SKINNY ANNIE BLUES

When the daddy he hasn't seen in 18 years is reported dead, Wiley Moss, who draws bugs for the Smithsonian, abandons his catatonic girlfriend Giselle for Galveston. Even the flight out is marked by Wiley's notable encounters with Chicken Man and the woman with the feet. And when he lands in Texas, where they make new goofballs every year, the locals—from Martin Moss's fetching blind widow Annie and the deaf-mute son Git, who helps her drive, and the Swedish waiter who dreams of past incarnations and gets an option on his next round sooner than he expected, to Skinny Annie (who is not skinny) and the entire staff of the Plum Blossom Palace of Heavenly Delights—roll out a blood-red carpet, complete with bad shellfish and incomplete romantic passes, for him. As monotonously manic as Dead Dog Blues (1994): a year's worth of antic wake-up calls crammed into a single shaggy story.