All rarin' to go

Sunday 9/7/25

Went to Charlestown yesterday all rarin' to go and do ten circuits in the Monument. I'd worked on a story, written a piece from soup to nuts, finished three other pieces, sent those four off, gone to Haymarket. I get there and they let me in twenty minutes early. I was sweating through my shirt just from the walk over, and then I do one circuit and I'm dripping. By two, I'm pretty well soaked.

I did get to run four circuits with no one else inside--I'm always grateful when I have the Monument to myself--but I capped it at five. The dew point was already at 70. It was pretty bad. You have these ambitions, but the humidity can undercut them just like that. I could have kept going. That wasn't the issue. It was the sweat. You get so wet doing that workout on days like that, almost overwhelmed by moisture, that you call a halt. A hot, muggy day yesterday, as though July had returned or extended a hand from out of the waste basket grave of discarded calendar pages. Should be more September-like today, and I'll see if I can't finish out this thirteenth consecutive day of Monument stairs strong.

Today marks 3339 days, or 477 weeks, without a drink.

Yesterday I had on a shirt my sister had given me, which says LB on it--for Lake Bluff, where they live. I was at Trader Joe's and a guy asked me if it stood for Lyndon Byers. This is because of how I look. Hockey type guy. I get this a lot. And publishing people, of course, hate athletic-looking men. And one who is smarter than they are? More "intellectual" and knows about all of the things they know nothing about but wish they did and think they should? That's a bad combo.

I had come from the MFA where I did take in the Van Gogh exhibit of Roulin family portraits. I should have planned this better. There were a lot of people there. Which, on the face of it, ought to be encouraging, but they're sheep. It's the name "Van Gogh." There's no understanding, discernment. They'd look at anything on the wall so long as that name is in place and the associations that go along with it.

Which is sad. That no one thinks. Similarly, it should be encouraging, in theory, that people lined up for eight hours in Central Park to get free tickets to see a Shakespeare play, but that's not about the play. It's about other stuff. The social aspect, saying you went, patting yourself on the proverbial back as someone who took their cultural medicine. I think very little attention is actually given over to the work in these cases and that you could swap in other work for that work and everything would go the same so long as the rest of it, associatively speaking, was in place.

This is a world in which the word "Trivial" popped up in my Google feed yesterday as the Word of the Day. Trivial. Can you imagine talking to someone and they had to ask you what that word meant after you used it? Because there are many people like that, if not most--and probably most--who don't know it, or else it wouldn't be turning up in this capacity. That's not coming from nowhere.

I spent more time in the Italian Renaissance section as it turned out. I have these regular haunts at the MFA--the second floor of the American wing, the Egyptian section, the folk art--and I'm adding this one.

Downloaded a recording of Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet in Helsinki from October 6, 1964. You want everything you can find from this band's live performances. Quite a bit has come out officially, but a good chunk is only on bootleg. I like the Berkeley show from 1967 quite a bit.

Rewatched The Brain from Planet Arous (1957) this morning. Going to write something about it, which will also be for the horror film book. First watched this in high school. Well, not at school. As part of my cinematic education. It was like I was training. I watched everything. Made notes on everything. All kinds of everything. I ilke when you can see the string holding up the brain as John Agar has at it with an axe. Agar's movies were usually fun. Sloppy B's, but fun.

After some wrangling with forum protocols and access codes, I managed to download the "despecialized" version of Star Wars. I'll work on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi later. As an editor of mine astutely put it to me once, the first film is the only one worth a damn; well, that's not really true, but I think artistically it is. It holds up as cinematic art, as I wrote for The Atlantic. Looks fantastic. I have this on bootleg Blu-ray, but no way to play it at present. This is how to watch the movie.

Asked my friend Howard for some help finding a five-disc set of Elvis outtakes from 1967-68 and this expanded edition of the Small Faces' The Autumn Stone. Downloaded most of the Grateful Dead's gig from Charlotte on December 10, 1973. It's one of those shows that doesn't really circulate among collectors. You need everything from that fall 1973 tour. You could write a book about the performances of "Dark Star" from it. I will, in essence, as part of a book about "Dark Star" itself, the single greatest piece of music--it's so much more than music, and the idea of "single greatest piece" also isn't sufficient--there is. They didn't do "Dark Star" at this show, though.

I've also come up with a little project--going to try and put together the best set of the Hollies' BBC recordings. There's an official package, but it jumps around chronologically, which is irritating. Then there's this fellow who put out a bunch of bootleg sets, but he erased the commentary by the BBC's presenters. I don't like that at all. I want to hear what went out as it went out. And I like that interaction. Even when the presenter--it's often Brian Matthew--talks a bit as the song gets started. I think that's part of the charm of BBC recordings.

The Red Sox were crushed again. That's 0-3 since it was announced that Roman Anthony was done for the season. This isn't a mentally resilient team. They've not been competitive in these games. And while it would be an enormous collapse for them not to make the playoffs, that isn't out of the realm of possibility. The schedule gets harder. They could be hanging on in that last week when they play three against the Tigers and three against the Jays. You can drop five out of those six pretty easily. What will their cushion be?

My guess: They qualify and are then sent packing in a first round sweep at the hands of the Yankees. I wouldn't want the Yankees anyway. The Red are, what, 8-2 against them so far this year? They are due for some losses. Teams that are close like this don't have these kinds of disparities in their head-to-head results--or rarely, anyway--when it's all done. It can happen.

But I don't think the Red Sox are that type of team. They also seem to have psychologically fallen apart since Anthony went down. You could hear it in Alex Bregman's voice that very night, like he was on the Titanic and he just got word that he'd be in the water within the next ten minutes. Which I don't get. Anthony was an important player. But he's one guy. They're getting their clocks cleaned nightly now. More terrible fundamentals, too, and evidence of Jarren Duran being a bad outfielder.

I don't think the Patriots will have as hard a schedule as most people expect them to--I see lots of potentially bad football teams on there--but it would behoove them to win today with next week's game being in Miami. It's hard to win there in September for any team that's not based in the south and was always difficult for the Patriots even back when they were great.

Belichick was still talking about New England yesterday and how he's banned Patriots scouts at UNC during his postgame press conference. He's like a dad who uses his kids as weapons after a divorce, and the kids are collateral damage, which the dad doesn't care about or is oblivious to. He just wants to hurt the ex. Or feel like he is. Or keep trying to.

BC lost in double overtime to Michigan State, and just like that, there goes BC's season. What do I mean? I mean when you're a team like BC, you can't lose out of conference "toss up" games. That means you'll at best be like 6-6, go to your garbage bowl, and ho hum, there's another inconsequential year. The earlier you lose one of these toss up games, the faster the entertainment factor for the season--any suspense, drama, excitement, hope--goes out the window. Barring a surprise. Like the loss was a blip and seven straight wins are ripped off.

That's not BC. Or very, very, very rarely has it ever been. 1993, perhaps. But that was a different level of roster, a different era, when there were other things like pride in who you played for, staying all four--or five--years, being committed to your buddies, your teammates. More things were possible. The BC quarterback--an Alabama transfer--is off to a nice statistical start, though. Eight TDs and no interceptions, and threw for more yards last night than a BC quarterback likely has in some time, though maybe Jukovec had a game where he put up that many. He lost it fast. Doesn't play football anymore. Funny to think now that he was on preseason Heisman watch lists once. But that's how it can go, especially in something--rare as those things are--that are merit based.