Grant Geissman

Rockin' crossword

I created another rock and roll crossword puzzle. I don't think many of you, if any, can solve this one. Surprise me.

Santa Barbara Antique Show

 

Reeling in the years

We met our friends Fay and Kevin at La Especial Norte in Encinitas yesterday for soup. 

It is an old standby.

The chicken soup is still outstanding but the large bowls have shrunk considerably. 

Way of the world I guess. 

You get about twice as much soup here in Fallbrook at Rosas.

Afterwards we drove down the coast towards the Belly Up to see Steely Jazz.

When my wife says no pictures, she means no pictures.

There were two shows, a five o'clock show for the Can't buy a thrill through Royal Scam period and then an eight o' clock set for Gaucho and Aja. Definitely wanted to do the early show, the latter a bit too overproduced and blah for me, can hardly listen to it anymore.

The band is pretty cool. Tom Scott from the L.A. Express, Keith Carlock, Steely Dan's amazing regular drummer, Steely Dan co-founder and guitar player Denny Dias, original vocalist Royce Jones, Freddie Washington on bass, Drew Zingg and the great Grant Geissman (ex Chuck Mangione) on more guitars, Yaron Gershovsky keyboards, a trumpeter and three more vocalists.

The vocals started out a bit rough but about three songs in it started to groove. One of the female vocalists was a powerhouse. What a neat show! I saw Steely Dan with Fagan last year and this sounded way better to me. Course the hall was way more intimate than the forum and the sound was much better too.

Carlock is a monster, reminds me of Frosty. Geissman played the flying V like a demon, great player. Good song selection, would have liked to hear more from Royal Scam and Pretzel Logic but you can't always get what you want.

We had reserved seats upstairs. Bought Thrifty ice cream on the way home. Leslie was wearing it by the time we hit our driveway, like a little kid. 

So cute.

*

Not much else, been getting a lot of cool new inventory, have workers up patching the roof, just in case. 

Went to the art opening at the library on Saturday, a little uncomfortable for me because I wasn't entirely happy with my piece.

Oh well, such is life.

Next time.

Steely Dan

Interesting take

Wise Sage

 

I saw this quote from Buffett a few months ago and my mind keeps going back to it. Worth pondering.

Buffett wrote, “We've never succeeded in making a good deal with a bad person.”“Conversely, we do not wish to join with managers who lack admirable qualities, no matter how attractive the prospects of their business,” he added in his letter.           

“I learned to go into business only with people whom I like, trust, and admire. As I noted before, this policy of itself will not ensure success: A second- class textile or department-store company won’t prosper simply because its managers are men that you would be pleased to see your daughter marry."

In my line of work I have done thousands of deals, with many, many people over the years. Of all types. Buffett's words ring so true to me. If your spider sense knows that a person is a jerk, it will be born out in time. It is never worth it in the long run. And first instincts are rarely wrong about a person. Like the parable of the scorpion and the duck.

I could illustrate with specifics but I won't. There are people who you can and can not do business with. And sometimes it is not a matter of a good or bad person, it is mere chemistry. The important thing is that both sides must win. Some people never get that. Steer clear of assholes.

Phish

The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys

Stormin'

It has been a week of storms, both solar and rain.

A man got some good footage of the Northern Lights right here in San Diego, on Mt. Laguna. 

The Sunrise Highway is the highest paved road in San Diego, what is it, 6500'? 

We drove it last week on the way back from Jacumba.

JB took this shot from his place up in Fairbanks.

Looks pretty storybook idyllic.

It started raining here last night but there is a lot more to come, a level 3 atmospheric river. 

You never know what that means, we were stranded for two weeks back  in '93.

You sort of have to surrender to the elements and not fight anything. Let it pass by and move forward when it is safe.

On the other side of the world, Thailand, Shawn sent this shot, which looks sort of Roger Dean posed but still very cool.

I have an antique show next week up in Santa Barbara, which has a hard time with the natural elements, I hope the roads and slopes hold up.

Friday through Sunday.

I am pretty close to being packed and have a little free time, a rare commodity in my world these days.

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in ten months, I grabbed my camera and headed up to San Jacinto to take some shots of birds and tune in.

I was most interested in just being there, never even took the good lens out but took a few snapshots to put the camera though its paces and see if I still remembered how to use it.

Barely.

Nothing too riveting, I saw male and female harriers, red tailed hawks, a shrike, not a heck of a lot.

Got a good walk in, shot this pic of an immature male vermilion flycatcher.

Saw lots of coots and ibis, a few egrets, nothing earth shattering.

I did run across a pair of pheasants, no doubt escapees from the neighboring hunt club.

Good for them!

Such beautiful birds.

I drove home and came to the common realization that I honestly have better birding in my own front yard, a red tailed at twilight, and a yellow rumped warbler.

I pulled the card out of the long dormant camera and realized I had some flea market portraits of old comrades I had never seen or processed before.

I give you Jim, Stephen and Dave, for your viewing pleasure.

Strange but wonderful birds indeed!

Hardy souls who have plied the pavement for what seems like an eternity.

*

Steely Jazz at the Belly up Sunday.

Wasteland of the Free

Sailors take warning...

 

What a beautiful sunrise this morning!

We may not get northern lights but the view to the southeast is pretty spectacular.

*

I have mentioned repeatedly that I relinquished my Democratic membership over a year ago.

I'm pretty much a lost sailor, who dislikes both extreme left and right and tries to tack somewhere in the middle.

So it was difficult for me in choosing to vote for Proposition 50. 

But I did.

Why?

Honestly, I think that gerrymandering like this is awful. 

California Republicans and the communities they represent deserve to be heard.

But our hands were forced. Propositions like this don't happen in a vacuum. Extreme Republican redistricting efforts pushed by Trump in Texas, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere required an answer and Newsom fought fire with fire. Thankfully there is a time limit on the proposition and things revert back to the old ways in 2030.

I also think that it was a bit disingenuous for California Republican Congressmen to feign indignation about the proposition while barely giving lip service to the fact that their party was doing the exact same thing nationally, in spades.

If they decried it, it was very quietly. Can't upset you know who, you know?

*

In another story I think that the recent shutdown should be addressed. 

The group of eight moderates who agreed to move forward are being vilified by progressives, I think somewhat unfairly. 

There was never going to be an outright win with this Republican House and this Republican speaker.  They may not even take the bill up for a vote in the house.

The eight who crossed over were also sympathetic to their own constituents, many of whom were federal workers in places like Virginia, who could not feed their families and were being dismissed en masse. 

The eight made a pragmatic decision regarding what they thought was best for their voters. I can not fault them.

Somewhere between 75 and 80% of the American public think that Obamacare or the ACA is a good thing. 

The Republicans have had fifteen years to come up with another plan, they have not. I am not a betting man but would wager that they will not be able to cobble something together palatable to the American people in the next two months. Or convince the American public how bad the current status quo really is.

So they own this one now. It is front and center.

The issue has been perfectly framed. Americans are facing a doubling or tripling of their health care premiums if we do nothing or we continue to subsidize premiums, like most of the other developed countries of the world. Horrors, socialism! But it is okay to throw forty billion at Argentina or the orange one's favorite dictator of the week. And it is okay to cut the populace's food stamp budget in half, the lazy scofflaws. The great majority of whom happen to live in red states. 

Wonder which option the public will want? Should be a real interesting issue in the midterms.

On the other hand, I read a rural red stater bemoaning their loss of snap benefits and they were wondering how they would feed their five children.

If you have no or insufficient income, why have five children in the first place? Because the good lord directed you to?

Back to the shutdown. AOC and the progressives are sharpening their knives and the conflict is becoming generational. Take out Schumer, Durbin, kill the old guard. Silly me, I trust the old guard far more than the young lions, they have been in the fire before and they know that government needs to actually function to work. I trust old doctors and older politicians, people who have made their mistakes and been around a while.

And sometimes that means working with and striking a deal with the opposition.

*

Isn't it an amazing coincidence that when Epstein says Trump was with a girl for three hours, he claims it was the one who committed suicide last year and can no longer speak?

*

I got a call from a reader today, who left a voicemail. She can't figure out if Trump was working for Putin as an agent. Did I think he had anything on him? Well, sheesh, that one is way out of my pay grade. But let me take a swing at it. It would not surprise me if he was and if the pee tapes were real. Pure guess and conjecture, mind you, but totally plausible.

Now let me bitch.

I went over to the Sketcher store to try to buy a pair of shoes. I like their fit and memory foam. To my chagrin they were all slip on now. The laces were a mere surface adornment with no real function or utility. Something vestigial, like a prehensile tail or a necktie.

I tried a pair on and they didn't fit snug. 

I asked the guy working there if they now size differently and he says they do, that he has to buy a  whole size smaller so that they don't fall off.

And he confided that he hated them too but that they were forced to wear them by management.

Why do they force these sorts of things down our throat or on our feet? We have done perfectly well lacing up our shoes and boots for about three hundred years, I'm not quite ready to give it up, sorry.

*

You might remember me telling you that I had found a substance that might keep the South American beetle from killing my Canary Island Palm?

Beetle is on an awful path through the region.

The stuff was called Bio Advanced Weed and Feed. Came in a blue container. 

I used it three times a year, diluting it in a trench at my palm's base.

I went to Grangetto to buy another gallon.

No go. 

No longer sold or permitted in California. A neonicotinoid. Anybody driving out from Arizona that might pick me up some, it would be greatly appreciated.

*

Well, the rain starts tomorrow, batten up the hatches matees and skibber the jib. 

Catch you on the next one!

Savoy Brown

Food warfare

"There is a chaos and it is an intentional chaos that we are seeing from this administration and where they have money for everything.They got money to fight wars. They got money for ballrooms. They got money for everything but when it's for supporting the people, that's now when they are crying, well, we are broke and that's not what the law requires us to do." Maryland Governor Wes Moore.

Cracking Up

Selfie Time

I used to be a fairly proficient artist and painter. I stopped painting when I got bladder and kidney cancer over forty years ago and unfortunately stopped drawing too. 

I was a neurotic mess when I painted. You're only as good as your last work and being good meant too much to me, sometimes turning me into an utter basket case.

I don't know why I told Carol Z that I would put a selfie in her last show, now that she is retiring from the library? What possessed me? 

But I did.

And did nothing until last week, a serious mistake.

I started working on a portrait that became an angst ridden german expressionist piece very quickly.

Here is a crop.

We couldn't have that, too many issues to resolve and I decided to just start sketching.

Things didn't get much better but I am admittedly rusty.

You draw and draw and draw and get into process instead of thinking about an endpoint and then one day maybe you find your groove again.

Not there yet.

I ended up working on this one a little more and framed it up and submitted it this morning.

Not really happy with it but I never am. Not too far away.

You can see it at the library.

One thing I want to do is to start drawing and painting regularly again and get back to where I once belonged, as Paul said.

I've been drawing since I was three or four years old.

You can check out quite a few different artist's self portraits at the library show which opens in a week.

Some of them are really good, certainly much better and more proficient than my feeble attempts.

But like McArthur, I shall return!

Little catch up

 

Joe, the Guamanian man who hangs out at the donut shop and looks like an Ainu gave me this cool old Edison sign, complete with rifle holes!

I stuck it on my rusty old plane in the front garden.

I dig it!

*

I made my first pot roast of the season last week.

My wife doesn't like me to cook food like that until the weather gets cold.

I made a mirepoix of celery and carrot and stuck an onion in, even though I never do.

Added mushrooms and garlic, beef broth, Italian tomato paste and old vine zinfandel.

It was a four hour cook but at the two hour mark I added potatoes and chunky carrots so that they didn't get too soggy.

Bay leaf and rosemary, plus the normal spices.

It was great but Leslie though the sauce was a little sweet. 

I wonder if it could be the onion?

Look forward to the next one.

*

Last night I grilled a rack of lamb that she had marinated all day.

Could have eaten two. We have a leg of lamb in the freezer to attack soon too. I am glad I bought the big New York beef section last year with the way prices have gone up. We will still be in relatively cheap steak for two or three more months.

*

If you have not eaten at the pho restaurant near Major Market since ownership changed a while back, please support them. Their food is terrific. I really like the shaken beef, which comes served sizzling on an iron grill. They drop an egg in to fry on top. If you are smart you will add the white rice immediately so it caramelizes like a clay pot dish.

It is absolutely wonderful, the best thing on the menu.

They are also now making crepes. 

I had this one with shrimp, chicken, mung beans and calamari and they instructed me how to wrap it properly with cucumbers, mint, jalapenos and lettuce.

Sauce is lovely, give this dish a try!

2000 Light Years From Home

Jacumba Hot Springs

It was my birthday the other day, on the sixth if you didn't know. Happy birthday! Thank you, thank you. 

The only good thing about turning sixty eight is all the people even older than you telling you that you are just a kid. 

Right.  A kid. 

Then why does everything hurt and why am I starting to walk like a certain deputy on Gunsmoke?

Anyway this kid decided to drive out to Jacumba Hot Springs on Thursday to, as they used to say, take the mineral waters, or the schvitz, I guess, depending on where your ancestors hailed from.

I had heard that it was a happening place and had driven out to take a look a month ago or so. 

Interesting story, three friends from the city buy the place and create a very chill resort. 

Check out the article in Travel and Leisure.

Where is it?

Way out in the East County, past Campo. 

Very much like our underlying Fallbrook terrain but more expansive, more granite, more cottonwoods, less people, less trash and more funky fun. 

It was a major spa destination in the 1920's but lost its bearings when the new freeway was built and it was cut off from the world.

Quite a few movies were shot down there.

A lot of people have found it, we met regulars from both San Diego and Phoenix there, not very many angelenos there, which pardon me for saying, made it a bit more chill.

We have hit pretty much all the hot springs resorts in California in our time, Two Bunch, Hacienda, El Morocco, Casa Del Zorro (not hot springs but close) O, Murrietta, Glen Ivy, Desert Hot Springs, Au Soleil, honestly more than we can count.

I think that this one has risen to the top of my list. I like the clean, tasteful and spacious rooms, the layout is not too expansive so you don't have to walk a mile to eat, the food was great, the staff was friendly and helpful, and it was not too expensive, about $240 for a weekday night and we paid a bit extra for a late checkout.

I am not sure if there was a sauna or not but that's not a dealbreaker for me. We heard no upselling for facials or massages or any of that sort of stuff. It seems designed for normal people and not for spoiled patricians who need excessive pampering so they can bitch about having their poached eggs overcooked or whatever.

So I guess I am getting ahead of myself. We had a very pleasant drive east on the 8 from El Cajon, after stopping for a quick lunch at Spicy City on Convoy.

We got on the old Interstate 80 and drove about five miles until we arrived at the resort. 

You check in at an old airstream, which makes for a neat office.

Place has a Morocco meets burning man vibe.

The bar is decidedly low brow, appointed with mostly kitschy female nudes by people like Vincent. 

I once had a chance to buy about fifty of his paintings but they were so schlocky I passed.

Now I guess they bring real money.

Who knew?

A couple of women in the hot tub wondered aloud where were the nudes of men?

The dining room has similarly amateur smoke tree paintings which look charming in their sheer number and insouciance. 

But hey, enough art dealer snobbery, we were there to chill and to sit in the pool, which we did. 

One for day guests and one for those spending the night.

Our room was way nicer than I expected, I think that even my more aristocratic friends would approve. 

Spacious, every amenity you could desire, rabbinic robes included. 

No television but a turntable in every room, with some very cool curated world beat type music.

Alcohol, if that is the way you roll.

I guess the prevailing style is mid century funk, not necessarily my wheelhouse but I am down with it.

Would be a fun place to shroom if that was your predilection.

Maybe the energy vortex advert would make sense all of a sudden?

Of course we were there for the water. 

And it was wonderful. 

Often had the pools to ourselves. 

What a great place to relax.

I loved the jacuzzi, which is located in what is known as the Echo Room. 

Architecturally, think James Hubbell meets Irving Gill and the Flintstones.

We met some very nice people there, pretty much everybody we encountered was wonderful, with the exception of one dour and heavily inked young couple who refused to make eye contact with anybody.

Their loss.

There is a manmade lake bubbling up from the natural springs located about two blocks away.

This was all prime Kumeyaay land and the natives definitely knew where the best spots were to hang.

Saw some very interesting birds out there including two ospreys.

The area is rich with wildlife.

We met a San Diego mom and her two kids that liked to soak there regularly. 

Next time I take the plunge. 

A warm lake sounds quite enchanting.

Need to remember to take two bathing suits next time.

A couple was flying an enormous kite near the lake.

What else?

Loved the food. 

Had lamb meatballs with a harissa sauce and a mezze plate the first night, two starters.

Leslie had a nice verdant cocktail whose particular components now escape me.

It was fun walking around the town, which was barely hanging on and is now in the midst of a rebirth.

Would we go back?

In a heartbeat, and soon. 

The sun, the water, the remote location, it all adds up to the ideal alembic for relaxation.

We decided to drive back on the Sunrise Highway through Mt. Laguna and Julian, stayed pretty and wild until we were practically back at our front door.

What a wonderful way to celebrate a birthday, in warm waters with the woman I love!