Beatles, stories, moon and back, A's, texts from Flann O'Brien, Laurence Sterne/Tristram Shandy book

Thursday 6/15/23

It's far too bright at this time of year. Messes me up. Sleep cycle-wise.

Larry Gura was another pitcher who was in the Chris Sale ballpark, who may have peaked higher.

It wasn't until just now--after four--that I learned the Red Sox won last night. If a team is doing anything you run into the scores of their games without looking.

I may write pieces on the Beatles' failed Decca audition and the Red Album. They would go well in Just Like Them: A Piece by Piece Guide to Becoming the Ultimate Thinking Person's Beatles Fan. It's a long book, but it could be longer.

Worked more on "Attic Cantata." Wrote a new story today, too.

My seven-year-old niece to whom I mailed "What the Mouse Knew," and who remains the only person to have read that story because I'm still working on it--so she got what's tantamount to an earlier take--was at a store with her mom/my sister. And rather than buy herself something, she got something for my mom. My mom always says that she loves her to the moon and back, and my niece found this piece of jewelry with a moon and a heart and that was what she chose to get. She gave it my mom and provided a little breakdown, saying it was because she was the best Grammie in the whole world, and she also loved her to the moon and back, and the heart was her heart.

Well. To hear my mother tell me about this...it did me some good. She was so happy. Today I texted my sister to have her tell my niece how super I thought that was, and how it made me happy because I knew how happy she had made her Grammie and that was a really thoughtful thing to do. My sister did, and she sent me a photo of my niece, who looks much like my mom.

Texts from the other night:

D: I'm want to hear the rest

D: At swim now I'll try to call after I'm not in the am

D: Dying to hear the ready

C: Your texts read like those of a drunken troll.

Pretty sure that was not a reference to Flann O'Brien.

No one is going to get that joke.

It's a shame that the A's are going to leave Oakland. A storied franchise with two of the greatest, coolest runs in baseball history, with the early 1970s and late 1980s/early 1990s teams. Is there a more underrated dynasty than the 1970s Athletics? Is there a flashier, cooler baseball team ever than those Bash Brothers A's?

A very fun book could be written about Laurence Sterne and Tristram Shandy. I'm serious. Part biography, part literary study, part cultural study, part academic takedown, part celebration of voice, part commentary on how literature can work, how it worked here, part breakdown of where literature is now, part account of a quest, part treatise in comedy, part medical story. Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy to get rich. Seriously. That was his intention. He thought, "This will make me big money." One may say that's not an accessible novel--I don't agree--but this book I'm talking about could be totally accessible.