Rooting for autumn: Grateful Dead and horror, Beatles Purple Chick person speaks, arrogation, winning and losing ways

Sunday 7/26/26

Nice to see the temperature dip into the 50s as I start work early on this Sunday. Rooting for you, autumn.

I watched Babysitter Wanted (2008) yesterday morning. I'm thinking about writing something on babysitter-centric horror films. I've made a potential list.

Also watched Attack of the Puppet People (1958) for a possible piece on drive-in horror movies. The list for that one includes Hell Night (1981), Targets (1968), Ruby (1977), Drive-In Massacre (1976), The Funhouse (1981), Blood Rage (1987), Dead End Drive-In (1986), The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964), King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962).

That last one is spoke about glowingly (and wryly) by the Grateful Dead at their 11/8/70 Capitol Theatre show, which may be the best rock and roll concert ever given. They also touch on The 39 Steps and its remake. Now I have the version of "Rosalie McFall" that follows in my head.

I saw some comments this morning from the person known as "Purple Chick" of the bootleg label of the same name. The most famous Purple Chick releases are the exhaustive Beatles ones, but there are other great sets, like the Buddy Holly collection. This person said that they hadn't listened to the Beatles at all in a couple years, which I thought was interesting. They had some tips, too, for doing this kind of undertaking. Which is to say, how to create a complete set of a band's unreleased material, with the emphasis as per this discussion being on their live material.

They advised going back to the earliest sources and working from there, because that's the material in its purest form, before people tried to make their enhancements. Technology has meant more and more of this as the years go by. Which can be good, but you also need to be smart. I'll keep multiple copies. Something like, say, the Purple Chick sets, next to the latest efforts in these matters.

If we're talking about the Beatles' Drop In appearance in Sweden in 1963, I can tell you, "This set is missing the full intro, but this other set has it," and so on. You'll get a set where there were some flubbed notes at a performance, and someone flew in the relevant notes from later on in that same song, smoothing the mistake over.

Me, I don't want this. If a person makes something sound better, but in an organic fashion, if you know what I mean--boosting the level of something, or removing a flaw in the tape that produces a click or scratch or reducing hiss--but I want the music as close to "as is" (or as was, I guess)--as can be. It was nice to put a voice, too, to the Purple Chick concept. You had the sense it was this grassroots, power of the people organization of many members, a mysterious shadow body doing right by the Beatles and others, but the Beatles especially.

Yesterday I walked ten miles, did 200 push-ups, and ran five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument. Wasn't too hot and the dew point was mid-50s. The last time up the Monument was a fairly good circuit. I pushed it at the end. Today marks 3661 days, or 523 weeks, without a drink.

Anywhere you go, people will stand in the middle of something, oblivious to anyone else. Whether that's at the grocery store or inside the lodge leading to the entrance of the Monument. Their heads aren't technically up their asses, but they might as well be. People don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves. It never enters their mind to look out for others, or to consider whether they're being rude.

But look at all the people--and it's many of these people--who take to social media and go on and on about morality and being a good person. The hypocrisy of this age. The brazen cluelessness, too. We're so arrogant in our ignorance.

In the Monument, most people won't even move an inch to let you pass or to make sure they don't trip you. It's a tight fit to begin with, especially because so many Americans are just so overweight. Look at a photo from the 1980s and before with a lot of people in it. Notice how different they look than people today?

But these people in the Monument won't even turn their bodies many times. If a person is standing there resting and their feet are spread far apart, they won't bring one of them in towards their body as you pass in the other direction. They've arrogated seventy percent of the stair for themselves. They're not moving. They're not doing anything. But they want to lounge the way they want to lounge. You're supposed to be looking out for people. That's not a thing in our world. Thinking of someone else. Making sure they're good. You aren't endangering them.

There was a guy yesterday--probably my age--who was coming out as I was going in. He told his wife (who had presumably been waiting down below, having declined to climb herself) that he made it to stair 135, but he was breathing hard and that was enough so he turned around, and she was complimentary like he'd battled and did a great job and what more could you expect than reaching stair 135? Not even halfway. He was more than fine with it. I'd be worried. Alarmed. I'd feel bad about myself. Weak, pathetic, vulnerable in the not good way.

Went to Haymarket. Acquired peppers, onions, tomatoes. Most of the vendors' signs read pepper's, onion's, tomato's, which pulls more life out of me still. Sometimes I walk around waiting to buy these items from a vendor who has shown that he or she can properly pluralize a common noun, but then I decide to give up the fight because it's been long enough and I need to get on with next things.

I cannot believe this world. I mean, I can. But it's such a fucking nightmare of illiteracy and stupidity. And spare me the, "It's probably just some poor person from Mexico having come over the border to try and make a better life for his family and how many language do you speak?" because it'll be some middle-aged white guy from Randolph.

Phoned and spoke to my uncle yesterday. This was the first time I've spoken to anyone all month. As I said, I am completely alone. I am unloved. I may be unlovable. I don't think there's very much love in this world anyway. A great rarity, actual love. What I am, and what this world is, means that I will be treated a way that no other person would be. I'll get into this a bit more later with an example pertaining to me reaching ten years without a drink of alcohol. Anyway, my uncle is eight-five. He lives in South Carolina now. He's my mother's older brother. I had phoned him last Sunday to see how he was doing.

He didn't answer, so I left a message saying why I had called and that I would try him again soon, which I did as I headed out to read yesterday, post-stairs. He's one of those people who, I think, thinks they get their texts and voicemails, but it's probably spotty at best. I asked him if he'd gotten my voicemail and he didn't seem to know what I was talking about. Anyway, he sounded in good health. He goes to the gym three days a week. That's really good, right?

He isn't a man of many words--we spoke for about ten minutes. He knows things are bad for me, but it's hard for someone to understand the extent to which that was true, and what this situation is, unless you're quite serious about it, and reading this record, among other things, and how do I go into it that much anyway? Some things, it's like they have to be done completely, because just a little bit or "some" isn't even a full drop of water in what in reality and complexity are galaxies' worth of oceans. I was mostly trying to let him know that I care about him anyway.

A letter to someone else:

Wanted to reach out and let you know that I was much moved by you thoughtful and heartfelt new essay. It really is a great piece of work.

My (perhaps very incorrect) surmise is that it was something you thought about writing for a while and that it has been with you well before you put fingers to keys. It's very astute in its understanding of how horror in film takes all these forms that aren't necessarily outright horror, like with Star Wars, especially that first entry in the trilogy. Darth Vader was as fitting a Ben Cooper costume from the horror perspective as the Lugosi Dracula and the Karloff Frankenstein monster. Made perfect sense on those mean Halloween streets. 

     I never knew that you were from Massachusetts. I knew, of course, that you come here on occasion, but I guess I have always thought of you as being so much, if you will, of where you are now, and the places you visit, that I was a bit surprised by your geographical origins, but that aforesaid association I do have with you and New York also has a different degree of sense to it as well now at the same time. 

I was sorry to read about some of those early experiences you had. Many of us categorically reject anything to do with anything pertaining to or resulting from someone who has hurt us, including what good things there may have been. I'm glad you retained your love for horror, because it's clearly brought light and joy to your life. And then there is admirable work like this, for others to partake of. 

Really great stuff. Thank you for writing it. 

More prosaically, I will have something to you soon, and there's also a Night of the Hunter Christmas piece here. 

Predicted yesterday that Sonny Gray will win the AL Cy Young award and then he had a poor start giving up 5 runs in 5 innings as the Sox were blanked by the Jays 6-0 with Dylan Cease going the distance for Toronto and allowing only one hit.

He's a Cy Young contender and the kind that voters prefer given his 7-5 record. If he can end up at 10-9, or, even better, 11-11, that might do it for him. Voters love low win totals for starters and a record right around .500. Because, you know, pitchers can't control whether they win, despite the very strange truth that in the 150 year history of baseball, great pitchers on bad teams have usually managed to win lots of games.

Hmmm. Almost like they have something to do with that. Can't be, though, right? Steve Carlton probably actually lost all those games he got credited for winning with the Phillies in 1972. Baseball-reference should correct that.

You know what increases your chances of getting a win if you're a starter? Going deeper into the game. Because then your team has more chances to score as you're holding down the opposition. That seems logical, doesn't it? It's almost like there's minimal value in just going out there for five innings each time.

Sox need this game today. You don't want to go 1-3 after winning 15 in a row. Then you have a case of "same old, same old after all" going. Ranger Suarez returns to the mound, so that could be dicey on account of rust.

Yesterday I had also mentioned the Red Sox needing to get Connolly Early back. Well, that won't be happening, because they traded him to the Nationals for Curtis Mead, who mostly plays third base, and when he's not there, he plays first, and he plays some second base. I don't know about this. You have a third baseman and a first baseman. I hope they're not going to move Durbin to second because he's been so good defensively at third. The pitching definitely got worse.

This is Mead's fourth years in the big leagues. He's already had two negative WAR seasons. He's hitting .254 this year, with 17 homers and 48 RBI. Eh...people tout this as his "breakout" season, but how much of a breakout is that? He'll finish with, what, 24 homers and 65 RBI? Okay, he has a pretty good OPS, but no one else has picked up on what I see so clearly: you actually need to hit the homers, drive in the runs, score the runs. Those "old school" stats are tangible. They are runs.

You have these guys who don't hit homers, don't hit for average, don't score runs, don't drive in runs, but they'll have a nice OPS+. It's like having a theoretical woodpile rather than a big pile of wood for your stove or the outlines of a woodpile that haven't been filled in. People don't understand baseball. Or life, for that matter. They're just looking at the dashboard the way they do with Instagram. Keying in on two or three main--because they make them "the main"--dashboard numbers. The game is lost on them. They're not seeing how it works.

Maybe he'll work out, though. They do need a bat. They still need a bat. You aren't getting Garrett Crochet back this year, though. Pitching has been their thing.