Confessions of a former Nick Drake fraud and a consideration of an oft-misunderstood album. "And what I heard was the most uplifting music of my life. Music that was filled with life. A deathless spirit. Deathless beauty. Deathless vision. An unwavering life-force, despite—or perhaps because of—what its creator knew about life. I thought, 'This is a celebration, not a dirge. Like a miracle of humanness.'”

On 1960's The House in Marsh Road in Bloodvine. "This is a get-down-to-business ghost, but this is a get-down-to-business film, a rare example of kitchen-sink realism crossing with the supernatural. The ghost is very real, as is the depiction of alcoholism, infidelity, and what it means to be trapped in a marriage in different manners for different people."

From Bloodvine. “We’re not here for the plot, though, so much as we are for a horror hangout. You like to spend time with Revenge of the Creature as though it were some friend who was passionate about the same things you were. There are no delusions of artistic eminence, but nor is there that style of franchise-milking we’re so accustomed to with sequels.”

On 1964's The Gorgon. "This is one of those movies that makes you think you should put on a jacket or vest—though not your winter coat—while watching. The sun hangs low in the sky, like it barely clears the treetops. Time is compacting, slowing down—the same as the life within the gorgon’s victims. It’s a cinematic nocturne for autumn and one of the few films in which you can actually hear the scrape from the edges of wind-scuttled leaves on the ground."

On the 1948 Warner Bros. adaptation of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. "Collins and his pal Charles Dickens were adroit at conveying 'real life' via a ghost story and ghost stories via real life. The ghosts didn’t even need to be spectrally legitimate, and a ghost might be a lot of things—the haunting specter of one’s past, for instance. The novel also offered opportunities to filmmakers as a sort of choose-your-own-adventure property: if you wanted to dial in on the mystery, you could make a killer adaptation. If you preferred to push the ghost story to the fore, a terror classic was potentially in the offing."

Regarding 1953's Invaders from Mars. "Watching people drop through the sandpits into the unknown below is like viewing the film of a ballet in reverse. These Orphic disappearances are all the more disturbing for how fluid they are. This is a brilliant coupling: the idea of the descent into the underworld and the grave, but also outer space at the same time. No wonder viewers were shaken up."

Ideal movies for spooky home viewing. "Halloween is perfect for watching movies where we live. Alone. Or nearly alone. Movie theaters bring us together for that communal feeling of sharing a viewing experience, but there’s something about being off on your own, curled up in the dark, ghosts and monsters on the TV, that fairly screams Halloween. Have you ever noticed in modern Halloween films how many people are watching movies in this very manner? A character will have on The Thing from Another World and we think, 'There’s a film that hits the spot this time of year! I need to watch it again!'”

The commanding actress on her centennial. "You were watching a cinematic absolute of self-actualization. Not only watching—hearing. You could close your eyes and listen to Bacall’s voice as if you’d put on your favorite album. The voice contained levels. You had the top conversational meaning. The middle ground where things got livelier. Then the depths, where life was at its most consequential."

On an important teacher and how we should always be returning to the classroom. "So while the days of a crisp apple in your lunch bag and the smell of freshly sharpened pencils may be behind you, they’re also in front of you in a different manner. We’re always free to have the right attitude that allows us to learn. It’s funny that we think that’s a kid thing. Just as it’s ironic that we must grow up and continue to grow by being, at least in part, our own teachers."

Loving and moving on from Kind of Blue. "Jazz has a different problem, in that the people who listen to jazz are typically other musicians, the highly educated—in the went-to-school-for-a-long-time sense—the intellectual, the wannabe intellectual. So when we land on that jazz album—like Kind of Blue—we pat ourselves on the back, because most people do not. We are very smart, eclectic. We’ve done a form of cultural extra credit." 

Keeping yourself moving with Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. "As a searcher, Miles Davis was also a sublime tryer. And if anything didn’t work or stick, that was part of the process. Getting to where you’re going involves all of the places you were only at briefly. Passing through can be vital."

A short story called "Read the Ice" appears in the spring/summer issue of the journal. 

A Hard Day's Night and joy. "I’ve listened to A Hard Day’s Night and found this joy in it in happy times, times of hope, times when I could barely continue on, times when the concept of hope felt like some awful joke because I had none."

The blazing invention and artistry of A Hard Day's Night. "A Hard Day’s Night the LP begins with 'A Hard Day’s Night' the song, and specifically what we can call the chord of chords. The opening polytriad conveys more in three seconds than most artists do in a lifetime, because of what it sets up to follow. It’s the sound of annunciation, of newness, awakening, germination. Richard Wagner had his famous Tristan chord, but that was a chord for the opera lovers, whereas the chord that begins 'A Hard Day’s Night' is the chord for the world."

Become a buff. "We go along with what is in front of us, or what we think we ought to, and what others are doing. Someone will say, “Another night staying in and watching Netflix,” as if we can’t find and cultivate an interest in anything on our own. That’s how we’ve become: If it’s not in front of our faces, we won’t care about it, because we won’t even know about it."

The single longest sustained work in history reaches its 3000th entry. 

Beyond a ballplayer. "Willie Mays was narrative. He fired the imagination. He was Casey at the Bat minus the whiff at the dish, and he went beyond color."

Falling for 1931's Dracula as a boy. "On a sunny spring day in my grandmother’s living room, I wondered if this was what death was like. I might have gone into the shadow kingdom with this vampire right then and there, despite how alive I felt. More alive than only a half hour before. But looking back later, I realized that with almost all monsters, you want to get away from them. No one swims toward the roguest of rogue sharks or roasts an extra hot dog around the campfire so that The Wolf Man is encouraged to pop in from the grove. But I wanted to be this vampire. To have a coffin. Transform into a bat. Create orifices where orifices ought not to have been. Emerge from out of the mist as the godhead—or devilhead—of the night."

How MLB is doing a disservice to the great Negro League players. "Tell the story of these players. Talk about what was done to them. Speak of how numbers are not some end all, be all. That someone’s numbers are known and someone else’s numbers are not requires exegesis, instead of a slapdash coat of paint to cover up a tragedy, which is how this feels."

On a new documentary. "The music within the grooves of those early records enveloped the listener in a gold and blue world of warmth, water, wakefulness, the possibility of the new day. The Beach Boys’ music spoke—sang—to joy, with songs that functioned as an open invitation to lend one’s own voice to them, never mind that they featured the harmonies of the gods."

A piece on 1960's The City of the Dead. "Witch movies—and witch art—often involve pursuit. Witches get people moving. The witches of Macbeth send the Thane of Cawdor on his way. Hansel and Gretel are always in motion, as long as they’re not in an oven, so much so that they must leave a trail of breadcrumbs to return from where they had come. Witch horror films commonly have a mystery component, with a protagonist in the role of detective, to be followed by another character playing detective in search of the missing detective."

The value of witches and witching it up. "Witches aren’t obsessed with orthodoxy, as we so often seem to be. We think in terms of blending in, of negating our individuality, stifling the voice within, or at least making sure that it doesn’t go out so that anyone might think we’re…gasp…different."

Celebrating baseball's value king on the fiftieth anniversary of the day he broke sport's most hallowed record. "Actual value isn’t about ego, or so one can rack up social media plaudits. Value is a kind of absolute. Value is always productive, never reductive. Value is a maxing out, and no one a ballfield has ever maxed out like Aaron."

A man who has died and returned many times. "And so I die. I’m dead then. I accept that I am dead. I don’t fight it. The rock is against the mouth of the cave. But I also know that tomorrow will come, and I’ll start again. I will rise. This day will be over. This death will be done."

Easter and the best thing F. Scott Fitzgerald ever wrote. "That’s Easter and its lifelong challenge right there: Discover the extra that you have. That extra bit of humanness that you didn’t know was there. Mine it and give of it. The next act is more important than the last, and there is always a next act if you cede the entirety of yourself over to the creation of one."