Saturday 5/2/26 The truth about almost all writers--a word that all but cries out to be enclosed in quotes--right now: They're using AI to create--another one of those quote words--their work. It doesn't matter the venue or the perceived "level" of venue or press. It's AI. The people who get the awards, who are lauded--those for whom the log always is made to roll--are producing AI work. And it should be obvious. We'll be going through recent cases in which these talentless,

Saturday 5/2/26 There are these kids who ride around Boston on bikes trying to get into it with people. They swear at car drivers, passerby. Call people “faggots.” That's a big one of theirs. They get hyper-aggressive. Pass in front of cars near lights, ride up against driver side windows, giving drivers the finger, don't slow down at all in crosswalks (and I saw them do this with a pregnant woman recently). Probably twenty of them. Early yesterday evening, I was crossing the

Friday 5/1/26 As I waited for the Bunker Hill Monument to open yesterday to run stairs, a high school class was also waiting a little ways away. Their teacher was asking them questions about the Battle of Bunker Hill. I was looking in the other direction as they answered, which they did correctly and in complete sentences. This heartened me. Then I turned and saw they were each using their phones to look up the answers and then reading them right out of their hands. The teach

Friday 5/1/26 The Edmonton Oilers were eliminated last night. Connor McDavid had zero points and was a -3. I just think, and have long thought, and long said, that this is who he is. Not a winning player. The Oilers should get a goalie and hire Jack Cassidy as their coach. I'm not someone who'd have McDavid as a top ten all-time player and maybe not top twenty. Yes, I understand that no one else would hold this view. The Knicks eliminated the Hawks in Atlanta, being up by mor

Thursday 4/3/26 As with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, most versions of the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" begin with a rest, but with different incumbency. The Beethoven piece has to proceed one way post-rest, whereas the Dead piece can proceed various ways. "Dark Star" is no less controlled; it's a matter of predetermination and determination in reactive response. I am versus I'm becoming now. Also: offstage versus onstage. Even when the Beethoven is performed onstage, because of

Thursday 4/30/26 Obviously, I've written and published much about Peanuts, and given quite a few interviews pertaining to Charlie Brown and company (most recently with a Chicago Tribune op-ed. For a while, I've had a plan to write a book on Rankin/Bass's 1964 Christmas special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which I've also written about (most recently in a Best Classic Bands feature) and been interviewed regarding many times. But going back three or four months, I started e

Thursday 4/30/26 I haven't written anything here yet about Alex Cora being fired as manager of the Boston Red Sox. I don't like Cora, I think he's a bad person, and a poor manager and haven't found the energy or motivation to do a synoptic entry on him and this development, which I guess is more in the order of an event, Boston Red Sox baseball history-wise. My thoughts regarding this man and the job he did can be found in this record going back to 2018. Actually, Cora's star

Wednesday 4/29/26 AI couldn't replicate the sound of that "whoo!" before the guitar break in the Flamin' Groovies "Shake Some Action." It's as human and joyous a sound as there is. A sound of someone who can't hold themselves back, who stands for all of us, caught up in the divinely earthly moment of making true art. When we lose such things, when they become foreign, unrecognizable, feared, shunned, resented, we cease being, or never become, that which we're here to be. And

Tuesday 4/28/26 It's my niece Lilah's tenth birthday. I sent her a beanie from the Aquarium--which we've visited together a couple times--that promotes conservation, a cause that Lilah feels strongly about. Dear Lilah, Happy birthday to you! Ten-years-old! These are exciting times, and I always wait with bated breath to hear—usually from your Grammie—what you are up to. I can tell how much she loves you just from the tone of her voice when the subject of you arises. I had hop

Tuesday 4/28/26 The Bruins had a classic Bruins no-show on Sunday afternoon. I've seen lots of bad Bruins games and efforts in the playoffs, especially on home ice, but that was definitely one of the worst. They kept turning the puck over in front of their net like this was part of the game plan or as though they were doing this with intention. Anyone want to tell me how good Charlie McAvoy is? Because he's awesome, right? That's the official stance, is it not? (Remember on C

Monday 4/27/26 Some fitness accounting, checks and balances, log of accountability. On Saturday, I saw the most amazing performance I ever have in the Monument. No, it wasn't by me. You don't see yourself, do you? Well, I guess you do. But it was by this man--who must have been in his sixties--who showed up wearing shorts despite the cold, and these really big gloves. Like, you're outside in winter in Alaska gloves. He was nattering on, making random remarks and bad jokes in

Saturday 4/25/26 We've seen many prose offs in these pages in which a story by someone who won a Guggenheim is pitted against a story of mine. The Guggenheim is as corrupt and farcical as anything in publishing. The award--which is a $40,000 grant--claims to provide financial support to a writer of clear talent who has shown, through their work and devotion to that work, their productivity, a vision on which they deliver and seek to continue to do so, expanding all the while.

Saturday 4/25/26 No writing of any kind like any of it. The last writer. The only one that could never be mistaken for AI. Whatever he's writing. It could only be him, and nothing else and no one else. This is from a lengthy work on spring horror films, which will also be in the horror film book, pertaining to David Gladwell's 1964 short film, An Untitled Film. But obviously a lot more as well. Fall is the most aromatic season, but spring is the runner-up. We know the smell o

Saturday 4/25/26 The last time the Red Sox lost 100 games was in 1965. Rubber Soul had yet to come out. Highway 61 Revisited was released about a month before the season finished. Before that was back in the 1930s (then end of the 1920s and the start of the 1930s was a dark time for the Old Towne Team. They languished in the mire while the Yankees soared in the sky. These 2026 Red Sox may give those 1965 Red Sox a run for their futile money. 100 losses is a possibility. This

Friday 4/24/26 It should be immediately clear to anyone who sees me inside of the Bunker Hill Monument or outside of it as we are waiting for them to open that I am doing something different that other people aren't doing. it isn't subtle. I'm dressed differently than everyone else. I'll have on workout clothes. A headband. Inside the Monument, I'll be moving at a steady pace, perhaps breathing hard, and usually sweating profusely. And yet, because people are so unthinking, s

Thursday 4/23/26 We're just going to keep talking about what these people are about and what they're up to. The twisted ways in which they are wired. How corrupt they are. Thieving, petty. Unbalanced. The real reasons why most things happen in publishing. The classism. The workings of the system of incestuous evil. Remember Eric Gibson? He's the arts editor at The Wall Street Journal who thought it'd be fun to chide me about how his paper had created a multi-year nightmare fo

Thursday 4/23/26 From a piece on Bob Clark's 1974 film, Deathdream, completed this morning. Bob Clark, the director who gave us unforgettable accounts of both sides of the Yuletide coin from mine to mint with Black Christmas and A Christmas Story, was pledged to range. The best artists are. If you can describe what someone does in a stock phrase or slap on a one-size-fits-all genre label, their work won’t last, and nor should it. Cast your mind to something like B

Thursday 4/23/26 Written this morning. Folk horror often immerses us like a long walk in the forest does the same. Our heads are cleared because of where we are. The choice—for it is also in some measure a choice—to be fragmented, scattered, distracted, isn’t the same easy option that it had been elsewhere. The noise has faded away. For these hours. We are left with our thoughts and ourselves. We can grow and know the self in any environment—in theory—but would we doubt that

Thursday 4/23/26 The "Johnny B. Goode" encore that closes the Grateful Dead's 1971 Halloween show at the Ohio Theatre will tear the flesh off of you, and you'll be glad it did and feel no pain. Dick's Picks Volume 2 is kind of like the Dead's version of the Who's Live at Leeds. You have this big show, which you can listen to as if it were an album itself, boiled down, in the case of Leeds, to six numbers; two from the beginning of the show, and then the final four performance

Wednesday 4/22/26 Here's the situation and how it really stands. I'm out of circulation, I've all but washed my hands. My social life's a dud, my name is really Mud. I'm up to here in lies. Guess I'm down to size. That's from the Music Machine's "Talk Talk," converted into prose form. Gripping words. I recommend The Ultimate Turn On set, Music Machine-wise. Down goes Frazier. Down down, you bring me down. Stone Roses. Slow down. Brrrrrmmmmp. Larry Williams. I'm downloading Pa

Wednesday 4/22/26 As I was saying about sports. Unfortunately, the Celtics did last night what they've been wont to do during the Tatum-Brown era, and that's make things harder on themselves by now having what we'll call that killer instinct, despite "instinct" being a term I'm loath to use with humans, given that we have free will (in theory, anyway). They let the 76ers into the series, and now it likely goes at least six games. You let a team in (or hang around) and anythin

Tuesday 4/21/26 On Sunday I was as close to drinking as I've been in the nearly ten years since I stopped. Had there been a pill in front of me that would have ended my life had I swallowed it, I would have taken it with little to no hesitation, and I think probably none. Drinking would be another way of giving up. Being done. Drinking equates to the same thing. I was up for something like forty hours. I sleep so little as it is. I didn't run stairs on Sunday--I got as far as

Monday 4/20/26 I'm not going to say too much here. The side-by-side comparison of the two textual examples speaks for itself. You will know this. I know this. Everyone in publishing would know this. What follows is the start of a story--something that's theoretically meant to draw the reader in--called "Plaster" from a December 2024 issue of The New Yorker , put forward by fiction editor Deborah Treisman, approved by editor in chief David Remnick, written by David Szalay. Pl

Monday 4/20/26 Lamenting what he perceived to be his failures as an artist in a letter that turned out to be one from the end of his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald maintained that his best work nonetheless possessed a sort of epic grandeur. I apply this appellation to the music the Grateful Dead made in 1972, especially the autumn of that year and the shows with a "Dark Star." As time is the thematic crux of Nick Drake's art, light is the thematic crux of the Grateful Dead's. Cont