Stairs (new record) + art (Beatles, Orson Welles, rare ghost story novel, Doors, Star Wars, H.G. Wells) + communications

Saturday 9/13/25

We've made ours a world in which people are only capable of being interested in themselves, despite virtually no one now being interesting in the slightest. These people are more unhappy and less filled, more broken, and empty, as a result. They can't let anything else in. Can't be aware of anything else. Including that which would make them happier, less lonely, less broken, more fulfilled.

Has there ever been a more bedeviled irony than that?

But sure, post thirty more photos of yourself on Instagram, and nothing else--just you, you, vapid, empty, broken you, until the end of your life--and captions about how you're a survivor and you protect your peace and you're so strong and you're living your best life, and get as many hashtags in there as possible, because we all know they're the true indicator of self-worth, self-respect, and a life well lived.

The number of dead-inside women who don't only post 500 photos of themselves in a row, but virtually indistinguishable photos, triptych-style, from the latest time that day they went in front of a mirror to do just this is one of those things that says so much about how awful and empty and dumb and diseased this world has gotten. These people have nothing else to live for save those "likes" from a fat, middle-aged man, with food encrusted in his nasty bear, and an unholy stench wafting from his undercarriage, who would "luv" to see some feet pics. I mean, honestly--how can you go any lower? But best life, sure.

Another stair-based Bunker Hill Monument record on Sunday: That was my thirteenth straight day of running stairs within the Monument, which was only possible because of a one-off--or once-a-year at most--scheduling quirk. And then obviously you have to go and do it all of those days, too. Can't leave that part out, can you? It was raining hard when I left for Charlestown; would have been very easy to bag out, but I wanted to see this through.

Then on Monday, when I was supposed to stand down from running stairs, with the Monument being closed and all of the stair-running days in a row, I instead went to City Hall at six in the morning--having begun work at two--and ran 5000 stairs there. I felt like going, so I did.

Tuesday I walked six miles--after three each of the days prior--and did my push-ups as I've been doing every day and ran five circuits of stairs in the Monument. It was fifty degrees when I began work at 12:01 in the AM, having awoken at exactly midnight, and I erred in thinking it cooler than it was at twenty past nine when I went out and ended up being overdressed--I had on a sweatshirt and beanie with my shorts--and overheated in the Monument in shortish order.

They let me in early again, which was good, because a group of field trippers entered at ten sharp. That can really clog things up. Typically at least one kid on these trips will ask me how many circuits I'm doing, which a girl did this time.

Thursday I ran ten circuits of stairs in the Monument. And wrote 4000 words. All in the morning.

Nothing Friday, but I'll do better today.

Couple pieces came out yesterday.

I wrote a film piece Tuesday, then another Wednesday, and a third yesterday, all of which I must fix, but that won't take long. Wrote a Beatles piece Wednesday morning as well.

From the Beatles piece:

Then comes Paul McCartney and Paul McCartney alone to sing “Yesterday,” which was shocking in a different regard. The Beatles were a collective. A gang. Crew. Unit. And here we had a member stepping out on his own.

We wonder now if there were people watching who were suddenly seized with a fear that in some near future these four young men would make music without each other, the gang consigned to memory. Would that occur in two years’ time? Three? Five proved to be the answer, but here’s the foreshadowing.

And here, too, is a stirring, human performance. The trappings of “Yesterday”—that it was McCartney minus his mates with a string quartet, and that so many artists have covered it—is overshadowed by a form of beauteous plangency. The song is a hymn, a lament, and a blues. A glassine of a blues, but a blues all the same.

Always and obviously on a different level than anything by anyone else.

The two pieces on Wednesday--along with the adding up of all that I do and the hours I keep--had me feeling tired. I wasn't going to do any stairs. I wanted to get out, though, and I figured I'd give my mom a call as I walked to South Station and at least get three miles in, but then I decided to go in the opposite direction to the Monument, go up just the once, and get the three miles of walking in all the same, so that's what I did.

Message to the kids via text to my sister:

Tell my buddy I heard she did great at the football game and I'm glad she's having fun at school. Also, tell Charlie that I thought his two-mile time was super and tell Lilah to keep reading under the covers and just try to get good at not getting caught.

That's some of what they're up to. Amelia is doing this thing called "Poms" after school on Tuesday, and as part of that she and her fellow pom-sters--I don't know what they're called--went on the field before the high school football game on Friday, video of which was sent to me.

This is something else, which also doesn't require much further explanation:

You're welcome, by the way. It's actually okay to be a nice person. Over the years, I've sent you various wonderful works of art. Works of deep and abiding kindness. Works to do a person--and the people they care about--good. Works that mean well. You never said a word. But you send me some random email about Oasis's autopilot cash-in tour in which they do the same note-for-note rote performance every night, calling it perfection. Why send that? Why that of all things? That's a rhetorical question. One that's more for you than it is to get an answer for myself, in which my interest is nil. But even then, I round up the gig in case you wish to revisit it at some point. And not so much as an acknowledgment. It's just not a good way to be. 

Downloaded quite a few Doors bootlegs, including five different versions of their Danbury High 1967 show--I need to go through these, as allegedly some of them are from different sources, and are all seemingly different in some regard--that I wrote about not to long ago.

Also a six-disc bootleg box set called '67: Complete Live 1967 Recordings. This has, of course, the Matrix sessions, which have gained official, cleaned-up release, but it's a handy package as it rounds up various other gigs from that crucial year in one place. The Doors in 1967 were the Doors, in a certain regard.

Located a copy of A.P. Baker's A College Mystery from 1918. The book is short, so I was able to print it out. It's a little known ghost story novel that is well-regarded by the few people who know about it.

Watched I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) for another piece I'm writing, and which I should really get cooking on by tomorrow. This one is about horror films and school. An apt and thought-provoking pairing. Is there anyone who hasn't had a nightmare about school long after leaving school? I doubt it.

It took me a long time--in terms of the calendar--to figure out how to download these Star Wars de-tweaked editions. The old computer was way too slow anyway. But there was also the matter of figuring out a few tech things. I'm more capable with that stuff than I sometimes give myself credit for--to myself, that is. I'm not as helpless as I usually believe, I mean. Maybe.

Regarding these editions, people use opt for one type over the other. That is, they go with the Harmy Despecialized sets, or else the 4K1977/4K1980/4K1983 offerings. I can see the value in both approaches, so I downloaded the original trilogy in each format.

The Harmy sets are basically the movies without later additions--that is, as they played in the theater at the time--but up to current day high-def specs. The other camp presents the movies closest to how they would have looked at the theater at their time of release. In other words, they look like movies in 1977, 1980, and 1983 looked.

Saw that the Replacements' Let It Be is getting reissued as a three-disc set which includes a recording of Chicago gig from '84. There's a bonus disc from a show at City Garden in New Jersey in that same year, which is out there in full on bootleg. Looking forward to this.

Downloaded this five-disc box set of British women artists performing live from 1965 to 1970, mostly on the BBC. It's the likes of Helen Shapiro, Mary Hopkins, Cilla Black, and Lulu, who I've always liked. She did this version of "Shout"--with a rasp in the voice like the one John Lennon employed on the back half of "Please Please Me" especially--that I first encountered around fifteen or so when I was watching old episodes of Ready Steady Go, because that's what I was doing by then.

I see that some AI company is going to "restore" the missing footage to Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons. Who wants that? Who could possibly want such garbage? Who is the audience for that? But you know what? Audience isn't even a thing anymore, because hardly anyone likes anything. Hardly anyone is even capable of liking anything.

People get things. I don't mean comprehend things. What I mean is, This is what you get, and that's how the world works now and people go along with those workings and that model and that status quo and it's enough for them. Without knowing they're doing it or questioning anything. Including that they're a human who doesn't have the ability anymore to even like things, or at least doesn't like things truly. Understand the distinction? So much so that they can't do or find anything else. Can't honestly love anything.

This is Netflix. This is what you get.

This is what we're hyping up--it's what you get.

This is what people are posting about, and it's what you get and what you'll take and roll along with as if there's nothing else.

It's almost like being in prison, and you get ten minutes out in the yard. You make due. People imprison themselves now. With their stupidity, complacency, laziness, lack of individuality. Humans are as good as lobotomized. They chew the food and they swallow it, they watch the flickering images on the screen that has been pulled down in front of them, but they're just there. They're not really there. Just there and there are very different.

Back to Welles: You always read these reports of someone with lots of money apparently who goes to Brazil for two years claiming to be hunting in attics for the missing reels of Ambersons. Say this guy found the reels. Do you really think, if you know anything about Welles, that they'd make that much of a difference?

With the exceptions of Citizen Kane and Chimes at Midnight, Welles made very flawed films. That's part of what makes him--on the cinematic side--interesting. Chimes is flawed in a different sense than what I mean here, but it's not really Welles's fault. That's more a result of budgeting and schedule matters, and none of that detracts from the film, and you could even argue that working around those matters--and getting creative in doing so--actually helped the film artistically.

Orson Welles and H.G. Wells met in San Antonio on October 27, 1940, and then appeared on the radio together the next day. It's perhaps human nature, given that one thinks of pre-Kane Welles as this wunderkind, to think of Wells as this old (he was born in 1866), serious man, given how long he'd been working, with his semi-(sur)namesake then in ascendance. Also, Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of Wells' The War of the Worlds, which I was interviewed about on NPR, was made to feel--or it felt, anyway--like some update and overhaul of a throwback text. (And isn't it nice to see the two paired again--this time in person--near Halloween?)

The truth is that Wells could be marvelously witty. I recently reread his "The Inexperienced Ghost," from 1902. These guys are at their club, having the whiskey, and one of them starts telling this story about how he "caught" a ghost the night before. The ghost was sad and ashamed, because it couldn't get the hang of haunting and was so bad at being a ghost that it couldn't remember how to disappear.

The guy tries to rally the ghost with some tough love, and eventually, through this complex series of hand gestures, is able to disappear again. The ghost hadn't wanted the man to watch, and so the latter turned his back, but there was a mirror and he was able to watch. He decides, back with the boys at the club, that he's going to try and recreate these "passes." It's a strong story. Different, clever, chummy, funny, touching, and ultimately scary. Also listened to a 1980 BBC radio adaptation of the story that's well done.

Listened to the "Death After Dark" episode of Nick Carter, Master Detective (does the "master" bit make him a ratiocination variant of Halimah Marcus, master of fiction writing?), which aired 2/19/44.

It's amusing to realize how slapdash an episode like this is, with the people who made giving no thought to anyone listening to it again. There's no fixing the implausible bits, or probably giving them a second look. This story has what looks to be a vampiric element, but that's explained away by these little people from some far off land who are killing women off in a public park by a tennis court.

They need the blood of female animals for their sacrifices only it's a city so there aren't enough animals and they have to opt for human females. They're calmly deported in the end, with the serial murdering chalked up to a case of cultural differences, no further punishment forthcoming.