Wednesday 7/29/26 In his career, Carlton Fisk hit 188 home runs at home and 188 home runs on the road. A baseball stat that has floored me ever since I encountered it as a kid: Ralph Kiner leading the league in homers for the first seven years of his career (1946-1952). And yet he didn’t get into the Hall of Fame until 1975 (and barely). From 1972 to 1976, Joe Morgan had 47.8 WAR. Ron Kittle: career OPS+ of 110. Kind of surprising, perhaps. Ichiro Suzuki: 107. The first All-S

Tuesday 7/28/26 Did major head work in the dentist chair today on a new story I came up with yesterday as Dr. Raffi did his work. I have something big here. Been working through it in my mind ever since. It's set in Paris in the nineteenth century. Someone advised me yesterday to become a Buddhist. I like this person. They may be a Buddhist. I'm unsure. If they are, I respect that. A Zulu warrior cannot be a Buddhist, though. Dentist visit (the one rescheduled from last week

Tuesday 7/28/26 Great art challenges. What happens in a world where few people can rise to those challenges, or are willing to? The veneration of pablum. Great art isn't homogeneous product dumped in the lap, pushed in the face, algorithm-able. It asks us to work with it. Be a team. I think of the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore West on 3/2/69 starting the show with "Dark Star." Challenging the audience. Great art gives us back so much more than we give it, but it does need us

Monday 7/27/26 I worked late last night until eleven, then went to sleep and was back up working by three this morning. Worked straight through until eleven, and then had to get out. I needed a good walk and also felt like passing through the Public Garden, so went off on a five mile amble. Walked eight miles in total yesterday, and did my 100 push-ups. I need to crank six music features. Yesterday near the end of those eight miles I worked out an op-ed in my head for Hallowe

Monday 7/27/26 I'm staring to plan a jazz essay about the standard "Autumn Leaves." I'll see if I can have it run somewhere, if not this year then maybe next, as it's getting on, but I think this would go well with my book, The Root of the Chord: Writings on Jazz's Essential Power and Artistry. Paul Desmond's version from Toronto in 1975, as heard on Mosaic's fine box set, got me thinking about this over the weekend, but I've been running up against quite a few versions of "A

Sunday 7/26/26 I was doing stairs today in the Bunker Hill Monument, as I have for ten years. There were three aggressively rude women who created a problem I've never had in those ten years. You wonder what has go wrong with the world and for people in that world to act as these three did. When I go up and down the stairs, I do the same thing every time. I stay as close to the wall on the right as possible. When going up, I flatten my body against said wall, making like a fl

Sunday 7/26/26 There's an episode of Cheers where the gang is discussing the worst way to die. I referenced this in an op-ed somewhere. Frasier eventually pipes in and says, "Dying alone, knowing that you've never been loved," thinking he has the clincher, and troubled by the knowledge of it. The others laugh at him because they've been tossing stuff out there like sliding down a greased razor banister. I think about this joke--for it is a joke, but, like the the best jokes,

Sunday 7/26/26 Nice to see the temperature dip into the 50s as I start work early on this Sunday. Rooting for you, autumn. I watched Babysitter Wanted (2008) yesterday morning. I'm thinking about writing something on babysitter-centric horror films. I've made a potential list. Also watched Attack of the Puppet People (1958) for a possible piece on drive-in horror movies. The list for that one includes Hell Night (1981), Targets (1968), Ruby (1977), Drive-In Massacre (1976), T

Saturday 7/25/26 LeBron James will be playing for the Philadelphia 76ers next season. Somewhat of a surprise. Looked like the Sixers were a distant-enough fourth in terms of likelihood of landing spots, after Cleveland, Miami, and Golden State. Interestingly for Celtics fans, it was the team adding Jaylen Brown that swayed James. The former has had a once-in-a-lifetime off-season. He goes from sixth in MVP voting with Boston, to being moved by Boston, and now he's on a champi

Friday 7/24/26 A rule in society, to which there are few exceptions, is to defend that which is bad and that which is stupid, if anything is to be defended (and upheld) at all. Ours is a world of inversion in which unnatural order is the order of the day. Where good is bad, bad is good, not funny is funny, funny isn't even understood, mediocrity is sublimity, sublimity doesn't exist and wouldn't be noticed and understood if it did. Whenever I see someone smart enough, if you

Thursday 7/23/26 I know they’re technically an invasive species—not like it’s their fault—but how can’t you be a fan of house sparrows? So full of resolve and good at hopping and neck-tilting and inquisitive looks. Watched Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) again and am writing a piece on it now. It's playing at the Brattle next month, too, and hopefully I'll be able to get over there and see it on the big screen. T.S. Eliot didn't write a lot of poetry. There aren't that ma

Thursday 7/23/26 The word "literally" is infiltrating commercials now. We're so linguistically impoverished. We can't say what we want to say. Even with the limited things we have to say. So we say "Literally." Tom Caron is saying it now on the NESN Red Sox broadcasts as well. There's so much out there now but so little of it that you can actually read. I don't just mean books, online articles. Everyone has a Substack about everything. I'm also talking what I'll call online d

Wednesday 7/22/26 If I had pulled a mini-Rip Van Winkle and passed out in the woods for a month and emerged to learn that the 2026 Boston Red Sox had just won 15 games in a row, as they now have, my incredulity would have been as vast as that forest. Tied with the 1946 Red Sox for longest in franchise history! I'm certainly not comparing these teams, but do you know how awesome the '46 Sox were? They won 104 games when the season was only 154. The most surprising long winning

Wednesday 7/22/26 I posted something somewhere about how a part inside of me dies each time I see an "of" for "have." As in, "should of." Someone then commented very seriously and calmly that "should've" is the contraction produced from "should of." They honestly thought they were helping to educate me. And now you know. If I post something that has an idea in it, far fewer people hit the like button. If I post something sans idea, that is a simple statement, or what someone

Tuesday 7/21/26 People really overrate Kobe Bryant. It's because of other things, like so many things. The persona--you know, the "Black Mamba" thing. A lack of understanding of the game. And its history. Bryant was a poor man's Michael Jordan. You'd have a hard time getting him into the top twenty players of all-time. He was too "me first and last," too high volume, too one-dimensional, not a leader, didn't make his teammates better. A rich man's Carmelo Anthony. Got credit

Tuesday 7/21/26 Something that I think about. It'll pass through my mind. Maybe I should say it reoccurs to me, because I don't need to give it additional thought, as I now know it to be true. But that suggests one ought not to think about thinks once they're known to be true, and that doesn't make sense, either. I guess it matters on the nature of the thing. One encounters truths in a great work of art, one thinks about the truths and should until the end. Perhaps beyond, fo

Monday 7/20/26 Got to North Station, bought my round trip ticket, entered the waiting area which voids your ticket for future use, waited to get my train to go to the dentist, and then they canceled the train. Called Dr. Raffy's office and left a message explaining the situation, asking what they wanted me to do and that I'd stick around and wait for the next train--which was an hour later--until I heard from them. He eventually called and had me reschedule. I could have gone

Monday 7/20/26 Want to know something somewhat dark? I have a very nice mug from my desk with the Bunker Hill Monument on it. It's sat there for years. I've never drank out of it, because I feel like I haven't done well enough in the Monument running my stairs to deserve it. That's how I am. And if that's how I am with the likes of this, one can imagine how I am with my work, regarding which I'm exponentially more demanding. The work, when seen, speaks for itself for what it

Sunday 7/19/26 I was sitting in the cafe reading yesterday. There were three girls at the table next to me--young high school students, probably going into their sophomore year. They seemed like nice kids. Not mean or anything as they talked about the things kids this age have always talked about. A break-up, for instance, of two of their classmates. But these girls could hardly go a sentence without using the word "literally." Like they were incapable of talking without it.

Thursday 7/16/26 You see it all the time now: "I hate living in this timeline" and variations thereof. Here we have a basic word and concept that people are no longer able to understand. They don't know what a timeline actually is. And the more that people say these things like the above, the more other people say these things, and the further everyone gets from ever being able to understand this simple thing like so many other simple things. Then this stupid and wrong thin

Thursday 7/16/26 The fourth-to-last thing you want to be in this world is virtuous. The third-to-last thing you want to be in this world is intelligent. The second-to-last thing you want to be in this world is great. The very last thing you want to be in this world is a combination of the above. The more you're any of these things, the worse it is. That's the sliding scale.

Thursday 7/16/26 I'll search all kinds of things online. Sometimes they're things I know, but I want to see what comes up anyway. As we erase the idea of humanness from the world, and of course intelligence, literacy, effort, skill, vision, and even thinking at the most basic of levels, we attempt to rewrite reality so that stupidity, illiteracy, sloth, having no abilities, echo chambers, and never thinking are positives. This better serves the masses. Each of us has become a

Thursday 7/16/26 Got an early start. That's something. Endless posts about the World Cup. People have nothing to say but they want to say something. So they post the score. Or say, "Go England." Millions of such posts. Billions. Maybe more than billions. Babble, babble, babble. Into the great sea of babble go all the voices of the people with nothing to say. And the noise roars in the ears. Drowns out all else, what little there is of it. I'm not interested in the World Cup.

Wednesday 7/15/26 There’s a sulfurous hue to Boston today befitting the times. Like a coloristic contrapasso. The air is acrid. It's because of the wildfires in Canada, but there's more to it than that, if you ask me. I feel like I've been under siege this summer with extra things. The weather. It's roasting again today. Now this apocalyptic aspect to the sky. Was here yesterday as well, but worse today. It's obvious that everything is off and wrong in the world. Or it should