Creatives, Beatles experts, Sinners, The Studio, General MacArthur, high school nation

Wednesday 6/4/25

What are the odds that someone wearing a DraftKings sweatshirt--like the person I saw the other day on Hanover Street--isn't a degenerate gambler?

No person who is creative has ever called themselves a creative.

People in a Beatles subreddit palavering about the harpsichord on "In My Life." All with that adopted, but ingrained, attitude that they are the expert. They know. Trust me, their tone says, I'm very knowledgeable and couldn't possibly be wrong. You should listen to me because I know the most, why, of course I do, after all, it's me.

There is no harpsichord on "In My Life."

Hardly anyone knows anything about anything. The only people with knowledge are much older. Then they will be gone.

People don't know, people don't know what they don't know, people don't know what there is to know, people don't know what's false.

Everything is equally true and equally false. Nothing is anything. There is fast becoming no more reality, so far as people are concerned. Everything is what you want it to be. Or not be. Because who is the wiser?

The problem is, reality is still reality.

I wonder why Sinners was successful. Very hard to figure that out.

Pander, pander, pander.

They'll eat it up, if doing so allows them to make claims about themselves.

Pander, pander, pander.

I'll see comments about how funny The Studio is and how it's a work of genius. I would like a single person to tell me a single specific thing that is funny in it or that makes it good. Give me an example. "This was an outstanding scene because..."

No one would be able to do it. The characters are broad. There's no depth. No insight. It's toilet-level humor. Someone took drugs and fell over. Yes, genius. You could have sketched out the the entirety of each character in five words or less on the the back of the same cocktail napkin. But it's nice because you get someone who has never seen a film by Buster Keaton telling you it's Buster Keaton level genius or someone who is as unqualified as anyone can be based on what they've actually partook of and not studied and not made the subject of their life telling you it's one of the best comedies ever.

Let's just say whatever the fuck we feel like saying, right? And it'll just be true because we said it. Hooray. Go us.

The ass has replaced the mouth. People may literally talk out of their mouth, but for all intents and purposes, they talk out of their ass.

They also weaponize their contempt for those who are smarter than they are and who try not to be stupid.

This is one of the many ways in which the adult world in America in 2025 is more like high school than high school used to be. Except now, the adult world is like a zombie-fied version of high school, and, more pointedly, a high school in which the attendees don't have souls.

AI takes many things. Among them is your human soul.

I saw another subreddit that is all about people who have AI write for them. They would say, unironically, "AI wrote my first five books."

Speaking of high school: I'd say forty percent of Americans who write the term do it as highschool. We are so stupid that we can spend four years in a place and not know the name of it.

But I'm sure it'll be fine. Let's keep going like this.

Some learned cinephile is going to make a top ten list of the best gangster films of "all-time." Gee, I wonder when all of those films will date from, with a dip back to the 1970s to include the first two Godfather films. Because nothing that they wouldn't have been automatically exposed to without trying during the years in which they were living and reached a certain age could possibly be worthy.

The ignorance and the narcissism.

The lack of curiosity.

The smug ignorance.

I hate whistlers. I shouldn't hear you. No one should hear you. I shouldn't hear you whistling, I shouldn't hear you laying on your horn, I shouldn't hear your booming bro voice as you talk with someone on speakerphone, I shouldn't hear your music--which is inevitably the shittiest music, too--I shouldn't hear the video you're watching without headphones on the T. You shouldn't be subjecting other people to your needless noises.

Woman at the Trader Joe's spreading herself out in front of a portion of the aisle for an extended period: Maybe get a beach chair and spend the day there? Would that be more comfortable?

It's not the coach in baseball, it's the manager. "You know what I meant." You want to be taken seriously, then be serious, be less sloppy, get things right. What I just said is highly offensive to most people. Alex Cora doesn't coach the Red Sox. He manages them. In baseball, it's a clubhouse, not a locker room. And yeah, these things do matter. Different sport, different mindset, different sensibility, different culture.

Another Red Sox loss last night. Same reasons as usual. Find me a worse team when it comes to the fundamentals. A worse big market team. Not a team that runs out a glorified minor league roster. (Which isn't far off from what these Red Sox are, admittedly.) After the game, Cora says, "We keep making the same mistakes. We're not getting better. At one point it has to be on me I guess."

I guess.

We got General MacArthur here.

You see what a passive aggressive bitch/weasel Alex Cora is? That is so typical of him.

As I wrote--and it's the best line there will ever be when it comes to this guy: Alex Cora is the perfect manager for a team that could win 100 games without him.

If Cora is fired, the Red Sox will still be bad and people will then bemoan him having been fired. He still has to be fired, though, because his dreadful attitude and lack of professionalism and quiet quitter mindset has permeated the entire team. It's in every corner of that clubhouse. This is going to be a process back to contention. Discharging Alex Cora is a part of that process.

Get rid of him yesterday. That failing, get rid of him today. Try to develop players the rest of the way out. Start on next year now.

Cora will go somewhere else--to that 100 win team that could win a World Series without him. And he will probably win a World Series again. None of that will change who he is and that he's not a good manager, he's a bitch/weasel, and the Red Sox should have cut him loose and never should have brought him back after he was suspended for cheating.

Cheating seems like a big thing to me. I don't know. Thought that should be pretty obvious, but it's like nothing is obvious to anyone now. Or that which is obvious can be seen and understood by less than one percent of the population, and everything else has no chance of being recognized for what it is or even that it's there.

Now trying doing the push-ups correctly. Bit harder, isn't it?

Maybe if you extend your streak of photos of yourself on your Instagram account to 1,050 it'll be easier to get that feeling of validation you're looking for? Try it.

Those people--and definitely those men--probably really like you for who you are and because they find you so interesting.

I mean, what else could it be, right?

What do you think about being interested in something? No? Okay. Carry on, then.

No one is making anyone be a dumbass but themselves.

Social media makes veritable gods of stupidity, blandness, cliches, the stock, the simple, the so simple as to not ever be worth saying, the insincere, vagueness. These are the drivers of social media success, which is now bound up with success outside of the office setting in our world. The success that is dependent on audience.

Look at this. It's from a guy with 53K followers who is a "Social Media Marketing Coach." I hate the world. How can you not if you're not a moron? He posts the likes of this all day:

You blaming the “Algorithm” for your content performing like crap is just your ego not wanting to admit your content and value sucks

Think of how stupid you have to be to say that. "Yeah, your value sucks." No clue what the word means or how it works. Basic English. Nope. Can't do it. "Yeah, you got some nice quality value. His value blows." Not how the word works, which people used to know when they were five-years-old.

Also this:

Your Content Doesn’t Suck your just not posting enough of it…

In other words: I'm an expert, but I'm basically fucking illiterate. And I'm so goddamn vapid. You will find more depth in a piss you take on flat ground. Hence, my appeal, as such. Because this is how it works now.

But hey, who isn't?

A cull would be nice. A Noah type of thing.