Saturday 12/19/20
Finished revising the Sam Cooke book and sent that back to Bloomsbury this morning. Powerful. It's a special book. Done at the same time as all of these other things, these hundreds and hundreds of other things, which are equally powerful, and all different, one to the other. Meatheads. The 200+ stories of the last two and a half years. "Fitty," "Girls of the Nimbus," "Dead Thomas," et al. Longer on the Inside. All of the published nonfiction of op-eds, arts pieces, sports pieces, essays, personal essays. This journal. It's unreal, really. What else can you say?
Walked five miles. Wasn't much, and it certainly wasn't stairs, but it was something. Trying to figure out a good system to be walking all the way out to BC for my stair running. Layers will have to be the key. Today I had on a Patriots T-shirt, that half-sleeve Downtown shirt that Kimball gave me, a Boston Symphony Orchestra sweatshirt, a Red Sox sweatshirt, and then a fall jacket over all of that. I was a bit like the little brother in A Christmas Story. Seemed to work, though, but then again, there was no wind. The wind is everything when it comes to the cold.
Had an interesting exchange last night with a former GM of the Patriots. We were talking about the best players of all-time. Randy Moss foolishly said he was better than Jerry Rice, when Jerry Rice, pre-Tom Brady, had a legitimate case for the best football player ever. Oftentimes Joe Montana was the second best player on those San Francisco teams. The ex-GM said he wouldn't include Brady in this discussion, because a lot of other quarterbacks were just as good, which I don't buy for a second. He mentioned Marino, among others. He was a favorite of mine, but I don't believe there's a remote comparison. (I'd say that the best ever player in the four North American sports isn't up for much debate; it's Brady, Ruth, Jordan, Gretzky.) We agreed on Rice, though, and also Jim Brown, and I'd also put Lawrence Taylor close to the top--he's in the top ten, anyway.
I'd like to see Northwestern beat Ohio State because I think it'd be a joke to have a 6-0 team in the CFP. If Ohio State has a problem with that, take it up with the Big Ten.
Tuesday on Downtown I'll discuss a Christmas episode--a five-parter--of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; the Duke Ellington/Nutcracker piece from JazzTimes; Elvis' version of "Merry Christmas Baby"; and, finally, John Clare's poem, "December," which I'll read over the air.
Early in the new year, I need to start pouring myself into Musings with Franklin. Get the second novel out there. A radical concept--a novel told entirely in conversation.
A photograph from today of a brother and sister playing hockey on the Public Garden ice. Gave me an idea. For something in something.
