Thursday 10/21/21
Everything about the Gabby Petito story is disturbing to me, and it continues to be disturbing. I think of this young life, snuffed out. I think of the disease that is social media. Social media is about one thing: lying to the world. People lying to the world and trying to lie to themselves. There's nothing healthy about it. How many people do you think are being honest about their lives on social media? Is it one out of a million? It's not much more. The comments that people need to make, trashing this deceased young woman for being white--as in, "no one would care if it wasn't a dumb white girl lol"--horrify me. I saw today some farm that made a corn maze spelling out RIP Gabby or something. How sick is that? Do you know what is sicker? I read through thirty comments under this picture of the freaking corn maze, and all but two of them were saying how beautiful this was. To make a corn maze spelling out her name? So you take your kids for seasonal fun to the Gabby corn maze? What goes through people's brains? Is there any sanity? Man are we sick. We are so sick as a society. Then there was someone who posted a photo of Petito, with her full name under it, and then posted another photo next to it of the spot where her remains were found, and underneath wrote "Gabby Finito." What has to happen to you to become someone like that? How do you go around living your life when that is who you are?
Today is the anniversary of my sister Kerrin's death in 2014. Thinking of that, of course. Got some much needed exercise in by walking five miles and running 3000 stairs. I don't want to talk about it right now, but I made important progress on a remarkable story. Halfway through some edits--nothing very major--on a film piece for someone. I saw the final jacket for Brackets. Striking. I don't like listing these places on the back covers. The work is all that matters to me, and getting it to the world. I don't mean out in the world. I mean where millions of people know what's up here and are experiencing this work. The jacket is striking. Book covers are as plain usually as the lifeless writing within. All you see is that creative sterility. But this is a different cover for a different book. Even the spine--which I had nothing to do with--is something to behold. Pitched JazzTimes. That went nowhere. Budget, I imagine. Wrote the Library of America. Wrote Document Records. Spoke to the Scrooge editor. Listened to the Velvet Underground at the Gymnasium in 1967. Worked on several "Everything wrong with publishing" (EWP) entries for new posts in that series over the next few days. A lot of these people who have no talent, are bigots, and will never produce a single paragraph of any value, go to a conference each year called AWP and stroke each other and gossip. So here on this site, we'll have EWP. Just pitched NPR about something.
Today is also the anniversary of Carlton Fisk’s 12th inning HR in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. Saw people slagging it off because the Sox didn’t win it all. In my view, it’s the second greatest home run in baseball history for a different reason: it ended the best game ever played. Bobby Thomson's Pennant-clinching home run would be the third best homer I'd say, with Bill Mazeroski's 1960 WS Game 7 walk-off job number one. Don't see how you beat that. But two of the three best didn't help produce a championship.
Saw that Mike Bossy--a childhood hero--has lung cancer. That makes me sad. I was thinking about the price a guy like that had to pay in the league at the time--the late 1970s into the mid-1980s--to score his goals. You could assault someone at the time. It's a far kinder, gentler NHL now. Speed is what hurts players presently. Bodies that size moving that fast. Not malice. You could do things to your opponent every night in the late 1970s for which you'd be put in jail now.
Here is that full Game 6 from 1975. I'm sure I've posted it a bunch of times on here over the course of these nearly 1300 entries. But that's fine. It's worth it.