Radiohead’s Kid A, Val Lewton’s The Body Snatcher, the Who’s 1975 North American tour, and John Atkinson Grimshaw’s November Moonlight.

Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" 200 years later. "Irving loaded up the atmospherics—you can all but smell the forest carpet, hear the owls—but he also mastered a kind of “gather ’round” tone, a convivial beckoning. He had a disconcerting story to relay, but it would serve you well if you understood its warning: Be not thine own self-haunter!"

On identity and becoming a writer via Linus and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and Val Lewton’s touching and beautiful horror film, The Curse of the Cat People. "That great sincerity is the quality he believes, above all, the Great Pumpkin looks for when choosing a pumpkin patch to visit each year, is telling. He only visits the one. The Great Pumpkin isn’t even a Great Pumpkin; it is that which is unique to us and germinates in us with our assistance. The Great Pumpkin in Linus’s yard is the Dragon with a Hoodie somewhere in a city, or the Elf King in, I don’t know, Prague. Or, sometimes, the friend who comes to visit us, whom we did not expect."

Macbeth! Scariest episodes of The Twilight Zone. Bob Dylan on All Hallows’ Eve in 1964. And—are ghosts real?

New piece on Théodore Géricault‘s 1819 painting, The Raft of the Medusa. "Géricault’s 16 x 23-foot painting featured figures both large and larger than life. He was prepped to the gills with his grim studies, and knew, better than any artist ever had, how human flesh de-colored as it decayed. A strange specialty, for certain, akin to what an artist might pursue in an Edgar Allan Poe story, but Géricault would have told you that human nature supplied his sensationalism — he just recorded it, as a poet might try to replicate the song of a bird."

Discussing Halloween episodes of Cheers and The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” the intertextual wittiness of “Monster Mash,” and Orson Welles in 1949’s Black Magic.

A funny book about an idiot left behind by a changing world, which will surprise you. Order via Amazon!

The bedrock works of American cinematic horror.

The Slumber Party Massacre, "Dracula's Guest," the Lights Out old time radio episode "Valse Triste," Hawthorne's "The Ghost of Dr. Harris," Casper the Friendly Ghost.

The 1941 "race" film The Blood of Jesus, Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers in LA in 1955, Anton Chekhov's "The Student," Lord Byron's "Darkness."

Denied an opportunity to pitch in MLB until he was in his forties because of segregation, Satchel Paige took the mound against the Boston Red Sox at fifty-nine-year-old and made his case as the best pitcher of all-time.

Exploring M.R. James's "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad," Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Richard Middleton's "The Ghost Ship."

Hammer's Horror of Dracula, the Band's second album, Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry, Beatles for Sale.

On the Mancunian band's last and greatest composition. "The sound is enveloping. It’s warm. I feel sunshine when I listen to it, though it was probably raining. I could check an old weather report, but I don’t really care. The avenues are lined with trees, as in a Maupassant Parisian novel, it is, indeed, this time, there is no mercy shown, because grace and truth take no prisoners."

Interview segment on Downtown about the original release of Dylan's Basement Tapes, the newly reissued and expanded Goats Head Soup, a recent box set of live Cream recordings from 1968, and the last great Byrds album. Bonus: "Wet Ass Pussy" talk!

Anxiety, fear, talismans, the nature of purpose, carrying on, going forth, and one man's beanie.

Charlie Parker turns 100! And you should listen to him! "I never thought about time and art the same way again after hearing Parker’s assorted advancements, as though something “old” was more likely to be passe. Parker’s was the kind of art that always seemed to be lapping us."

The dynamic, evanescent partnership of Charlie Parker and Fats Navarro. "Artists who innovate have a tendency to shock us when we enter their remit. The show is not for mere show, and it has a high pleasure quotient—the pleasure not only of discovery, but discovery imbued with greater risk, richer reward."

A conversation regarding Charlie Parker, a Beatles recording from Houston in 1965, W.F. Harvey's short story "August Heat," and a new short story, "August Autumn."

Sagging Meniscus will publish Musings with Franklin, a novel told entirely in conversation. It's set in a Boston bar that has existed since the Revolution--and is now a tourist trap that no one goes to--featuring Writer, who believes he may be dead and in hell, Bartender, and the pervy guy from the suburbs who dresses up as Ben Franklin.

The greatest recording session in American history. "Parker was rather like John Keats: older than his years without being old, or the young-man version of an older person. With Parker you get the vim of a Mozart, an energy that feels forever retainable, despite when health fails and tragedy mounts. His development, from the jump, was hastened. Something, or someone, put him on a swift curve. At all of 16, he leaves his home in Kansas City, Missouri, takes to the road with bands. A bus accident damages his spine, requires painkillers, and hooks the man known as Bird on opioids, which will play a large role in his death at the age of 34, less than 10 years after the November 26, 1945 session that invents bebop, so far as the listening public was concerned."

On a recent biography. "The anecdotes dovetail with the burgeoning sound. In high school Coleman converted to vegetarianism, which must have seemed like a life choice played for extreme shock value in mid-century Texas. He balked at school, hating pretension, but believing himself—correctly—to be a highly educated man. A school couldn’t contain his kind of brains. Of course, his alto sax could. One could say that he went to the U of Horn, and we’re not talking steer."

Talking about a short story in JazzTimes and a personal essay in The Smart Set.

How relocating can impact a family. "When you’re a certain age and you grow up around kids your own age, you end up with friends, normally. Not everyone. Doesn’t mean the young people who don’t are somehow at fault or lacking. But I knew for me, and I was beginning to learn it then, at the age of 11, those deep connections were rare. And I’ve always needed a true connection, which is different than 'mere' friendship."

Talking about interesting items found in the woods, the differences between Hitchcock's British and American periods, and sunflowers and Van Gogh.