Nightmare, the vestigial, stairs, lost wallet, McDavid, Red Sox front office, core American music box sets, Veneta "Dark Star," film noir

Thursday 6/19/25

Had another nightmare about my ex-wife last night. A lot of trauma. I was in Greenwich Village, it was pouring, needed a place to stay the night, had a key to this unit that was once mine, went in, got into bed, and all of these people who lived in the units upstairs started showing up and confronting me, because it belonged to Molly and not myself apparently. They'd all been brainwashed into believing things that weren't true--things it was easy to disabuse them of with simple statements of truth. I was befogged the whole time. Confused. There was a bureau stuffed full of books belonging to me. People started hooking up. Right in front of each other. It was like college. I woke up disoriented, scared. Like I was about to hear from her team of lawyers again.

People are cowards. Very few people in the world aren't. If the total number was in double digits, I wouldn't be surprised. But millions, if not billions, of people tout how brave they are.

Qualities and traits and abilities like courage, intelligence, substance, depth, writing well, speaking well, caring about others, doing the right thing because it's the right thing are apt to become vestigial. Like the coccyx. There will be this faint indication or trace that these were things that once were. Maybe there will just be evidence of them in some book that no one reads.

I saw this post today:

"Will human intelligence become less valuable or worthless? I don't mean here only in economic fields, but I mean that human intelligence and everything you have learned or studied will become worthless and completely redundant. Education will become a recreational activity like learning to play chess."

This has already occurred. There is no greater proof of that than I am. Not the redundant part, but the rest of it. The greatest mind of all time, and the greatest artist, could be here right now. It wouldn't matter. Few would know, and those who did would resent and/or fear that person in a world that is now all but pumping someone up if they are to get anywhere.

Walked three miles, did 100 push-ups, and ran ten circuits of stairs in the Monument Tuesday, which was the actual 250th anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill. Greeted one of my ranger buddies with a "Happy anniversary, my friend."

As I said, I didn't like the feeling of needing to be attended to on Monday and I also didn't want Saturday's performance to seem like a fluke or anything that I needed to recover from. Having said that, I failed to run stairs yesterday. Got caught up in working on a new story.

Making sure to chew on the right side of my mouth. The prescribed painkiller is ibuprofen in 600mg tablets--taking one is like taking three Advil. I've had next to no discomfort here, though. Sometimes I note something like this--the dosage, that is--or whatever detail of life in case I'm in the same position again. I can check my "notes," after a fashion. It's right here in this record because I put it there.

Learned that my niece Amelia is taking swimming lessons. This is important. It was last summer that her sister Lilah--my fellow reader and official best pal--saved Amelia in the pool.

Isn't it remarkable how liberally people apply the word "expert" to themselves? Look at Threads. "I'm a digital marketing expert with four years of experience."

My buddy Howard sent me Revenant's copious Albert Ayler box set, Holy Ghost: Rare and Unissued Recordings (1962-70) I have the physical package somewhere, but who knows where.

Acquired a copy of Christmas Day with Kitty Wells from 1962. She's backed by the Jordanaires, who often sang with Elvis.

Got this big set--it's over 100 cuts--of Judy Garland songs from her musicals. One of the core Garland documents. America has produced very few, if any, better singers.

Also, Bear Family's lavish box of the complete Sun singles. It's one of those cornerstone sets, along with the fourteen-disc The Chess Story and the 1600 track The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, which I downloaded in the spring. Have a listen to Jerry Lee Lewis's "Save the Last Dance for Me." It's not very well known, but a treat, like every last one of his Sun sides.

Landed some Hank Thompson and Marvin Rainwater Bear Family boxes as well.

The two women who live across the hall who slam their door constantly as well as the guy upstairs who slams his at least fifty times a day--without going out--were gone over the weekend, which meant relative quiet. Not a thought for anyone but themselves. Assholes all. It makes a difference not having a door slamming multiple times an hour. The women are so stupid. To hear them talk is to hear the personification of imbecility. The guy has to be crazy. He keeps things in the hallway, like it's another room. Then he goes into this other room--slamming the door behind him--retrieves what he wants, and slams the door again when he goes back in. It's rare that you hear him slam the door and then hear him coming down the stairs to go out. He basically slams to slam.

I am not capable of liking a moron. A big reason why is because being or not being a moron is in most cases up to the individual. If you want to be smarter, you can be smarter. I hate laziness. I hate lazy people. I hate inefficiency and inefficient people. I wouldn't hurt them. I would treat them the same as I'd treat their opposite. But that's different.

Early Sunday evening, I was walking by the harbor. As usual, trying to figure out what to do, what I might do, if there is anything that can make a dent in this hell. When I found a wallet on a bench at the water's edge. This is the second time I've found a wallet. The first time was before I kept this journal. There was like $500 in cash in it. The wallet that time--it was actually a purse--belonged to a woman who was maybe thirty. I tracked her down, returned it to her, and she was unpleasant. Not very grateful--at least not to me. What are chances of losing a wallet with $500 in it--she was getting married and doing all sorts of pre-wedding things, going by the contents of this purse--and someone returning it to you with everything in there?

The wallet I found Sunday belonged to a guy from Colorado who'd gone to BU and lived in Providence. It took a bit of sleuthing to track him down. Luckily he was in the area and I didn't have to wait that long and he came out to meet me at Starbucks near where I'd found the wallet. He didn't even know it had been gone.

One of the biggest compliments you can pay a team in any sport is to say that they're very hard to play against. The Florida Panthers are very hard to play against.

The Oilers dropped the first three games of the Finals last year. This year they won the first game (and lost the second in double OT). And yet, they came closer to a title in the prior season than this one. That's sports.

People will think this is premature, but now is the time I start wondering if Connor McDavid is going to win a Stanley Cup in his career. As Yogi Berra said, sort of, it gets late early there--I'm talking about careers for athletes. You have to figure there's no Stanley Cup Final for McDavid next year. The odds are way against three trips in a row. That's another year off of his career.

The Bruins and Oilers should have a chat about Jeremy Swayman. A deal could be a good thing for both sides.

I said to someone yesterday that I expected both the NHL and NBA series to end with their next games. That's one down. There is often a point in a series where if one team is going to win, they can't let a specific opportunity get away. If it does, that's typically it for them. They don't win again. I think that was Game 4 for the Pacers. But you don't know. Again, that's sports.

The Red Sox won't win again until Craig Breslow is gone. I heard a press conference yesterday with him and Sam Kennedy--who is also an idiot and comes off as incapable of sincerity--that was just embarrassing. Corporate speak, Yale speak, meaningless terms repeated again and again. Craig Breslow is the sports version of a writer who thinks they're special because they name a character Acker. You cannot take someone like that seriously. Personally, professionally. These two boobs must have said some version of the word "alignment" a dozen times.

If Breslow was like this when he played, his teammates must have hated him. He must not have had a friend on any team he was a part of and been the butt of everyone's jokes. He was on a conference call with some scout, and the scout thought the call was over, and Breslow a "fucking stiff"--which he is--and Breslow heard and fired the guy. You are a fucking stiff to the max. And an arrogant stiff whose arrogance will be his undoing. This guy is going to be humbled. He will fail in this job and be fired. Mark my words. But he's such a fucking arrogant stiff that he probably won't even learn a lesson. The Red Sox front office is insufferable.

Sox bounced back from an 8-0 drubbing on Tuesday to win a Garrett Crochet start yesterday, 3-1. They're not scoring much. Weren't before Devers was dealt, but the pitching they've been getting isn't nearly what the pitching is going to be. There's going to be a big drop-off, Crochet aside, in all probability. Have to find ways to score more runs. Abreu's return could help, Bregman sounds like he's ahead of schedule, and though most people sleep on him or think he's ineffectual, I actually like Matsuzaka. He puts the bat on the ball consistently, which is rare these days, and I think they need someone like that.

My sense regarding the AL postseason here on June 19: You're right there for the third Wild Card spot with a .500 record at the moment. It feels chintzy talking about a third Wild Card spot. Baseball is a regal, classy game. Playoff teams should be division winners. Not a second this and a third that. But that's how it is now, so I'm playing along. By the end of September, you're going to need to be ten games or so above .500 for that third Wild Card spot. .500 or a game or two above won't cut it. Someone's going to surge forward a bit. I'd like that to be the Red Sox.

Listened to the Grateful Dead's performance of "Dark Star" at Veneta on 8/27/72 a couple times the other night. Certain Dead performances acquire a consensual "best ever" reputation because of availability. That is, the performance has long been available in good sound and was a standard/staple as a result in the tape trading days. That inflates the reputation. As with this "Dark Star" and Cornell 1977. I'm not suggesting this isn't dynamic art, because it is.

On Sunday at the Brattle I saw a couple of noirs: 1951's Tomorrow is Another Day and 1949's Tension. Neither had ever screened at the Brattle before, so it was cool to be there for that. Tomorrow is Another Day is the superior film. Ray Teal gets a chunky role and is very good in it. Tension is what I guess you'd call a hoot. Anything with Audrey Totter is likely to be over the top (her eyebrows alone could have received separate billing in 1947's Lady in the Lake), and Tension is no exception. This was part of the Brattle's annual film noir program. There were fewer people at Tomorrow is Another Day, which began at noon, but I'd estimate that there were 100 people there for Tension.