The Pink Lotus: "Tintin both offers and withholds."

More hilarious perversity making its way around the internet - the Erotic Tintin (from the Guardian).

Thanks to Conversational Reading for the heads up.

And in other news, Grant brought my attention to basically the best cake ever. Man, I wish I were this person's friend.

The answer is "no."

I finally got back to work this week (haven't I said this here before?) after weeks of relocation. This week I finished interviews with photographer Taryn Simon and sculptor Michael Rea, reviewed The End of Europe, and updated The Foghorn.

I'm also catching up on a wonderful backlog of emails and tips from Grant, including these from a "treasure trove" of Evelyn Waugh anecdotes:

From Evelyn Waugh, Portrait of a Country Neighbour, Frances Donaldson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967.
He entertained himself with grandiose projects [at Piers Court]. He built what became known as The Edifice —a semi-circular stone wall about ten feet in height, surmounted by battlements and with a paved area beneath it. When this was finished he advertised for human skulls to adorn the battlements. He received a surprising number of replies, which I doubt if he had expected, and he had to refuse most of the offerings. The Edifice was not a great success. Many people thought it hideous and Evelyn himself was not satisfied with it, although he got pleasure out of the building. [pg. 23]

From Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, Selina Hastings, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1994.
For Evelyn, it [a trip to the US in Nov 1948] was a joyless experience, the unbeautiful campuses, the characterless hotels — in New Orleans he smashed open the window of his air-conditioned room with his stick ... [pg. 536]

From To Keep the Ball Rolling: The Memoirs of Anthony Powell: Volume Two, Messengers of Day, Heinemann, London, 1978.
One night [at W's family home on North End road] Waugh asked if I would like to hear the opening chapters of a novel he was writing. ... Waugh's embryonic novel — then called Picaresque, or the Making of an Englishman — was the first ten thousand words, scarcely altered at all later, of Decline and Fall. The manuscript was written with a pen on double-sheets of blue lined-foolscape, the cipher EW printed at the top of the first page of each double-sheet. There were hardly any alterations in the text. ... Some months after the reading aloud of these chapters — probably a moment towards the end of the same year [1927] — I asked Waugh how the novel was progressing. He replied: 'I've burnt it.' [pp. 21-2]

And, while we're on the topic of Mr. Waugh, Allan Massie of the Spectator asks, "Can a novelist write too well?"

Why, how unlikely!

Thanks to Aubrey for TEN new pairs of Unlikely Animal Friends!

"I've never travelled in a bus and I've never addressed a stranger on a train."

"The prospect of just being introduced to somebody as just a person, a man as you might say in the street, is entirely repugnant."

Evelyn Waugh undergoes "the most ill-natured interview ever" with the BBC, 1953.

This is just too priceless - A former Lonely Planet writer assigned to cover Columbia admits he just hung around San Francisco and made stuff up.

"I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian Consulate."

See The Foghorn's Lonely Planet Master Guide for our take on this fine organization.

My new favorite time-waster is the UnSuggester on Library Thing. Suggest a title and it will suggest some books you are sure not to like. Some examples:

Did you like The Critique of Pure Reason?

You will not like Confessions of a Shopaholic. (I did, in fact, like both.)

Did you like The Confessions of St. Augustine?
You will not like Night Pleasures.

Did you like ANSI Common LISP?
You will not like Wuthering Heights.

Did you like The Road to Serfdom?
You will not like The Devil Wears Prada.

Did you like Bitch?
You will not like The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

Did you like Real Sex?
You will not like The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

On our trip to Yiwu this weekend, Dev enjoyed a refreshing beer, now "Free From Formaldehyde"!

The New Yorker's Alex Ross reviews the Met's ill-fated production of "Tristan und Isolde" and famous operatic debacles past.

"The most priceless aspect of the 'Aida' imbroglio was the double take delivered by Ildikó Komlósi, the mezzo singing Amneris, as she turned around to find a replacement tenor embodying Radames, his rumpled gray blouse suggesting a change of scene from ancient Egypt to the bargain floor at H & M."

"I never got to sleep alone till I got married.”

From the latest New Yorker, a gathering of elderly Jewish comedians.

The best sentence I've read this week, from Hilton Als' review of a new production of "The Seagulls" in The New Yorker: " . . . she deserves better than the show’s costume designer, Suzy Benzinger, has given her. (Her dresses are like something Bob Mackie might have whipped up for a “Seagull” parody starring Carol Burnett.)"

Well, this is great

Found here, with thanks to Grant!

Also, stay tuned for some reworking of this blog and a lot of new content soon.

Announcing The Foghorn

I am very happy to announce the launch of my new web project, The Foghorn. Check back every Wednesday for updates.

Presenting, the baby squid hat. As worn by Rosemary Spindler.

(Courtesy of Rosemary's blog. Inspired by this knit version.)

No, I still don't like Jane Smiley,

but I do like this link from Grant.

More from Grant - see Cavett for more. This is an excerpt from Mailer's (third-person) written account of the show, including a run-in with Gore Vidal before the airing:

At this moment, alone in the green room, he felt a tender and caressing hand on the back of his neck. It was Gore. Vidal had never touched him before, but now had the tender smile of a man who would claim, "It doesn't matter, old sport, what we say about each other — it's just pleasant to see an old friend."

Mailer answered with an openhanded tap across the cheek. It was not a slap; neither was it a punch. Just a stiff tap.

To his amazement, Vidal gave him a stiff tap back.

Norman smiled. He leaned forward and looked pleasantly at Gore. He put his hand to the back of Gore's neck. Then he butted him in the head.

Thanks again to Grant for sending me this from the new Paris Review Interviews, Vol. II., now on my Christmas list - from an interview with Harold Bloom. The interviewer narrates within the brackets...

(Midway through the interview...)

BLOOM

....But the early books of Wilson Knight are very fine indeed--certainly one of the most considerable figures of twentieth-century criticism, though he's mostly forgotten now.

[At this point we wander into the kitchen, where Mrs. Bloom is watching the evening news.]

BLOOM

Now let's wait for the news about this comeback for the wretched Yankees. I've been denouncing them. They haven't won since 1979. That's ten years and they're not going to win this year. They're terrible.... What's this?

[TV: The Yankees with their most dramatic win of the year this afternoon.... And the Tigers lost again.]

BLOOM

Oh my God! That means we're just four games out! How very upcheering.

MRS. BLOOM

Jessica Hahn.

BLOOM

Jessica Hahn is back!

[TV: ...hired on as an on-air personality at a Top 40 radio station in Phoenix... ]

BLOOM

How marvelous!

[TV: Playboy magazine had counted on Hahn to come through. She appeared nude in a recent issue.]

BLOOM

Splendid. ...But oh, let us start again, Antonio. What were we talking about?

[We return to the living room.]

From Grant, my favorite provider of literary anecdotes, scintillating links, and a recent agonizing/amusing personal history regarding a Taco Bell uniform.

As told by George Plympton:

"I remember Norman Mailer at one of our July fireworks parties in the Hamptons. He wanted to fire a shell. He had his bourbon drink in a blue glass, really more a vase, the sort of receptacle one usually finds in the back of a kitchen cabinet when everything else in the house, even the plastic cups, has been commandeered. He held the drink in one hand, safe out behind him, and he approached the fuse with the railroad flare in the other. The mortar held a six-inch Japanese shell. I watched him—struck again by the grotesque attitudes that people get into when faced with igniting a shell. In his case, he seemed not unlike a scientist intent on catching a lizard by the back of the neck. The shell came out almost instantaneously. His surprise at the shock of its emergence—a six-inch shell of that type weighs about eight pounds—toppled Norman into a complete backward somersault through the sawgrass. Astonishingly the blue vase remained upright as he pinwheeled around it; not a drop of bourbon splashed out. He got up and took a sip and asked if he could do another. 'Do you have anything slightly larger?'"

"Camp Inquiry is different from the popular camps of the past in that it is oriented around the central theme of skeptical and free inquiry towards paranormal and supernatural phenomena."

God save us from the secular humanists who send their children to Camp Inquiry.

I'm just now finishing up a review of Alan Bennett's Untold Stories - highly recommended.

From Bennett's diaries, discussing a biography of Ted Hughes:

“I hadn’t known about Hughes’s homophobia – though I’m not sure antipathy to Truman Capote can be so subsumed, Capote really deserving a phobia to himself.”

Alex also passed on this lovely Capote story:

Truman Capote and Gore Vidal were at a New York cocktail party (alternate versions place them at a television studio, though Alex heard his version from Mr. Vidal himself) when they got into an argument that ended with Capote decking Vidal in the face, toppling him onto the carpet, his face a bloody mess. Mr. Vidal looked up at Capote leaning over him and responded with, "Words fail Truman Capote yet again."

(Further research also suggests it might have been Norman Mailer and not Truman Capote, but I'm sticking with my Capote theme.)

It might be flavorful, but it certainly is tasteless

Get it? The Cultural Revolution. It uses live cultures, it's a revolutionary product, it's maybe the worst name for organic yogurt ever.

Thank you to Joanne for brightening my morning by showing me this -

Yesterday was Dev's birthday, and to celebrate we went to the (exhaustively titled) Shanghai Natural Wild Insect Kingdom. Shanghai has two world-class aquariums and a nice zoo, so I had high hopes for the SNWIK.

The SNWIK is fronted by a number of lop-sided, hastily constructed model insects, each about the size of a large dog. Inside, the first room is given over to the pleasing if perplexing combination of ferrets and fish. A small wooden ferret house is filled with a pile of 6-8 sleeping ferrets at the edge of a large, murky koi pond.

Past the fish, you enter the butterfly tunnel - which is, in fact, just a tunnel surmounted by a tangle of netting strewn with dessicated butterfly corpses. The tunnel does boast a parrot, two foxes, and more than a dozen adorable pygmy marmosets; the foxes dining on a meal of dog food, popcorn, shortbread biscuits, and chicken bones. The tunnel reeked of feces.

Past the butterfly tunnel is the "frog area," as well as like areas for snakes, turtles, and lizards. Several reptiles live in a reconstructed cave environment decorated with black construction paper bats like a kindergarten Halloween art project.

Next was the insect area, which I studiously avoided, as I am terribly frightened of insects. On the other hand, perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad, as Dev assures me that many of the cages contained only model insects.

Past the insects was the assortment-of-cute-mammals room, with baby goats, dwarf hamsters, rabbits, chinchillas, squirrels, and more ferrets.

Then, the gift shop, which sold an assortment of insect paperweights and unlicensed rip-off Jurassic Park toys.

So, in short - a world-class educational institution, and a world-class birthday.

Thanks to Grant for this wonderful selection from a Paris Review interview with Nabokov.

Nabokov: I detest Punnigan's Wake in which a cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue hardly redeems the dreadful joviality of the folklore and the easy, too easy, allegory.
Interviewer: What have you learned from Joyce?
Nabokov: Nothing.
Interviewer: Oh, come.

From Nabokov's Lectures on Literature, in his discussion of Bleak House. The scholar is discussing the three types of narrator: the moving pillar, the sifting agent, and the perry.

"The third type is the so-called perry, possibly derived from periscope, despite the double r, or perhaps from parry in vague connection with foil as in fencing. But this does not matter much since anyway I invented the term myself many years ago."

Jin Jiang Amusement Park

On Saturday Dev and I celebrated the unseasonably warm weather by taking a trip to the Jin Jiang Amusement Park, which we thoroughly enjoyed from top to bottom, from the 10,000 Year Old Camphor Tree Ticket Office to whatever the hell this is.

The haunted house was suffused with the twin horrors of shoddiness and decrepitude, though its soundtrack of screams and moans was less frightening when it was replayed several hundred feet away in the Dinosaur Cavern rollercoaster, this time bouncing off several inert plaster dinosaurs and an exhausted coaster. Like all self-propelled amusements, the Bicycle Monorail was fun for about three minutes, after which it felt like digging your own grave.

But by far, the highlight of the trip was Joyland, Shanghai's answer to Disneyland's Small World ride, one of my childhood's fondest loves. This horrifying replica featured one-armed gnomes, leering anti-Semitic caricatures, and, of course, flagrant trademark infringement.

We were also glad to see that these kids showed up - the exact same loud teenage girl and sullen teenage boy that have stood in line with you at every single amusement park you have ever been to. Including, apparently, in China. Why? For entertainment.

While searching for a nightclub to review last night, we happened upon the Chantilly Bakery. A large window-sized poster in the bakery's front entrance showed a close up of several dainty cakes on a plate beside a steaming cup of coffee, a vase of flowers, and a folded copy of the morning paper.

Unfortunately, the newspaper's headline - clearly legible and prominently placed at the poster's center - read "Cyclone in India kills thousands"

Thank you to Joanne for this. It's hard to imagine who is buying these. Non-Christians are unlikely to purchase Christmas nativity scenes, and Christians are likely to have a basic level of respect for their Savior.

And since I continue to be a top hit for Jewish dog toys, why not investigate these?

The Anatomy of Melancholy: Quote of the Day

"For particular professions, I hold as of the rest, there's no content or security in any. On what course will you pitch, how resolve? To be a divine, 'tis contemptible in the world's esteem; to be a lawyer, 'tis to be a wrangler; to be a physician, pudet lotii, 'tis loathed; a philosopher, a madman; an alchymist, a beggar; a poet, esurit, an hungry jack; a musician, a player; a schoolmaster, a drudge; an husbandman, an emmet; a merchant, his gains are uncertain; a mechanician, base; a chirurgeon, fulsome; a tradesman, a liar; a tailor, a thief; a serving-man, a slave; a soldier, a butcher; a smith, or a metalman, the pot's never from the nose; a courtier, a parasite..."

The Anatomy of Melancholy: Quote of the Day

"Rhasis and Magninus discommend all fish, and say they breed viscosities, slimy nutriment, little and humorous nourishment. Savonarola adds cold; moist and phlegmatic, Isaac; and therefore unwholesome for all cold and melancholy complexions: others make a difference, rejecting only, amongst freshwater fish, eel, tench, lamprey, crawfish (which Bright approves), and such as are bred in muddy and standing waters, and have a taste of mud . . . Lampreys, Paulus Jovius, highly magnifies and saith, none speak against them, but inepti and scrupulosi; but eels, "he abhorreth in all places, at all times, all physicians detest them, especially about the solstice." Gomesius doth immoderately extol sea-fish, which others as much vilify, and above the rest, dried, soused, indurate fish, as ling, fumadoes, red-herrings, sprats, stock-fish, haberdine, poor-john, all shell-fish. Tim. Bright excepts lobster and crab. Messarius commends salmon, which Bruerinus contradicts. Magninus rejects conger, sturgeon, turbot, mackerel, skate.

Carp is a fish of which I know not what to determine."

Moscow: Europe's Roadside Attraction

I passed an Aeroflot ticketing office in Shanghai today with the posted slogans "Visit Russia on Your Way to Europe" and "Stop in Moscow When You Go to Europe."

I love that the airline has officially given up on the idea that anyone actually wants to go to Russia for its own sake, and is now marketing it purely as a pit stop on the way to Paris.

---

I passed the ticketing office on my way to pick up my visa for Vietnam. I am excited to report I'll be heading to Saigon next week! Looking forward to new Flickr photos, etc.

Unlikely animal - well, it's just great.

I never thought I'd miss "Jewish dog toys"

Wow. According to Google analytics, the last five people that landed on my website were searching for the following phrases:

1. animal enemies
2. mosquito problem
3. naughty maids bottom welts
4. how to say electrician in mandarin
5. mourning and melancholia

And yes, I realize by posting this here, I'm only making it worse.

Also, whoever is looking up "animal enemies" is my new best friend.

Unlikely animal transport.

Unlikely animal enemies.

Unlikely animal heroes.

More unlikely - and adorable - animal friends, courtesy of Grant Munroe.

Celebrity Traffic Brigade

My own rather less illustrious Smith story:

I was stuck in a driveway off Sunset Boulevard, my right-turn light blinking timidly. A naturally cautious driver, I scooted out one inch at a time, watching as car after car flew past. Just when I felt the bleakest, when Los Angeles felt the most cruel, a brand-new bright red sports car came to a full stop, its driver waving me ahead of him and into the lane with a gallant sweep of his hand. It was John Lithgow. Now this might not seem so extraordinary, but consider this: That same week, another skittish driver of my acquaintance was wedged into a rather impossible parking space. After inching forward and back for several agonizing minutes, a solicitous stranger walked up behind her vehicle and began directing her. It was Jon Voight. From these two seemingly unrelated incidents, I first came to know of the mysterious Celebrity Traffic Brigade, kind Hollywood do-gooders who repay the loyalty of their fans with help navigating one of America’s most treacherous cities.

(Note: The stories are true, though these two events were actually separated by years, not days.)

Oh no! It's more unlikely animal friends!

I was just discussing Tales of Grimm and Andersen over at Identity Theory and felt it deserved a quick mention here, too.

Specifically, I urge you all to read the tale of "The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage." Weighing in at a scant six paragraphs, it tells the story of a stay-at-home mouse, grudging bird, and sometimes-sentient sausage who keep house together until indolence and class envy tear them apart. Quite literally.

Best line: "[After the dog ate the sausage] the bird then lodged a complaint against the dog . . . but it was all no good, as the dog declared that he had found forged letters upon the sausage, so that he deserved to lose his life."

Forged letters.

And while on the subject of fairy tales, allow me to recommend Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.

More unlikely animal friends! - and a sweet balm for the endless ache of existence.

"Oh, God, we have forgotten about snacks!"

"You see each visitor for this restaurant is unique, and it doesn’t matter if he is well-known actor or the veteran of war."

Stealing links from Metafilter again, but this is too charming to pass up - Francis Heaney takes an anagram of a famous poet's name and then writes a poem in the style of that poet based on the anagram title. For example, a pithy poem entitled "I Will Alarm Islamic Owls" as written by William Carlos Williams.

Usually these sorts of literary gimmicks are rather tedious, but this really made me laugh. The full text is available free online, though bound copies can also be purchased on Amazon.

What is it with you Jews and your dog toys?

I am simply amazed by how many people are coming to this site while searching for "jewish dog toys." Since these people now account for about half of my hits (the other half, I assume, arriving with bated breath to hear what I have to say about the latest fiction), allow me to provide more information.

I got the toys, pictured again below, at PetCo.



Here's a link with availability and pricing.

You try to lighten the mood with one throwaway joke and look what happens...

This is how I spend my time

Flashdance!

You'd think a person who rails so consistently against the sentimental and the banal wouldn't put so many pictures of dogs on her website. But you'd be wrong. Here is Cromwell in his Halloween "Flashdance" costume.

I just spent $20 on Jewish dog toys

The fish says "Oy vey" when you squeeze it. There was also a stuffed dreidel that played "Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel" - but then I would have spent $30 on dog toys.

Things That Are Better in New York

Things That Are Better in New York, According to a Vocal San Francisco Party Guest

1. Bagels
2. Public transportation
3. Street fashion
4. Graffiti
5. Lox
6. "Authentic public culture"
7. Dance clubs
8. Slang
9. National Public Radio
10. The New Yorker
11. Suspension bridges
12. Cable cars
13. The Dodgers

"So You'd Like To Be a Book Reviewer"

Content-sensitive ads offered by Google after "reading" my daily Gmail:

1. "So You'd Like To Be a Book Reviewer" (appropriate, but vaguely taunting)
2. Bitter Apple Spray (too easy)
3. O'Malley Biscuit Joiner
4. Discount Leotards
5. Kwanzaa Recipes
6. "Get Rid of the Problem - Not the Cat"
7. "Burning Man: Preparation"
8. "$300/Hr in Minneapolis?"
9. Twelfth Night Cliff Notes
10. Stuffed penguins
11. "Fear No Man: Discover What The Martial Artists And The Army Don't Want You To Know"
13. "Caring for the Angry Child"
14. Bully Prevention Techniques
15. Discount Poly Containers

Incidents and Accidents

I've spent the last hour searching accident report websites. I wanted a present for Dev and I was hoping to find some type of potentially gruesome accident category (hunting, scuba diving, dirt biking) and subscribe to an industry accident report magazine. I discovered two things: #1. accident report subscriptions are really expensive; #2. everything is terribly hazardous.

A brief survey of the web includes accident reports for roller coasters, circus performers, nuclear plants, mining, paragliding, oyster farming, avalanches, crane operation, and "general amputation accidents."

Context is for Suckers and Historicists

In going through some old email today (looking for a long-lost scrap that could be stretched and tortured into an article) I came upon the following phrase, totally unmoored:
"I always get Sonny confused with Toucan Sam. Though, come to think of it, that's stupid, because no one would name a bird Toucan Sonny."
Either I wrote that to Aubrey, or Aubrey wrote that to me. But since it's stupid, I'm guessing I wrote it.

Other phrases whose context I have mislaid or willfully ignored:
1. "You'd be surprised how clean many of those dishes coming out of the dishwasher weren't."
2. "Europe will change my life, giving me the soul of a poet, the aesthetic sense of a painter, the passion of a French whore, and the walk of an Italian model."
3. "String cheese is actually a compressed cylinder of mozzarella cheese, so called because it can be peeled apart into various-sized 'strings' and so consumed."
4. "I should calculate my average apostles per sex act."
5. "If I lived in a hotel for 40 years, I would still jump on the bed every time I came in."
6. "If you were to tap yourself on the head with a small rubber mallet, not hard enough to do damage, but hard enough to feel, every weekday for nine hours, then stop, you would understand how I feel about not hearing her voice."

Liner Notes

(And while I'm up here posting old things, let's add these - )

For several years I've been constructing themed song compilations and accompanying liner notes for my wonderful friend Lucas. Here are two nice examples: Notes on the Narrative Song and Notes on the Advice Song.

Herodotus and de Selincourt

Here is a collection of quotes from my edition of Herodotus' Histories with explanatory footnotes provided by translator Aubrey de Selincourt. I originally compiled the quotes as an email to Lucas, to share the wonderful dialogue between the frequently ridiculous Greek man-about-town and his extremely literal-minded British editor.

For example,
H: He was caught trying to raise a revolt amongst the Egyptians, and as soon as his guilt was known by Cambyses, he drank bull’s blood and died on the spot.
A: Suicide by drinking bull’s blood is common enough in ancient literature, the more surprising in that the drink is not fatal, as could easily have been demonstrated (one assumes).

More available here: Herodotus and de Selincourt.