Wednesday 11/24/21
Was watching The Andy Griffith Show episode where there’s a new boy. Opie wants to fight him so Andy asks why. Opie says he called him names. To which Andy replies, “those won’t hurt you.” What a concept, right? He tells his son to try and find something he likes about the boy.
There’s this part in My Dinner with Andre when they talk about how no one can say anything that’s real directly, so those things come out in weird ways. Lesser ways. Non-ways. This is even more true now. I experience it constantly, especially as someone direct in all he does. People will give others token compliments that they don't mean. That's what people do now. About the little things they write, their achievements that are not real achievements. They can only talk in stock falsities. So, when it comes time to say something real, about something real--something amazing--they cannot do it, person to person. People say a lot of weird things to me. They try to play it cool. They try not to seem like they're overly fawning. They don't want to appear worshipful. They want me to think a certain way about them. To think they're "cool"--or at least that they're not embarrassing themselves. Over-extending. It takes a certain amount of vulnerability to speak to me about what I do, what I've created, because it's real time. Time to be real. You can't do the stock falsities. Thus, a person now has to speak in a way that is not familiar to them, and as a result, not comfortable to them. Consequently, they'll reign it in, and say something really weird because it's so understated as to be a complete misrepresentation of what they think. "You're one of the strongest people I know," to give one example that is not completely work related. I mean...come on. I'm one of those, huh? It's such an-off-the-mark understatement/diminution as to be as "accurate" to say that I have no strength at all. Both statements are equally inaccurate. To say the truth, though, makes someone uncomfortable. It's too real, too intimate, and it makes someone feel naked. Out there, cock in the hand, vagina in the wind, however you want to put it. Almost all human intercourse is different elsewhere because you have people doing BS things that are not real things and others comment in BS terms. Which is fine if you're a maker of BS and that's the level of your work. Much less fine if you're not and it isn't.
With the announcement of the Hall of Fame ballot yesterday, and there being so many controversial names on it, a lot of discussion turned to Pete Rose, for there is no sports topic that is bickered over like Rose. I've seen it for decades now. And every day on FB baseball history groups, someone puts up a picture of Rose and people say the same things they've said for years, thousands of times already. I think very few people have a clue what Rose was as a ballplayer. He played forever and his WAR is still less than 80. His game has not aged well. Punchless singles hitter w/a narrative. Good doubles guy. HOF career, but he’s not what many think he is. A versatile fielder, but not a very good one, despite the two Gold Gloves which don't make a lot of sense. Little speed. No power. What did the hustle really mean? It's nice in theory as a life lesson, but he also played it up, did his belly flop slides into third when there was no need.
I'm doing a lot of Beatles things. Big projects. Watching a lot of Get Back right now. I can't say anything about it, though. Swore my life over to get through Disney security. They even tell you to go in a separate room and use headphones if you live with people so that they can't see or hear anything. Fair piece of work to do today.
Bruce Pratt filled in for Rich Kimball last night on Downtown. Was good to catch up with Bruce person to person. Pratt and Kimball are two of my favorite people in the world. Good men. With Kimball, I'll send him a list of things we can talk about, and of course he can add in whatever he wishes. I like being put on the spot. I know everything, so why wouldn't I like this? I like when someone brings up a subject and instantly I show that I am an expert on it. That strikes further fear in my enemies. How could it not? It enrages them even more. They think, "He knows this, too? What the hell?" So last night I come on, Bruce says here's Fleming, he's all these things--author and critic (which I'm not really, but more on this later) and hockey guy, etc., so straight away he starts asking me about baseball and I'm there doing my thing. The competitor in me loves that. The "wait, this guy is the best in the world at this thing and this thing? And wait...and this thing too? And this? Where does this stop?" But that is also why just about no one can see what I am, because it's beyond the ken of what people know, have experienced, or think is possible. So they doubt their senses, or I just fall well outside of the bounds of the circle that surrounds them; the circle of experience, and the circle within which their minds operate. They doubt the bounds of possibilities as I redefine them. What you then need are hordes of people saying something about you--about me--and then it is easy for everyone to just say what is in another way obvious. I become the self-fulfilling prophesy of a new understanding of genius, though that term makes me uncomfortable, as it's limiting. I'm beyond it. I've proven that. I prove it with what I do every single week. Not week in, week out. That's not what I mean. What I mean is if you take a single week of my life--any week--and look at what I produced, wrote, said, I've proven it if you only looked at that seven day period.
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Okay, it's later now--we're coming up on noon. I just wrote an entire 3000 word feature on the Beatles. It's awesome. Made me cry. Now I'm going to run some stairs and grab a hot chocolate and come home and give this thing a final read and then file it. You did that fast, man, and it's absolutely going to beat the tar out of everything everyone else writes about this film. Other level. Good job.
