All Saints' Day

I'm a a fan of Fussy and (back in the day) of nycgetaj-o-b. I can't say why, and (if you knew me) you wouldn't expect of me, but there you are. They seem tapped into something that reminds me of people like old neighbors of ours who collected African art and German prints and had art books from floor to ceiling. I never really understood them, but they were clearly in touch with _something_. Lou Reed and and Hunter Thompson have a similar kind of effect. I've always been too wrapped up in Doing The Right Thing to really explore that. Well, I go to modern art museums to find out, but they refuse to write it out for me so I'm still not getting it.

Setting some arbitrary task to improve yourself is the kind of destructive Type A behavior I disassociate with such folks, so I think this is doomed from the start. Maybe they dutifully do their homework or run every day just because it's good for them, or because it's the Right Thing To Do, but I think more of their freedom from prescription and what they see with that opportunity.

You'd rather be reading a blog by a friend of mine. Funny, in-touch with all kinds of odd corners of pop culture, passionate about professional baseball despite its obvious commercial distortions of happier ideals, bright, dedicated but with a reasonable sense of proportion -- much more suited to this sort of thing. He died in a car accident because another driver didn't pay attention to the Rules about driving on bald tires in the rain. That kind of thing has always kept me from taking a walk on the wild side.