Do you live in Minnesota? Find out what’s under your house.

Last, next.

87: Nat’l Parks (Sequoia)
88: Wednesday Blue

Earlier today, I reposted this tongue-in-cheek teaser for the fifth and final installment of my Poetry Mini Interview from April of 2021:

5: It’s the shocking season finale! To raise funds to save our gang’s favorite hang-out from foreclosure, I must perform a thrilling leap on water skis over a shark tank! (And in the episode’s audio commentary, I talk about what I’m currently working on.)

Now, let me be absolutely clear: Happy Days did not metaphorically jump the shark when Fonzie literally jumped the shark.

This article offers several other moments when the show took its fatal turn toward moribund irrelevance, all of which have something to recommend themselves.

I, however, have my own suggestion.

Fonzie was, as you may recall, a greaser. Likable, sure, but still a hoodlum and always just a little menacing. You did not want to get on his bad side. If you did, he would snap, “Step into my office!” and direct you to the boys’ room at Arnold’s.

For me, the show began to die when they installed a desk and chair, so the bathroom looked like an actual office. This killed everything about the running joke of a bathroom being a bully’s “office.” The fact that no one on the show either understood this — or much cared — demonstrated to me that the writers had lost their way.

Not like I lost much sleep over this at the time. By then, I had moved on to much more serious fare, such as The Dukes of Hazzard — which, compared to Happy Days, was practically The Wire.

You come at the Dukes, you best not miss.

(The penny, by the way, only recently dropped for me that the Dukes were bootleggers. This seemingly crucial detail, which explains absolutely everything about the antagonism between the Dukes and the cops, was simply lost on me as a preteen. The show was, to me, essentially a live-action Roadrunner cartoon. I didn’t care why the Coyote was chasing the Roadrunner any more than I wondered why Roscoe P. Coltrane and Boss Hogg were so obsessed with the Duke boys. I just wanted to watch them fail spectacularly as often as possible, preferably by destroying one ’67 Charger after another.)

Bonus! Now that this rare series has been reissued on DVD, be sure to check out the bonus disc of Deleted Scenes & Bloopers: Songwriting! Sylvia Plath! Bob Dylan! Cults! Hot dogs!

1: Never rebroadcast since its original airing, it’s the genre-defying pilot, in which people say the word “accomplish” so many times it stops holding any meaning whatsoever.

4: In this week’s musical episode, Hal Holbrook, fresh off his Tony award-winning run as the Mysterious Stranger, joins the cast to sing about adjectives. (Originally performed and broadcast live!)

2: In this exciting episode, groundbreaking in its use of CGI, I answer the question, “What poets changed the way you thought about writing?” Special appearance by the late John Engman in a flashback.

5: It’s the shocking season finale!

To raise funds to save our gang’s favorite hang-out from foreclosure, I must perform a thrilling leap on water skis over a shark tank!

(And in the episode’s audio commentary, I talk about what I’m currently working on.)

And here is the third post in my ongoing poetry mini interview.

In this “very special” episode — animated, in homage to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice — I wonder how I know when a poem is finished. Grace Paley guest-stars.

In the spring of 2021, I participated in the ongoing — and truly wonderful — Poetry Mini Interview series.

With summer upon us here in the northern hemisphere, it’s time for re-runs, where episodes of TV shows are shown out of order, so nothing makes sense!

Q: Why was he doubly irritated?
A: Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded himself twice not to forget.

A poem of mine, Time & Times, has just appeared at the always wonderful Selcouth Station.

[2023-06: Selcouth Station has, unfortunately, shuttered and the website is no longer available.]

• GK Chesterton, Manalive (John Lane 1912) (reread)
• GK Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (Penguin Classics 1908, 2011)

Spiders, spiders, spiders.

Ants, wasps, beetles.

Foggy morning after a very stormy night.

Last, next.

86: Signs of Spring (Contra Costa Goldfields)
87: Nat’l Parks (Sequoia)

Happy 85th to Thomas Pynchon!

I’m not going out today (too much to do at home) so here’s a photo from a previous Pynchon in Public Day—

—at the excellent Volstead Speakeasy in (of all places) Eagan.

Keep cool but care.

It’s been a busy week.

Goodbye, tiny apartment.

Culture or delusion: the distinction, often, rests on how many people share it.

This is a dream I had in high school. I’d had actor’s nightmares before this, of course – and I’ve had many others since. But this one was astonishing in its duration and complexity. Also, even as I was dreaming it, I thought it was hilarious.

It begins with our whole cast and crew crammed onto a coach bus as we speed across a vast empty parking lot toward a sports stadium. Out the windows, we can see other coach buses converging on the stadium. We yell to the driver to go faster as we frantically run our lines.

We are participating in a cross-country competition in which different theater companies race to be the first to arrive at a location, set up, and stage a play. Then we strike as quickly as we can, get back on the bus, and hit the road for the next location, which is sometimes several days’ drive away.

The dream jump cuts to the interior of the stadium. We are running up and down stark concrete corridors, pushing costume racks, carrying carpeted blocks and other set pieces, frantically trying to find our dressing room. We’ve been assigned a room, but the numbering system doesn’t make sense. Each room we look in is a cluttered storage closet or a utility space full of pipes and mysterious, bizarre equipment.

Another jump cut. Now we’re on stage: the performance has begun. The houselights are on, so we can see the packed audience under the glare, watching us disinterestedly. Whenever it’s not their line, actors slip offstage to the green room to get fitted for their costumes, or to scavenge for necessary props. The stage manager is studying a fuse box as the lighting designer is puzzling over the light board, pushing dimmers up and down to see what, if anything, happens. The crew is building the set around us, so we’re shouting our lines over the constant din of hammers, drills, and the occasional circular saw.

Sometimes I’m an actor, sometimes I’m in the crew, but in the final scenes of the dream before I wake up, I’m one of the playwrights. We’re crowded into the green room beside the seamstresses at their sewing machines. We’re writing the play as it happens: brainstorming, jotting notes, and banging away at large manual typewriters. When someone finishes a page, they pull it out of the typewriter and run to the copying machine. When the copies come out, someone else grabs the sheets and runs out into the house. Weaving between the members of the orchestra (who are crammed in the space between the front row and the stage, sight-reading music they’ve never seen before), the runner then feeds the sheets up to the actors, who pass the script out as surreptitiously as they can while carrying on the performance.

I remember I woke up laughing. I was relieved it was only a dream but I was sorry I didn’t know how things turned out. How, for example, did anyone actually win this competition? As with any actor’s nightmare, however, it was both worse and better than some acting experiences I had in waking life.

Rabbits, thunder, red squirrels.

Fox, spiders, finches.