the characters make Lorrie Moore jokes even the Arab. It’s like Jerry Seinfeld playing every character on Heroes or something.”

The Feud by Thomas Berger
Slapstick perfection.

Wise Blood by Flannery O Connor
There are scenes in this novel that are more realized in my mind than scenes from forties' noirs.

Eustace Chisholm and the Works by James Purdy
Sticky malevolent hustling in NYC slums, so poetic your heart stops. Really hard to believe Purdy will go there but he does. Angela Carter tries to go there and usually fails miserably. Will I read it a second time? I do not know if I will.

Vital Parts by Berger
Part three of Berger's brilliant Reinhart novels about a lovable/laughable overweight schlub, imagine a cross between Larry David and his friend Jeff. This time out he's embroiled in a cryogenics scheme with a playboy highschool buddy who was, by Reinhart's account, an overwhelming dildo in high school and Reinhart tells it straight, so you believe him. Reinhart needs a break in this life, but even that he might screw up. Cryogenics, really Reinhart? Loaned it to my sister-in-law Pam who enjoyed it for about five seconds.

Treasure Island by RL Stevenson
I liked it, but whatever, I was on an island at the time.

Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O' Connor
Sounds cliched, but without Flannery, American literature would not be what it is. Robert Lowell was convinced she was a saint. She died at my age. This came out posthumously and it's incredible.

Nobody's Angel by McGuane
Fascinates me for not being among his best. Written during a turbulent time in his life.

Seize the Day by Bellow
Disconcertingly stagey, I basically hated it.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles
One tender book. Gore proclaimed it profound on adolescent boy-lust. Just nod your head, kid.

Nothing but Blue Skies by McGuane
Contains my favorite scene in a novel involving cajun spices. And who could forget the barn party?

Watchmen by Alan Moore
Certainly impressive, I suppose.

Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
My two favorite novels of the year concern enormous fat guys.

Americana by Don Delillo
Don should have stopped this after fifty perfect pages. Turns into X Files conspiracy thriller about the secret patterns of the number of holes in things. A pile of horseshit.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Crafted to within an inch of its life and tighter than a Jerry Lawler headlock. This one kind of got the best of me. There's really nothing quite like it however.

Third Policeman by Flann O' Brien
Beyond criticism really. I desperately want to have a porter at the bar with him, but I can't because he's dead (highest compliment).

Life of Johnson by Boswell
I was hoping to read Johnson's dictionary as well as Samuel Johnson is Indignant by Lydia Davis, but I only read the Boswell, which I was so immersed in it at the Rose Garden this summer waiting for Tim to pick me up, I made him wait fifteen minutes, which is horrible, I know. The book is good, but not something to dick your friends over for.

Glory by Nabokov
The eighth chapter I remember being good, the first chapter is a close second. Couldn't tell you what's in-between other than an amusing comment regarding toothpaste and a noirish altercation at drunken gunpoint. This novel is an arrogant disaster.

Being Invisible by Thomas Berger
Very funny. Only flaw really is an excessive use of the word chagrin.

Going Places by Leonard Michaels
I like H's description of Leonard sitting on your chest while you're reading it. That said, it's orgiastic stuff, which possibly makes it even weirder.

Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
What does one say about this Great L.A. Novel? You don't say anything. You shut your stinking trap.

Who is afraid of Teddy Villanova? by Thomas Berger
A neo-noir from 77 that will never be caught up with. In terms of going whole-hog with miraculous language, this is a tour de force. Angela Carter's Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman is also one and also a drug novel, which this may be too.

Off to the side by Jim Harrison
Wise memoir. Jim has a ranch on the Arizona/Mexican border, but he does not accept drop-ins. There's an essay on flunking grad school and his aversion to linguistics. I was signed up for linguistics at the time and promptly dropped it. Thanks Jim.

Mysteries by Knut Hamsun
Brilliant variation on the stranger in a small town theme. This fellow wears a yellow suit and exhibits fantastic eccentricities. Recalls original thinkers such as the nihilist in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, but way weirder.

Tennis Handsome by Barry Hannah
In my workshop we were asked to bring in a piece of fiction. This is what I brought and this is what I said: “What I love most about reading Hannah is you don't know where his next sentence will take you. He uses non sequiturs that have their own weird logic. His prose style is really musical and the compression in his sentences makes even a relatively short novel like this one, quite dense. We were first introduced to The Tennis Handsome in a short story called Return to Return that was included in 1978's Airships. French Edward is the Tennis Handsome, a golden ale locked manchild sculpturally blessed like Michelangelo's David whose immortal grace on the tennis court hypnotizes a nation into a bunch of droolers fixated on the TV. French is the toast, accidental pun, of Vicksburg, Mississippi and there haven't been many of those. We also get French's filthy manager Baby Levaster, Dr. Word, his horny old demented bi-curious coach and Vietnam vet Bobby Smith, but Bobby doesn't appear until later. The Tennis Handsome has a non-linear form, sixteen chapters flashing forward and back over a 40 year-period, taking in a couple of wars, but mainly documenting these bizarre characters orbiting around French Edward.” My teacher kindly informed me afterwards that Barry had once thrown a knife at her head.

Best Friends by Thomas Berger
A cataclysmic turn-of-events to keep you on the edge-of-your-seat and in an entertaining panic, just the way you like to sweat your literary aerobics.

Bushwhacked Piano by McGuane
Reread this for a personal essay I was writing in Lit Studies. As good as ever!

Kangaroo by DH Lawrence
I loved the story of RL Somers' self-administered exile to the obscure coast of New South Wales and his fear of sodomy that restricted him from being “mates” with the homoerotic ex-serviceman of the RSL.

Driving on the Rim by McGuane
"It's been a wonderful life. I wish I understood it." I really need to get in touch with him as his last two books have been about preparing to die and if this is his last novel, then a load-bearing wall I require for my strength will have tumbled. This one has a great scene about serving hot dogs in impromptu fashion.

Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham
Good, but did I miss something that compelled SJ Perelman to call it one of only two successful comic novels written in his era?

Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
This book was amazing. I can see the influence on Angela Carter, who's a similar tough-minded broad (pardon the slur ladies; it's my forties gumshoe parlance).

Hair and ancients plug

From left: Elizabeth, Kes' Karl, Ancients' Jon and Clare's Dave. As much as I love all these people I am really only posting this photo for Elizabeth's hair. I review Ancients 2 here at the renovated 10th Chaffinch.

A Flaubertian Christmas

Christmas on the ranch was one of the livelier events in recent memory.

Stew donned a kilt with matching tartan tie. This is after a few champagnes and a shower. He wore a buttoned-up shirt from a clothing line produced by country singer George strait. He mentioned this when his rancher neighbor Jason said he got one of his CDs for Christmas. I said they've been giving them away with a minimum purchase of western wear at boot barn, according to an ad I saw. They asked if I got a job there because at Thanksgiving I said I was going to try after I saw a sign on their window that said seasonal help needed, but I never followed it up and that was the end of them inquiring about me getting them discount boots at the Boot Barn, which they had already done previously.

Drinking a wide array of specialty drinks at the ranch added to the fun. Egg nog and kahlua was a good one. Next was a delicious red and white wine concoction with diced apple and orange zest, a sangria kind of doodah. Annah brought a chardonnay from LA in route to Philly that I liked a lot. "It's a good cupcake," she said. I took it as some curious LA parlance when that's the actual name of the winery: Cupcake. Look out for it, if you like a buttery chard.

Jen and Stew's daughters wore matching outfits outshining their Dad. They had a good time on the alligator seesaw that Jen's Mother brought for them.

We listened to the life-changing Orange Juice box set that Stew got for his birthday recently. A jalapeno goat's cheese pre-funk with Jameson's whisky, a Jen party staple - that was good too.

Christmas goose for dinner was tubular. Purple cabbage with garlic and anchovies, how did Stewart do it, we all wondered. Couldn't get the gravy to work, we all had a hand in trying. I, for one, found the flour. I turned to the beautiful Hollywood actress who kindly dished me up and said how historical this meal seemed to be. Like Christmas dinner at the Flaubert's circa 1875. I then looked at her plate and couldn't help but notice how artfully arranged her yams, cabbage, candied walnuts, foie gras and homegrown ham was compared to the chaos she made of my plate. Still I appreciated the dishing up effort even if it was slightly less inspired.

A day of mainly cloud cover for a solar house meant that by six we were lighting candles and losing power. By 6.15 the CD player stopped right before it got to the last song on the XMAS mix I brought over of songs that have nothing to do with Christmas, Corn Chips by the Cannanes, which is too bad. I forgot to mention the orgasmic bread and butter pudding. Make up for it next year.

Holiday book pile

H on what I got him for his birthday and what's next on the pile:

"I just finished the Leonard Michaels collection. The first set of stories made me feel like someone was sitting on my chest and gutturally dictating their descent into hell (Obvious Celine influence with the cadence). Damn you Henry, Phillip & Marjorie! The next set of stories was a Borges/Nabokavian head scratching puns bookended by two of his best short stories. The third section was also tremendous. The over the top Hemingway homage "Tropicana" being a highlight along with the handball one. I wasn't as impressed with the Nachman stories. What impressed me most about Michaels is that each collection sounds like it was written by a different author. I also finished Vital Parts and loved it (Splendor Manwaring buy his parents old house). For Christmas I will be alternating between "Bats Out Of Hell" and Ann Beattie's just released "New Yorker Stories". Seems appropriate. Happy holidays fuck face."

Wanted: cathartic haircut

I'm drinking a hazelnut coffee and contemplating a haircut. I am what is known in this town as a longhair. I'm very nervous last haircut was a sweaty nightmare I couldn't get out of there quick enough. She left my sides uneven and wore a scowl of disgust throughout the graceless procedure. I suppose the lustrousness intimidated her, but why, it's just sui generis atomic particles. Anyhow it was my mistake. Avoid Supercuts with a passionate intensity. I'm going to test out Alleycat Salon this time instead and then I'm going to use my five dollar voucher at Macy's Coffee and finish Driving on the Rim, which is building to a fine conclusion. I would have held out on having a coffee prior to the Macy's experience, but I figured I needed total neuron control in order to elucidate any special trimming technicalities.

Last day of school

A number of hardships accompanied finals week.

I misplaced my keys and dismantled my bedroom. Books and important papers were flung around, pages crumpled from lashings of aggravation. A good hour of fury I subjected myself to when all along the keys were under my assignment on the kitchen table. The next day I couldn't find my blue folder that contained all my notes for my research paper, and took my derangement out on my housemates who I suspected of deliberately disposing of it to watch me squirm. It wasn't until I was on my way to school that it occurred to me that I had done some photocopying at Raven Printing after finding my keys the day before, so I dropped by. Boss Raven happened to be serving a customer, so I used my spare time filling my pockets full of tootsie rolls, compliments of Raven Printing.

Boss would have recognized me because it was my fourth Raven transaction. "What can I do for you?" he said, though I can't promise those were the exact words he used.

"Did someone leave a blue folder here yesterday?"
"Sure did!" he said and went and fetched it out of the lost and found. I was effusively over-the-top in my gratitude. "The lady described to me who it was that had left it and it wasn't the description that I would have used." I didn't know how to take a comment like that, but I was glad to get my blue folder back.

It's snowing heavily and I'm staring at empty stockings hanging from the fireplace and wondering when I will be able to leave the house and fill them when Doris is leaving for Austria by noon tomorrow.

I arose at 6.30am this morning to do yoga but it was already snowing and my shoes didn't have the best grip, so I made a coffee and worked on some revisions for a good solid hour or two, or at least for the 52 song duration of Sebadoh's The Freed Man. Then I walked to campus to return books. On my way home I decided to stop for a biscuit and gravy at the Railway Cafe.

I saw Kelly from class and met her boyfriend. They were trying to find her a thesis for a Shakespeare course she's taking. Best believe that by the end of breakfast they found it. Kelly's from a Scandinavian wing of Minnesota, therefore she's besotted with my Norwegian sweaters. Best believe that!

I looked at my bill and saw that they charged me $3.39 for one biscuit, then remembered that two were $3.99 so I ordered another. The cheerful owner guy looked out the window at the steady-falling snow, then said to the group at the big booth, "48 hours ago I was washing my car. I did the white walls. I had music on..."

I think the biscuits had MSG in them because then I became quite ill. I bought some milk and walked home without an umbrella because it snapped in half as I was passing the Walmart parking lot.