iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 2h

Skinny kids in hoodies and glasses manning a bake sale table outside Shaw’s and they knew I was a mark. The Medway High XC team is $10 richer and I have some lovely cookies.

A baggie with a couple of chocolate chip cookies sits in a grocery cart

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 3h

@chrissteller.bsky.social he appears to have both hands on the bat, unlike his guitar

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 4h

I looked at this card and thought of Thomas Magnum, though on second look, maybe that’s a bit of a leap.

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 5h

the newspaper in the Carl Yastrzemski shrine in my basement is 43 years old today.

Front page of a newspaper sports section has been cheaply framed in one of those thirty-second slide-on slide-off frames you get at craft stores. (“Thirty seconds, slide on, slide off, eh what?” said the vicar to the actress.) the sports page happens to be the Middlesex News of Framingham, Massachusetts, from October 3, 1983, and it commemorates Carl Yastrzemski‘s last game the day before. Two cards of Yaz are propped up against the bottom. (“Propped up against the bottom, eh what?” said the vicar…) Every Massachusetts home should have a shrine to Yaz, who gave the best of himself for all of us

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 16h

jaysus, these Amerks jerseys are ... unsubtle.

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 18h

TFW you're listening to an album on which a well-known guest musician appears, and the instant (s)he starts playing, you know his/her sound like the voice of a friend. "Oh, damn, that's gotta be .... yup, it is!"

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I quite like the first sentence of my new SABR Biography Project article, about former AL umpire Jack Kerin. The other 3,530 words aren’t nearly as good, but if you stop reading early, I’ll never know. The link: sabr.org/bioproj/pers...

Old black and white newspaper clipping shows the face of a Caucasian male in a circle. This is from the first decade of the 20th century sometime and the man’s dress and hairdo are consistent with that period. Reader, it’s Friday. Be kind to yourself

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 20h

between conception and junction lies a lifetime

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 21h

it's McQuaid Invitational weekend again. Best of luck to one and all.

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 21h

from the Boston Globe 50 yrs ago today: Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee speaks at a rally in support of a ballot question to establish a deposit on cans and bottles in Massachusetts. Y’know, the 2026 Sox have plenty of time on their hands to wade in on political matters….

Clipping from October 2, 1976, Boston Globe shows Red Sox pitcher bill lee speaking into microphones. He wears a striped rugby type shirt. A Caucasian woman with a beaming smile is behind him (she’s the secretary of environmental affairs in Massachusetts)

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

You would probably expect I would be watching baseball but instead I am walking up and down this avenue repeatedly. I like it here

youtube.com

Duke Ellington African Flower

YouTube video by Mike Lopez

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Whatever happened to Nigel Earthworm II?

news clipping from the Boston Globe of February 15, 1970, from a story detailing what former Ultimate Spinach frontman Ian Bruce-Douglas has been up to lately. Apparently he's formed a new band called the Ian Bruce-Douglas Apocalypse, the bassist for whom is called Nigel Earthworm the Second. (I can only imagine what Nigel Earthworm Sr. thought of his son's capers.)

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I have proudly done my bit for freeform. The kingdom of heaven is within!

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I trust somebody out there will do the public a service and compile a mix

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Uncle Meat, on the other hand, is timeless

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“Straight Up” into “Don’t Speak” in the doctor’s waiting room and oh, the drama

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

nice of the Yanks to gift the Sox the third out there.

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

maybe this is one of the back-channel arguments for why the Red Sox keep Fenway. (No, it isn’t; there are plenty of others)

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Mottler would be a great name for an ‘80s arena-metal opening band. Klaus Mottler would be the guitarist, songwriter, and sole constant member, and they’d have albums with names like Venom Vixen and Phantom Wind to Hell

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Music for the drive home was Miles’s On the Corner. What a colossal, sloppy, wonderful fuck-you that record is.

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If the MLB playoffs aren’t doing it for you for one reason or another, a new Sleep Baseball episode drops tonight.

Screenshot of email message from the people (person?) who do Sleep Baseball, which is broadcasts of fictional baseball games optimized to help people drift off to sleep. This is one of the finest ideas of my lifetime and they keep producing new episodes even though, strictly speaking, they might not be necessary

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

thing I always mean to do and never get around to: go to Project Gutenberg and see if there are forgotten novels like this to feast on

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Arthur Hailey’s work is mostly relevant in the 21st century as a good place to source your social media pseudonym

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

i will wear my 2026 Red Sox postseason gear proudly, alongside my Liz Truss UK Prime Minister gear #dontblink

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

woman in adjoining cube just said “gimme a call sometime” to end a phone conversation, and immediately I heard DLR’s voice going, “but she KNOWS what that‘ll GET HER”

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

this is like Philly’s answer to the Gavle Goat. I hope it fares better

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Nos. 71 and 90 are duking it out to be my lunch earworm

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Jacob Pomrenke @buckweaver.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Today SABR launched an incredible new book and companion website on Baseball at Manzanar: How We Played the Game, 1942-1945. It’s the story of 120,000 Japanese Americans who were removed from their homes after Pearl Harbor and forced to live at remote incarceration camps: sabr.org/baseball-at-...

Cover image for SABR’s “Baseball at Manzanar: How We Played the Game, 1942-1945,” edited by Russ Speiller and James Forr.

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jesse jarnow @bourgwick.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

cruise the infobahn with the frow show, 3 hours of new music & delicious sounds, from now 'til midnight ET on listener-supported @wfmu.bsky.social. wfmu.org/playlists/JJ...

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

BOIO NYOIO (it's entirely possible that there are only two of these posts left this year)

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Stopped in traffic behind the arse end of a Shelby

Long, mostly unoccupied car trailer has a black Shelby perched at its peak. All seen from the POV of the driver stopped behind it in le traffique

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

@bowiesongs.bsky.social, you might like this: 50 yrs ago, as part of the promo tour for the first Dr Buzzard album, you could see them in such exotic locations as the Dedham Mall

Full page ad from the Boston Phoenix alternative newspaper, September 1976, promotes the first Dr Buzzard album in a variety of ways — including a chance to win a 10-speed bike, and the opportunity to “see Dr Buzzard live” in three Boston-area locations, including the suburban Dedham Mall

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think the Etsy witches shot their bolt unfucking the 2025 Mariners.

Headline from the Boston Globe: they hired “Etsy witches” to hold off the nor’easter for their weddings. It didn’t work

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

High time we changed this. “The Staten Island,” in particular, has a great ring, like “the Pink Floyd.”

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Happy birthday, Mark Farner. (PS: Reply to a Grand Funk reference with the Simpsons, get blocked. It’s the law.)

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Josh Kantor @jtkantor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Tonight (Tues 9/29) & tomorrow (Weds 9/30) at 8pm ET, I'm livestreaming from home via facebook.com/7thinningstretch2020, taking song requests while you watch the Red Sox play their first two 2026 playoff games down in the Bronx. Raising money for GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK and FOOD BANK FOR NEW YORK.

I'm wearing a Red Sox jersey and smiling while sitting in my living room playing an organ that's nearly the exact same model as the one at Fenway. There are a few pieces of old-school baseball memorabilia on top of the organ.

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Still on this jag. Playing their last MLB games 50 years ago today: Tommy Harper, Tony Oliva, Cesar Tovar, Tony Taylor 40 yrs ago today: Enos Cabell 30 yrs ago today: Ozzie Smith, Alan Trammell, Tim Wallach, Andre Dawson 20 yrs ago: Phil Nevin, Emiliano Fruto

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

wanna liven up those Wednesday nights? try bone-in, skin-on sheet-pan chicken thighs with circus peanuts and Triaminic

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

checking the stats on the Flickr account and someone has been poking through my shots of an Allentown Railers game (Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League) from July 2015. Wonder where all these once-young ballplayers are now ... working for THE MAN, no doubt

A bunch of baseball players sit and stand behind chain link fence in a dugout. The pic is taken looking down at them - the players are on field level and the photographer is in nearby stands. Most of their faces are hidden but one is seen smiling broadly. They wear orange and black caps and orange jerseys with black numbers and white trim

Same buncha ballplayers, same team, same game, only in a slightly different orientation. Now the face of the player closest to the camera is visible. He wears a batting helmet and smiles slightly

Third and last shot of the orange and black ballplayers (all Caucasian, some with facial hair) hanging out in their dugout. A couple of them have their heads turned away from the game and seem to be checking something out in the stands. A beautiful brunette, perhaps

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

he took his baseball name from a lost ‘60s Jan & Dean single

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Dave Marsh, on "Sir Duke": "A tribute from a student to a master? Or from the nonpareil of one generation to the peers among his predecessors?..You wonder who, in the next generation, might be talented enough to be able to return the favor" www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnNg...

youtube.com

Sir Duke

YouTube video by Stevie Wonder - Topic

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"smokey stevenson" @kurtblumenau.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Huh. Also 50 years ago today: Ed Kranepool ties the Mets-Expos game with an eighth-inning solo homer, then wins it with a two-out RBI single in the bottom of the ninth. Giants walked the earth in those days. Box score from @retrosheet.bsky.social: www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/197...

Beetle browed Caucasian male with a hint of five o clock shadow (this must have been before he did the shaving cream commercials) stands in a baseball batting pose. He wears a Mets cap and pinstriped home jersey with, gloriously, a blue windbreaker underneath. This is the ineffable, estimable, leviticusly deuteronomous Ed Kranepool as depicted in the 1976 SSPC baseball card set

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