Theremin-voiced women, drawing and quartering whistlers, new horror film pieces written, Grateful Dead op-ed, "Five Blocks" completed

Thursday 4/24/25

Is it necessary for women to do that high-pitched, undulating, "Listen to me, don't I sound like a Theremin?" voice when they see/greet each other? It deeply creeps me out. Why must we always be--and in this case, sound--so insincere? Nothing sounds so Stepford-ian as that voice.

I hate whistlers. I cannot pretend otherwise. I hate almost anyone who whistles. I don't want to be subjected to your off-key warblings. There's this guy on my street who whistles constantly which is beyond irritating. It's so inconsiderate and narcissistic to force people to hear you like they can only love it. Were drawing and quartering still a thing and I had a vote to cast as per such a person, that would be a very easy decision. Stuff that ballot box. I'm really not being that jocular here.

The radio program The Whistler is okay. Also, Otis Redding at the end of "(Sitting on) The Dock of the Bay."

"Five Blocks" is now complete. Is it for Become Your Own Superhero: Intrepid Exceptions to Modern Fiction? It could be. Does it matter? Does anything matter? What matters within this hell's hell that I am in? These are some lines from the story which I had reworked:

The person does not remember when they had five blocks instead of ten. They just see blocks. There are blocks here. Understand? Blocks, blocks, blocks. Five blocks were block-saturation. But, curiously, ten blocks signify its attainment as well. That isn’t supposed to be how saturation works. But the rules of nature aren’t meant to correspond—or at least they do not—to human nature.

Then, a day arrives when instead of ten blocks, there is now just one block. Life has changed. Matters of life have changed. The worm who went that way has gone this way. The cycle shifted. Laws of averages kicked in. It doesn’t rain anywhere all the time, which is why the sun has never had reason to think, “Betcha you won’t find me obscured by a cloud again.”

Another block cannot be put atop this one block because that second block doesn’t exist. The block is singular. The block might not even be present. It may be in a different room. In the old house in which the person no longer lives. Buried in the earth. Sequestered in the pocket of someone they no longer know. Confined to a dream. Perhaps still at the factory. In the raw materials stage. The block exists within a tree in the woods that has yet to be cut down.

Look at that. What do you see ever, what have you ever seen, that's like that or any of it? Pit that against anything by anyone else. All of those people who write the same way every time in the same way as so many others. I've written that way there, after having never written that way before, and I will never write that way again. Everything is new. Everything is unique.

You can have the power in you to save humanity, really, and what it means to be human, and humanness, and I am practically entirely convinced that it means nothing.

In this world. Maybe the next? I don't know. I think more and more about the next world.

Some levity. Shall we do some levity? You know what was one of the more popular posts was on here lately? The one titled, "A visit from Boston Police." Because people thought, "They finally nabbed him!" and hopes were gotten up.

Today I arose at 3:47. I was at the desk by 4. I didn't stand again until 12:30. I did 100 push-ups. Walked to Charlestown to run stairs in the Monument. There was a huge line because of kids on field trips. Stood in it for a while, made no real progress, gave up and left.

Downloaded all of the Grateful Dead's shows from May 1977 and Leslie Howard's ninety-nine disc set of Franz Liszt's complete piano recordings.

Jaylen Brown was really good last night with Jayson Tatum out of the line-up.

I wrote three separate horror film pieces today. They will all be--or would have been--whatever it is or to be--for Nightmares Be Damned: Writings About Horror Films Worth Staying Up For.

One of them was on 1952's Crow Hollow.

English B pictures of this nature won’t dazzle you; that’s not their aim or how they’re made. They’re movies that we cozy up with. Put on the kettle, pour the cup of tea, settle in for seventy minutes, and if there’s some rain against our windows, all the better.

Accidents befall Ann. Or are they accidents? What’s up with these old gals? A spider strikes, then a bowl of soup. Someone wearing Anna’s dress receives a knife in the back, and we’re not being figurative.

The stolid husband in these pictures is often useless (“It’s your imagination, dear”) until the last, and that’s if his wife is lucky, but Ann isn’t a wholly sympathetic creature herself. Bit of an attitude with this lady. You’re never rooting against her, hoping she gets bumped off so that Bob can meet someone else on a Saturday and marry her by Friday and try the Crow Hollow experiment all over again, but maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. Depends on your mood and bloodlust after you’ve gotten that cup of chamomile tea just right.

Another on 1961's Mr. Sardonicus.

Castle was fun, so people updated their wills and took their chances. Or something like that, because it’s also fun to play along. His movies were well made, with touches of Orson Welles, James Whale, and that manner of shot by shot quality control of the by-then defunct studio system, in which everything seemed like it’d been given the once over and then given it again just to be safe. You could say that no education in horror history is complete without having seen the half dozen Castle films of his prime era any more than if you’d somehow bypassed the Universal glory days of the early 1930s, the sci-fi/horror conjoinings of the 1950s, or the teen slashers of the 1980s.

Ray Russell wrote the screenplay for Mr. Sardonicus, adapting it from his short story. Russell was a major player in 1960s horror, though mostly forgotten in the twenty-first century. His 1962 novel, The Case Against Satan, for instance, is a far better read than Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, a book which liberally helped itself to Russell’s wares, and makes for ideal thought-provoking entertainment on a crisp October evening.

The other on 1955's It Came from Beneath the Sea.

Pete, meanwhile, behaves in that regrettable “how a man’s man ought to be” style prevalent in some—but by no means all—movies of this vintage. He tells the woman what she wants because he knows best, and then he plants one on her and when she backs away from his touch he just grips her harder until she's convinced she’s as into him as a person can be into anyone else and starts moaning his name while rubbing the hair on the back of his head.

Howard Hawks was another director who was one and done when it came to sci-fi/horror and he didn't even give himself a director's credit for that film, The Thing from Another World. Tobey was in that picture as well. Hawks pulls off a communal dynamic; everyone is more or less equal, or has equal voice. It Came from Beneath the Sea aims for a version of that with the central trio, but it’s hard to compete with a master. There’s a touch of what would later be Three’s Company in there—come and knock on our laboratory door—but go with it; you’ll enjoy yourself.

That place I alluded to that has owed me money--and it is but a pittance for two short stories--for years is going to pay me, but only because I threatened to expose their thievery in this journal.

You only deal with fuckery here. That's almost all there is. Of what nature will the fuckery be? That's really the only salient question. Thirty years of this.

Here's a Grateful Dead op-ed I wrote with which I could do nothing. Something to keep in mind the next time you see the latest stupid op-ed in a sea of stupid op-eds in a world of stupidity, which you actually won't see, because no one reads, but if you read this and ever look at an op-ed page or decide to, you'll know or learn what I mean. Then again, I saw a real cutting edge opinion piece the other day: It was about the nice new pink and yellow tote bags that Trader Joe's has for spring.

The deathless Easter music of the Grateful Dead.

I first learned that I loved the Grateful Dead—the most impactful musical presence ever to grace my life—years ago on a lonely Easter. I was sitting by myself, wondering how I’d get through the day, when I began listening to a random Dead show from 1974, and within moments, it was as if previously unsounded chords in my heart and soul were now being played by a hand beyond my own.

The Dead, who are marking their sixtieth anniversary, have long been written about in misleading ways. One might think, for instance, that they had to be listened to high, that they were so mellow as to induce slumber, which is nonsense. The Dead could rock harder, do garage music, heavy metal, folk, country, jazz, cowboy, avant-garde, and populism—sometimes all at once.

But it could be that the Dead rocked their hardest when they were playing gospel music. Typically, we think that gospel music belongs to the remit of the religiously-inclined. Dispense with labels, though, and you break chains and free the soul. The drama of life resets. What didn’t appear possible before, is possible now.

Easter may strike us as a somber holiday. An uplifting one, yes, but a holiday of death, and not in the playful Halloween spirit.

We know the story: a man was murdered, and three days later, he returned, advising that love is the way.

Love isn’t anything as simple as how we’re apt to talk about it now in a world where we “catch feelings,” but rarely give of ourselves such that others may in turn live better. There’s more to love, just as there’s more to the Dead.

The prime gospel period for the Grateful Dead—whose very name, come to think of it, is analogous to Easter—was in 1970. That’s when the Dead performed the greatest about-face in American musical history.

Up until then, they were intergalactic musical trailblazers with a healthy rhythm and blues grounding in this world of ours.

Then—somehow—they simultaneously emerged fully formed as this ancient American enterprise—ancient like Mark Twain’s writings can feel as old as dust but distinctly of this Republic—of down and dusty music. Timeless. Predating. The music of what had once been mountains and were now rounded hills, and the vales through which our native pilgrims had passed. And yet, music that also feels like it’s perpetually waiting for us up around the bend.

These were barn dance musicians, hired for the evening to make life better for a few hours and, as a bonus—for such was the staying power of the Dead’s art—long into the future to come.

I love listening to audiences love this music on the surviving tapes. Sometimes, you can hear the people dancing. There’s a recording attributed to San Diego on 8/5/70 that, in my view, is more Easter-worthy than any grandiose movie epic or Renan’s Life of Christ. The Dead didn’t play on this date—we don’t know exactly when and where it’s from—which only adds to the tape’s mystery. This a portion of a gig—the acoustic, gospel-heavy part.

The music makes me think of that Shane MacGowan singing about whether you’re a Christian, pagan, or Jew—because no matter who you are, this music is for you.

Among the numbers is “Cold Jordan,” and you never knew how the audience was going to clap along when the Dead played this song. Sometimes the group clapped on the off-beat, others on the on. Different days, people, settings, times in life.

It does a person to hear this music. You’re impacted differently with every listen. In each instance, you want to get back out there into the thrum of life, which can be very hard and is one reason why so many of us are now passive.

But you must rise and dance. That’s the crux of Easter’s message. The Dead never had a need to preach. Their gospel music isn’t overtly about God. The focus is on us.

After all, this is the same band responsible for the lyric that best encapsulates why we are here better than any other: “What do you want me to do/To do for you/To see you through?”

Life isn’t about likes and followers and surface appearances. That’s clutter and grime. Not truth, the unfettered self, and the emergence into tomorrow to do better than was done today.

See yourself and the world better this Easter by dancing with the gospel Dead. You’re apt to feel like you’ve come back to life yourself.