Persay

Monday 12/2/24

A reminder and a recommendation, because it's that time of year: Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre troupe adapted Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol twice for the radio, recordings of which we both have, once in 1938 and then in 1939. It's the 1939 version that is almost always recommended, as if that's the only version, when it's really just the one that people are aware of or just re-share without knowing. That version features Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge. He was American's unofficial Scrooge at the time, which made it so logical for him to play Potter in It's a Wonderful Life nearly a decade later. Barrymore couldn't make it in 1938--he was ill--so Welles played Scrooge. This is the version to listen to. Well, listen to both. But this is the one to cherish, to revisit annually. It's scrappy and warm, has a real spirit of everyone pulling together as one, Christmas-style.

I should write a piece about how perhaps the best horror film of the 1940s is encased in It's a Wonderful Life. The 1940s were a rich decade for horror. You have The Wolf Man (1941), Cat People (1942), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), The Seventh Victim (1943), The Curse of the Cat People (1944)--which is so much more than a horror film--The Uninvited (1944), Dead of Night (1945), The Body Snatcher (1945). Citizen Kane (1941) opens as if it were a horror film. But the deepest, darkest horror of the decade could very well be from the point in It's a Wonderful Life when George Bailey realizes uncle Billy has lost the money to when he returns to the bridge and his friends come to get him. That's horror zenith stuff in between.

Yesterday was a lost day. I can't have lost days. I was useless. But at least that means I'll do better today on account of how disgusted I am with myself.

Downloaded Clifford Brown's Brownie: The Complete EmArcy Recordings and Brenda Lee's 1964 album, Merry Christmas from Brenda Lee, which kicks off with "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," by Johnny Marks and features Hank Garland on guitar. He played with Elvis for that 1961 Hawaii concert, which is one of the best live tapes going. Elvis was back from the army and hungry, as evidenced by Elvis Is Back and that raw and bluesy gig. Marks wrote "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and the music for the 1964 Rankin/Bass special. Gave the world a lot, especially for this time of the year, the ostensible seasons of giving. Lee was all of thirteen-years-old when she cut "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" in 1958. A favorite song of my mother's, actually.

False positivity is the new toxicity and it's deadly. It results in stagnation, lessened accountability to the point of no accountability, the effacement of any standards, enabling, denial, devolvement, worsening, weakening, estrangement from reality, the inability to even recognize reality. Think before you lie out of your ass for the latest time about someone or something. All publishing is, for instance, is this lying. And look at the shit you see from these writers on here in the prose offs, look at that system, look how there's nothing worth reading as a result. False positivity is deadly toxicity. Think before you lie, and then don't lie.

Last week was perhaps the hardest week yet. Wednesday was perhaps the hardest day yet. If the means to do away with myself had been available in front of me, that may have been in it. One could say that those means are always there, so maybe I should say certain means or different means. What I had to do, what I told myself to do, and what I did took all of the strength I had. Or a lot of it. I could go into specifics but that would be later.

There's been little headway to having warm water again. I was watching Control, the Ian Curtis/Joy Division biopic, and I saw my current water heater that doesn't work in the Curtis home in the 1970s and I thought, "That's probably not great."

As for Thanksgiving, I scarcely heard from anyone. People know, of course. The situation. Where it's at. What that day would look like for me. What life is for me at present. And for years and years now. Some of these people are people I reached out to in kind ways for the holiday, as I do at other times. Those people didn't so much as even respond. So. You know. There it is.

I could not be like so many people are. I just couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. I would never be that way. My heart is too big. And I have a heart. An active heart. I also vet everything I do and I say. Everything I don't do. It's just what I do now without deciding to. To me, that's how it has to be if you're going to be a good person. But I think there are hardly any good people at all. That doesn't mean they're all bad. People really just care about themselves, though, and the ironic thing is, if you cared about yourself well, you'd make sure you were a good person.

Yesterday marked 3066 days, or 438 weeks, without a drink.

"Dead Thomas" is over 6000 words now. The work I've been doing is phenomenal. Every day. Each day I am tending to work that is beyond anything anyone has ever done. And as I say this I'm hyper-aware that I should be doing more and must buckle down in the doing of more. I have to get going on some things.

Someone texted me to say that they had started reading "Dot" and it was amazing how much it pulled you in right from the start and you knew you had this special evening ahead of you that was going to be awesome, like when you're a kid in the theater watching Star Wars. Presumably they meant that original film or the original trilogy, because this person would have scant awareness of any subsequent films and almost certainly hasn't seen them. It didn't sit right with me. You stopped reading to text me? So that's like listening to the first song of an album, leaving, and then what? You come back and put on the second song? No. You listen to the album. You read the story. That's how they're supposed to go. As for Star Wars--I get what they were saying, and I'm sure they'd say it's a faulty comparison, but if that's so, and a person knows that, it seems better to me not to make the comparison. And here there is no comparison artistically, nor in terms of gripping, riveting, all-out entertainment. I know, what a concept, right? Fiction that is more artful than anything, and more entertaining. Modern fiction at that. Forever modern fiction.

There's a new Beatles documentary called Beatles '64, which is really just an excuse to have a documentary and more Beatles-related product. Pieces will be assigned because they're about the Beatles and it doesn't matter what they say, or how bad they are, or how good they might be--with how things things stand at present--because they're not really being read. But the word "Beatles" gets the click. And that's all that matters to venues who publish such things--the click, not the content. That's how pieces get assigned. What word or words gets the click? It's practically irrelevant what's in the piece, the writing. You don't have anyone who can write well. When no one can write well, this is what you got. To write well in this society is to be someone who has gone against all the grains of it with talent, focus, dedication, and purpose, for many years, hard, hard, hard years. There isn't anyone else cut out to do that. And no one has. Allowing that they had any ability in the first place. Which is itself unlikely enough.

And I'm seeing comments from people about how amazing this documentary is. It isn't. It's fine. People don't have much in the way of standards, because they're partook of so little. So little of value. They've partaken of what everyone else is partaking of, which is simply that which is squashed up against their faces. They don't look. They don't seek. They don't know what's what and they don't have the experience to know what's what. Hence, they don't have much in the way of standards. The think that's just fine, mediocre, is something about which they can say, "Whoa, so amazing," because of that inexperience. What thirteen-year-old Colin thought was amazing was often not what adult Colin--and the Colin who keeps growing--would understand to be actually amazing. Most people do not progress beyond being that twelve or thirteen-year-old. To use an old phrase, people need to get out more. Go. Instead, they sit there, and whatever they experience has to be that which comes to them, such that it's basically unavoidable. You'll won't have standards and you won't have much of a clue as to what is what if that's how you live. You have to go. You gotta move, as the song says.

Boston College handled Pittsburgh pretty well Saturday to go to 7-5, which I think is solid for them and for Bill O'Brien in his first year with a late-ish start and someone else's players, that someone else not being a good coach. I think if O'Brien had made the quarterback change earlier, then BC could be 8-4, maybe even 9-3, but let's call it 8-4. They are clearly a better team over their last few games.

I look at the college playoff and I think there aren't twelve teams that deserve to be in it, but you can look at the NBA and NHL playoffs and say the same things, and you've been able to for a long time now. Look at the NHL in the 1980s. But I always liked that. Football is a less is more sport. When the sport trends to maximalism, it's less interesting. I get it--there's a certain amount of chaos. Really it's about money, like many things. But is there any team you look at and think, "Wow, great team"? I do feel like it's better than what baseball does now. One Wild Card was better from a quality control standpoint. One Wild Card worked because it ensured that in a weird year where a team won 101 games and finished second in their division, they wouldn't be left out as two 87 and 93 win teams got in.

There were fights Saturday after some of the games when the away team that was victorious attempted to plant their school's flag on the opponent's field. Really? We need to be this childish? Do whatever you want on the field after the game in celebrating with your teammates, but the flag thing is like field rape. Ha Ha, we did this to your field, which it didn't want you and you don't want. Look what we did, ha ha ha.

In one of these situations, the flag was fixed atop a trident, which this idiot tried to stick into the field turf. I quickly saw a video and I thought, you know, it's just a matter of time before someone gets impaled and dies. The NCAA needs to ban this practice.

But all of these fights during "rivalry week" speak to how we are a nation of clods now. I'm not saying it's tension bowling over from these contentious times or any of that rot. We are devolving simpletons. I saw footage of a Notre Dame player punching a USC player in the face mask with his bare fist, in-game. Don't relieve the refs saw it, so it wasn't even a penalty.

Could you imagine seeing this story line in the 1940s? All of these teams play and all of them fight afterwards? Wouldn't have happened. But it happens now, because we are less than we were then. People are less. They're dumber, simpler, baser. And people were never anything great--on the whole--to begin with.

I thought Syracuse had a great chance to beat Miami, and they did. I have not believed in Miami at all this season. Game was in Syracuse, you knew the Orange would be up for it, last game of the season, chance for a big moment, weak "top" team, and there you go.

The only videos on social media that I'll deliberately watch all the way through are usually of hockey drills. I'll watch drills. I like good drills. I like a well-designed drill, a creative drill. I like trying to get better and getting better.

You see all of these halfwits on social media trying to sound smart, and they'll "persay." I'll click on the bios because I'm curious about the backgrounds of people that stupid, and they'll be lawyers or something like that. There is no intelligence. It basically doesn't exist. Persay. Same as the people who put the dollar sign--and I'd say it's most people--after the numbers. You look at dollar figures all the time. You check your bank account all the time. How can this not have penetrated your thick skull by this point after all of that exposure? It's because just about nothing can get through now.

I happened to notice a bunch of things about Dartmouth athletics lately that made me think how at a small school you can still get the school pride experience, sports-wise. In the first season of Newhart, there are references to Dartmouth athletic events, and it feels very small town-y. The Dartmouth basketball team knocked off BC at Conte forum. BC is no power, of course, but they'd just won that Cayman Islands tournament and had only dropped one game. They scheduled too many games in too many days and had the travel, so those were factors, but that's not to say they made for the difference. Dartmouth's hockey team lost to BC the other day, but they just made the rankings at fifteen. And the Dartmouth football team won the Patriot League. Do you win the Patriot League or do you just finish first? Anyway, they had the best record.

I will see these posts from people bragging about how young they look and they will often look like a golf bag.

Saw a post this morning from a woman who said she went on a first date with a guy and he drank a whole bottle of wine. She doesn't drink. She wanted to know if this was a red flag. I should add that particular compound noun to my list of blocked words. She said that her kid told her this was normal and that she'd just been out of the dating game for a while, which I much imagine was a lie. There are red flags galore. Talk about incarnadined. And among them is someone being this stupid that they have to ask and that they have chosen to solicit input on social media. Drunkards and morons do tend to find each other, though, so this could be a perfect match, which is what I said, given that she wanted advice. I'm kidding. I didn't say that. I only thought it.

What is someone supposed to say? "It's a great sign, lady. Bottle of wine on the first date, probably doesn't drink much at all the rest of the time, and this should go swimmingly for all involved." Because that's on the table, right? If you have to ask, that's a potential viable answer, no?

Not knowing the difference between apart and a part makes a big difference. All the difference.

My hair is ragged. I need a shearing.

The u-shaped mark on my thumb from the scissor incident is becoming lighter. Maybe this is as light as it gets. Still can't believe I did that. Incredibly stupid and careless.

It's been a little chilly walking across the bridge to Charlestown of late. Cold going there, because I'm not overdressed given that I'm about to be running stairs, and cold coming back because I am wet from running stairs, and then I get into the shower with the water heater not working.

Avoid anyone who says, "I love that for me," because there is no way they're not a narcissist who is terrible at doing things right.

All of the people who say, "No one prepares you for blank" are saying so much about themselves without having a clue they are doing so. This is an entrenched loser's mentality. An entrenched defeatist mentality. You have no agency? Prepare yourself. Everything has to come from someone else? You can't do it on your own? And you're not supposed to be prepared for everything, because you can't be and that's just how it is. People talk like as if this is some right of theirs, like they weren't sent off into the scrum with the right gear.

The dismal--ain't gonna be changing for years either--Patriots lost yesterday to the Colts, 25-24. 24 points is about the Patriots' offensive ceiling. Drake Maye is going to have to survive this team, and, really, this franchise. They're a bad NFL franchise now. As they once were at other times. They're now solidly in the running for the top draft pick, abetted by Jacksonville--who they "trail" by one game--having the tiebreaker on account of their victory over the Pats.

The Celtics lost to the Cavs last night on the road. They were without Derrick White and Jaylen Brown, the latter of whom has missed a lot of games this year. People talk about the phenomenal shape that Brown is in, but to me, the most important shape is being able to play shape.

Will Brown be a Hall of Famer someday? The question occurred to me this morning. He may have peaked. His shooting is worse this year. He has, what, one second team All-Star finish? He may never have another. You'd find many lists of the top twenty players in the league without him on it. He has the two playoff MVPs. He may not get another. Or he may. He could be still on the way up. I tend to think not, though. He's a very good player, not a great player. He'd probably need additional championships. I feel like the NBA is the hardest league to make, but it has the easiest Hall of Fame to make once you make the league. You can be pretty good relative to your peers and get in.

Saw maybe twenty women hockey players asked what's the one rule change they'd make in their sport, and seventeen of them must have said to allow checking. I have not understood why they don't.

Ray Bourque was in the booth yesterday for part of the Bruins-Canadiens game after yet another celebration of the Bruins' 100th anniversary. I think this was the last. You've won six Cups--settle down. Then again, if they'd won twenty, I'd find this kind of thing, in excess, grating.

The Bruins play-by-play guy isn't very good. Close to the first thing he says about Bourque, and to Bourque, is that Bourque has the most unique view of whatever they were going to talk about--how the old Garden was or something. And this irritates the hell out of me. Most unique? You are a play-by-play guy. You make your living with words and supposedly your proficiency with them, and you're saying "most unique"? You don't know better than that? We are talking the fundamentals here. Knowing that "most unique" is not correct is for a broadcaster what doing a crossover is for a skater. Nothing is merit. Except sports. Merit doesn't exist anymore because there isn't anyone to merit, as in fairly, based upon their ability and qualifications. But the slots and jobs still need to be filled. Someone has to have them.

Wayne Cashman was in the booth earlier. People now wouldn't understand how Cashman played the game, how the game had to be played when he played. If they saw the footage, they'd think he should have been arrested for his on-ice behavior.

The older Bruins talk too much about the Canadiens. They owned you. Unfortunately. But they talk about them like they also won sometimes, the way the turn of this century Red Sox could talk about the Yankees. The Bruins never got over the hump against the Canadiens until the Canadiens were done being the Canadiens, if you follow me. The 1987-88 Canadiens wasn't the 1978-79 Canadiens, and that latter Canadiens team was a dynastic Canadiens squad on fumes.

Charlie McAvoy scored two goals and while I don't find it shocking when he provides any offensive production, I do find it surprising. He is the most overrated player in the history of Bruins' franchise, and I'd get him out of town as fast as possible, because you are never going to win with him. He's a losing player. A guy who got paid and became less, probably because 1. He stopped trying as hard and 2. He was never very good. He's a second pairing defenseman--at best. And he always seems to be on the ice when the biggest goals are given up, and has a hand in the giving up of those goals. He fails to do something--make that play--that would stop the puck from going into the net. Remember the Panthers series after the 65 wins?

Bourque was in the booth when McAvoy scored his second goal. He was actually talking about him. I don't think I've ever heard Bourque weigh in on a player candidly. He said that he defers too much, then added that he never deferred. He wasn't bragging. Bourque shot first and asked questions later. He got pucks through to the net. Those shots resulted in tip-ins, rebound goals. Production. He led the entire league in shots on goal some years.

Now, this isn't complex. Is no one saying this to McAvoy? Be more assertive. Or is everyone saying it and he can't or won't do it? Why? Shoot the puck. Get involved. There was a time when I would have thought that of course this is being said to him, because it's so obvious, but now I think people are so stupid, and there's basically nothing they can do with their brains, and it might be getting said. Whenever I have to deal with someone--or pretty much whenever; need to be careful in qualifying sometimes, because so many people are looking to be offended--I run smack into their incompetence and it's something for me to deal with and get around. I advance a centimeter, and then boom, run into the incompetence. The other day it was a junior publicist and the junior publicist's assistant with the "cute" nickname. Almost any interaction becomes a problem to be solved. The "fucking hell, here we go," moment happens early. I used to assume people were doing the obvious things and the things of the most basic competence, but they're not. And I've also learned that there is nothing someone is unlikely to be doing, no matter how obvious, practical, necessary, and seemingly required as it may be.

Bourque talked about Cale Makar and I totally get why Bourque of all people would be drawn to his game. His offensive game, at least. Bruins announcers rave about the skating of McAvoy, but he's nowhere near Makar's league as a skater. What Bourque was stressing, though, was how Makar gets pucks to the net. He finds those lanes.

An aside: People put all of this emphasis on shooting percentage in hockey (with forwards, that is), as this indicator of prowess. Shooting percentage means nothing to me. How many shots you're putting on net does. The more rubber on the goal, the better. You'll get your goals and generate production.

Watching some of that game it was plain that these Canadiens, unlike the Canadiens of yore, play little defense. I've yet to see the current Bruins put up much offense against a defensively sound team this year.