Happy Robert Burns Day

Received this from my Scottish pal Pat in England today:

Hey Robert

Hurt my arm this mornin and had to go to hospital for an x-ray, as I was sitting waiting to be seen, the lad next to me says," Fair fae yer honest sonsieface! Great chieftain o' the puddin race!!" I was like, eh?!?!., I turned my head round to the the lady sat on my other side, she said, " ! Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie!" , As I grabbed the next doc walking past I said, "here mate is this the psychiatric ward?" He says," no this is the burns unit! 

happy rabbie burns day 

Px

Cultural eggshells

I am all for woke but there are times we should not forget common sense. The woke police have now successfully engineered the removal of Splash Mountain from Disneyland, arguing that it perpetuates dangerous racial stereotypes.

The ride was based on the 1946 Disney film Song of the South and the narrative was an elderly black man named Uncle Remus, who regaled white children on the plantation with traditional African American folk tales.

I fail to see a problem here.  I am sure that there were plenty of elderly black men who did try to teach and humanize in their day. I look at them as a force for good.

banned for what?

Splash Mountain now joins Doctor Seuss, Bugs Bunny and a host of other cultural icons who failed to make the grade in what now constitutes political correctness in today's hypersensitive vigilance and have been summarily thrown on the cultural ash heap.

Think about the great television we all enjoyed in the seventies, All in the family, Barney Miller, Taxi, etc. I doubt any of them would be allowed to air today with their use of dark humor and edgy writing to address cultural issues. 

We are all so squeamish, tip toeing around every cultural hot button, worrying so about offending everybody over the slightest thing.

No different than Ron De Santis and the anti CRT police outlawing the teaching of race history that might make students feel bad about themselves or their race. Stop already with the revisionist history. We can all use a long truthful look in the mirror. Stop the historical whitewash. Look at people's actual intent.

adios...

*

Last week I read about a large jewel theft ring that was busted. The swindlers befriended elderly Asian women and stole all their jewelry and they operated nationwide. The paper said that the criminals were all deported back to Romania.

And a light went off. These weren't Romanians per se, they were gypsies but you can't say gypsy anymore in this political climate. So stupid. Gypsy or Roma have a long, and I suppose proud history as thieves and they do think of themselves as a separate clan from the Romanians. Geneticists believe that they originated in India. They teach their children how to scam and pickpocket at a very young age. You may not like to hear it but it is the truth.

What is wrong with calling them what they often call themselves? What happened to honesty? 

Tommy Roe.

Tommy Roe, like Tommy James, was a master of the short but punchy sixties pop song. Remember this one?

Pony up

I made my first political donation of the cycle today. To Rep. Ruben Gallego, who is running for Kyrsten Sinema's Senate seat in Arizona. Three measly bucks. But every dollar counts. Boot the bimbo.

“The problem isn’t that Senator Sinema abandoned the Democratic Party — it’s that she abandoned Arizona,” Gallego, a Democrat, said in a release. “She’s repeatedly broken her promises, and fought for the interests of big pharma and Wall Street at our expense.”

Donate here.

Deja Vu all over again

Back from the table

I drove the seven hours to Mesa thinking very apprehensively about the show. I didn't really have the greatest material and my ego suffers when I think I am the low man on the totem pole without bullets in my gun. Was I primed for a fall, after a pretty darn long string of wins? I have sold some great material this year and it is not easy to find and replace the truly great stuff.

Thankfully, I brought affordable material and sold like gangbusters. The traffic was incredible, sales were pretty constant in my booth. Didn't make a killing but did not embarrass myself whatsoever. And I bought some neat things along the way. It was a very successful venture, only diminished by the news that my wonderful friend Terry D. was hospitalized and very ill. Our thoughts and prayers are with him.

I stayed with Sue and Steve the first night in Phoenix and we went to a nice dinner party with mutual friends in Scottsdale, Ben and Debbie. Fred King was there as well as Dain and Sue. Everybody was casual, not stuffy and we all had a lot of laughs. Debbie made a killer cheese dip.

We set up at eight o'clock on Friday and early buyer people started coming in not long after that. Some people depend on early dealer business, I am more of a retail guy. But you are only given until four o'clock to set up and it definitely is harder with these people asking you questions about material. 

It normally takes me two full days to set up a show so I focused on hanging paintings and filling my case. I was finished in the nick of time. And this was with a booth half normal size, I can't afford the big ones anymore and the promoters are raising prices up, up, up. Not sure what I will do in New Mexico this summer... Booth prices have basically doubled in the last year.

Afterwards, Steve and I went to Hodori, one of my favorite Korean restaurants, farther south in Mesa, on Dobson. 

Steve is my most gastronomically adventurous dealer friend and he is always up for great ethnic.

We had a wonderful meal, incredible short ribs, bib bim bap and a seafood pancake. And of course, all of the wonderful sides.

Service was a bit spotty but the food is incredible and I would go back in a heartbeat.

His short ribs were the best I have ever tasted. He liked the caramelized crunchy rice on my dish.

After dinner I found my motel, the Sleep Inn, which was much farther away than I figured, Mesa being a much bigger place than I was aware of. The drive to Superstition Springs took another twelve miles. When I got there they told me that my visa had been twice declined, guess I forgot to pay it last month. Sheepishly I found another credit card. Recharged my heart monitor and slept as best as I could.

It is a nondescript place located between an autopark and a kiddie park and there was a lot of outside noise all night.

And for those of you who think I exist in some glamorous bacchanalian heaven, this was breakfast.

I had the choice of raisin bran or fruit loops, hate them both, went for the latter.

I think the eggs were powdered, bacon was limp and greasy. Whole breakfast went into the trash. Inedible.

Orange juice was okay.

In the middle of the night there was a huge crash above me like a helicopter hitting the building. 

I ran down to the lobby with another guest but the front desk knew nothing about the cause of the cacophony.

Freaked the other lady out and I finally calmed her down and told her that it was nothing.

I have no idea what happened but it would not surprise me if someone found a body.

I bought a passel of really nice Western paintings by a famous illustrator and have already sold two of them.

I bought a very nice navajo weaving as well which I might put out at Modernism.

As I said, the show came through with gusto and my low expectations were surpassed very quickly.

I had a nice breakfast with Joseph, Linda and Zim on Sunday morning and the second day even surpassed the first.

You just never know.

Show went until three. I was dead tired and packout took over three hours. I might have been the last one out.

Bought some worthless prints from some Mesa guy who had contacted me through a friend, out of charity. A mitzvah  perhaps.

But he couldn't find the place and it cost me another forty five minutes of packout navigating his arrival.

I went back to Steve and Sue's and we cooked ribeyes, potatoes and squash, delicious. Had a good night's sleep.

Unfortunately, I have caught a bad cold. I was dizzy driving. There was an accident on the ten west and I was not sure if I was moving or stopped. Vertigo. Then the dust storms hit around Blythe and continued all the way past Beaumont, at times almost total whiteout with zero visibility. Makes me glad I don't have a higher profile vehicle.

But you fight the wind every second and can not let your guard down and that is tiring for eight hours. I finally made it. I went in today and unloaded but feel terrible and came back in the afternoon to rest. Hopefully will get better soon as I have an awful lot on my plate and two more shows in a little more than three weeks back to back.

The fun continues...

Hot Stove League

 

Goodbye David.

 

I am in Arizona. Jeff W. texted me the sad news about David Crosby. 

Our musical heroes are just dropping like flies. 

David had one of the most beautiful voices ever. What a storied career.

It was nice to get to see him play with his son a few years ago.

What an incredible contribution he made to our music.

Classical Gas

A 7-11 owner in Texas has been using classical music to drive the homeless people away from his three stores in the Austin area.

For the past two weeks, a speaker atop Patel’s store has blasted the likes of Beethoven, Bach and Mozart 24/7. So far, it appears to be working, said Patel, who owns three 7-Eleven franchises in the Austin area. Employees have reported seeing fewer homeless people hanging around, and the number of customers coming in at night has rebounded to normal levels.

Patel acknowledged that the nonstop music probably makes it tough for homeless people to sleep at night. He said he feels bad about piling on people who are down on their luck, especially since they are also his customers. “Studies have shown that the classical music is annoying. Opera is annoying, and I’m assuming they are correct because it’s working,” he told KTBC.

Well, he is right on that point, or maybe you just have to be in the right mood.

This isn't the first time that this tactic has been used, with good results. I would like to get all agey and huffy and tell you that the homeless in my day were more refined, and would have enjoyed a little Prokofiev with their maddog, but I'm not sure it is true.

I did think this was funny.

Eric Tars, legal director at the National Homelessness Law Center, told The Washington Post that weaponizing classical music is but one example of the “hostile architecture” that government officials, church leaders and business owners use to drive homeless people out of public view. Others include public benches with armrests that block people from lying down, spikes on flat surfaces to achieve a similar end and boulders in green spaces to prevent camping.

Eric, let me know how you feel about "hostile architecture" when they start shitting at your back door and leaving their buttwipe there for you as a present, like they do at the building I own. Perhaps you will fire up your own victrola.

But I got to thinking, wouldn't this be a perfect teaching moment?  Classical music is admittedly down right now. Rather than stay an object of scorn, classical musicians can use this moment as an opportunity to share and educate. Send the brass section to a homeless camp in the morning with a rousing Brandenburg concerto. Woodwinds could be dispatched to city parks and string quartets could prowl the streets for flash interactions with panhandlers and window washers. Everybody will be humming along with Mozart before you know it.

Or buy them all tickets to Lincoln Center or the Met. They used to have brownbag concerts when I was a kid so that people didn't think classical was merely for the well heeled. A win for both teams!

Arthur Brown - Fire

Finally, after years of looking, I find the entire fire poem on line and not just the song portion. The great Carl Palmer on drums on this live version from 1969.

Here is the original wonderful album version from a year earlier.

Crazy world out there.

New house committee members yuck it up.

Everybody is obviously entitled to like and support the candidates and parties of their choice. You just have to wonder how some of the more batshit crazy people ever get elected but they obviously do. From both sides.

I have many friendships across the political spectrum. Lately, I have been asking my Republican friends a very simple question; which GOP members out there do you like or admire?

The first person who answered me was J___ who responded with; Jim Jordan. I didn't attempt to rebut his choice, I appreciate his honesty. To me, Jim Jordan is a guy who looked the other way when college kids were getting sexually assaulted. Sworn affidavits from very close friends of Jordan said he had to know, it was an open secret that the doctor was a molesting the wrestlers. In addition, he appeared to be in the middle of the January sixth maelstrom and refused to comply with a congressional subpoena. 

But hey, on the other side, Jordan is a pugnacious fighter, as much as I disagree with him and I can see why my friend admires him. Takes no shit.

All of the rest of my respondents said Ron DeSantis. Now I don't personally like the governor of Florida anymore than I like Jordan, I have a hard time with many of his tactics and positions but I will admit that in a GOP lineup that contains the likes of Greene, Gohmert, Gaetz, Gosar, Boebert, Biggs, Santos, Perry, Noem, Higgins, Zinke, Banks and Roy, he seems halfway normal. And it is gratifying to me that my friends on the right are leaning towards normalcy over the obvious alternatives out there.

But who is electing these other people? And why don't their supporters ever fess up and say so? Why don't I ever hear anybody at coffee, say "Boy that Matt Gaetz, he sure showed them damn Ukrainians who is boss?" Or "Marjorie Taylor Greene taught them liberals what will happen if they kill any more christian children at their pizza parlors and suck their blood."

Nobody wants to ever claim the wackadoodles. They just keep voting them into office. It's the craziest thing.

My friend called me and asked him about the job Biden was doing. I said that he seemed to be doing okay, he certainly stepped right in the middle of it with his document storage and that criticism was definitely warranted. I see very few Democrats, if any, covering for him. I think policy wise, I support the great majority of his decisions and give him credit for stabilizing the Presidency after the tumultuous Trump regime.

If you only were tuned into the Fox media machine, from day one, Joe Biden was a senile dotard who couldn't stay awake and wasn't capable of independent speech. Every headline was and is geared towards tearing him down. Ditto Kamela and Pelosi. Much like MSNBC went after Trump. That is politics today, unfortunately, pure trench warfare. We do our utmost to see our opponents in the worst possible light.

Biden could push the rock from the cave and ascend to heaven and Fox would find a way to critique his flying technique. 

I read a lot of news from left and right. I read Fox, National Review and Reason daily as well as the NYT, Washington Post and TPM. I don't do Breitbart anymore, can't stand it but I have in the past. My point is that you have to get your information from a variety of sources and then do your best to figure out what is real if you want to be an informed citizen.

Because there are very few if any objective news sources today that do not have a political slant to one side or the other. If you are only tuned in to your comfortable silo you are going to miss a lot. I think you have to mix it up. You also need to figure out why you are being fed the information you are getting and who it is ultimately serving?

Stay vigilant, use your critical thinking skills to the utmost of your abilities and make sure that your trusted news source passes the smell check. Don't be manipulated.

Peregrine leaping

 

Your time is gonna come

Curiouser and Curiouser

I hate myself for saying this but there is something about the whole George Santos business I find hysterical. 

I love the fact that this guy can tell lie after lie after lie, with a straight face, and just not care. Nor apparently, do his cronies in the House. 

It's like he was conjured up in Faust. They aren't even good lies, they fall apart instantly and he just shrugs and smirks. "Oh, well. Caught me." He's playing the long game here.

He is going to get away with it, too, Speaker McCarthy even gave him committee assignments today. He may be the worst liar ever uncovered in Congress but his party needs him for the balance of power. And he is quickly becoming a new bro for Matt Gaetz.

Calls to resign will be pointless, he won't resign, he is having the time of his life. He cracks me up. 

The Brazilian government has some unfinished business with him over a little theft and check fraud fiasco but it's not like we will ever extradite a United States Congressman. He is safe in the House. Teflon George is slicker than greased goose pucky.

Maybe he is actually a comedian or an author with a Walter Mitty fantasy wanting to see how far he can push the envelope for his book? Can't wait for the next episode.

But he is not going away. He reflects very well on the august body of the house and the integrity of our politicians today and reinforces the reason why we should trust them so. He is no more venal than the next guy but he doesn't care about hiding it. And it gets juicier, yesterday new evidence that he may have been financed by Russian oligarch money.

Have to love this guy. Would be perfect on Saturday Night Live. The unrepentant liar bit. Or even:

© Robert Sommers 2023

Kari Lake

I was reading this article at Newsweek, Kari Lake's Still Committed to Overturning Governor Election, and it provoked a few thoughts. 

Post Trump this will be the new political paradigm. If you lose, forget the facts, just deny, deny, deny and hope that some partisan higher court throws you a bone. 

...Lake remained defiant over her loss in a slate of conservative media appearances over the weekend, railing against an election she claims, but has so far failed to prove, was incorrectly decided against her due to myriad issues on election day.

So far, several Arizona judges have ruled against the former television news anchor turned right-wing thought leader's case, stating she has thus far failed to prove her approximately half-point loss to Hobbs was the result of intentional manipulation of ballots.

Lake lost by over 17,117 votes but will apparently not be dissuaded. Her language is getting increasingly incendiary. Lake and her attorneys have stated that they want all the votes that elected her opponent disqualified, even if there was no wrongful intent in the ballot processing operation.

The lawyer who filed a brief on Kari Lake's behalf said that the Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate could still overturn the results of the Arizona midterms, even if no evidence of voter fraud is found. According to Kolodin, "the trial court got it wrong in terms of requiring proof of fraud or some ill intent. That's simply not what Arizona law requires.

Talk about tin pot democracy, what exactly are they putting in the water next door in Arizona?  It gets more and more ugly and strident:

"We don't want to have this cartel operative, this cartel-owned goon, Katie Hobbs, sitting in the governor's office," Lake told former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon on his War Room podcast over the weekend.

"Our state government is controlled by the cartels right now. The Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is a cartel attorney. And the cartels completely control Arizona, and that's not what the people voted for. We know they stole the election. We know they had intentionally sabotaged Election Day. And we've proved that in court, and we will continue to prove it," she said.

Whether she has anything left to fight with is questionable. In a prior ruling, Maricopa County Superior Judge Peter Thompson threw out most of Lake's claims on their face in what legal experts told Newsweek at the time failed "to meet the high bar necessary to overturn an election."

So now anybody who opposes her is a goon and a member of a cartel, even the Republican judges who heard her cases and found no factual basis for her claims.

"We're going to push it to the Arizona Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court if we have to, because we know we won," Lake told former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on his Trinity Broadcasting Network show, Huckabee on Sunday. "We have to fight this."

A couple things here. Even if a couple ballots were printed smaller than required by statute, they were all tabulated and this would affect both candidates voters' votes, not just Lake's. Why would any judge award her all of the disputed votes since both candidates voters were equally inconvenienced? It flies against logic and smacks of total irrational desperation. How do you go from "I don't like all the screwups and ballot confusion that occurred on election day" to "give me all the votes?" In what parallel universe does that make sense?

Unless, of course, you believe in a Mike Lindell style grand conspiracy and spiritual warfare scenario in which she is the white knight fighting satan's minions and some grand cabal of witches, other Republicans included. The Judge was clear in his ruling.

In a 10-page ruling, Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson acknowledged “the anger and frustration of voters who were subjected to inconvenience and confusion at voter centers as technical problems arose” in this year’s election.

But he said his duty was “not solely to incline an ear to public outcry,” and noted that, in seeking to overturn Katie Hobbs’s victory by a 17,117-vote margin, Ms. Lake was pursuing a remedy that appeared unprecedented.

“A court setting such a margin aside, as far as the Court is able to determine, has never been done in the history of the United States,” Judge Thompson wrote.

He went on to rule flatly that Ms. Lake and the witnesses she called had failed to provide evidence of intentional misconduct that changed the election’s outcome.

“Plaintiff has no free-standing right to challenge election results based upon what Plaintiff believes — rightly or wrongly — went awry on Election Day,” the judge wrote. “She must, as a matter of law, prove a ground that the legislature has provided as a basis for challenging an election.”

Obviously, she has proved nothing, because she can not. She lost and her ego is such that she can not come to grips with it and get over it. Sad. She adopted a perfect page from the Trump playbook, calling the election fixed weeks before it was ever even held and notifying the world that she would not accept a negative result in the event of a loss.

The difference between Kari Lake and Donald Trump is that I believe Donald Trump knows that he is lying and honestly doesn't care. I think Lake is plainly delusional at this point, to the point of believing her own concocted lies. The woman needs heavy meds and serious psychiatric help. 

Unfortunately we are going to see more and more of this sort of reality rejection and because of all the Qanon MAGA Pizzagate nonsense, people will have even less and less trust in our election systems, the great majority of which are manned by patriotic Americans of all political stripes who do their best to be fair and on the up and up, the old American way.

*

And hey, at least she hasn't tried to shoot Hobbs or anything like that. Want real crazy, go next door to New Mexico.

He looked into his options all right.

Marshall McLuhan 1965 - The Future of Man in the Electric Age

"You can not cope with vast amounts of information in the old, fragmentary, classified patterns. You tend to look for mythic and structural forms in order to manage such complex data."

"We have never stopped interfering drastically with ourselves by every technology we could latch on to. We have absolutely disrupted our lives over and over again."

"The need to become completely autonomous and aware of all the consequences of all that we are doing before the consequences occur is where we are heading..."

Touch and Go

Slave to the machine

                                                                                                right, left... © Robert Sommers 2023

Have you noticed how pernicious and yucky social media and the internet is becoming? Take a seemingly innocuous website like NextDoor for instance. Not necessarily a gross offender but a decent example. It started out as a folksy place where people could complain about immigrants peering over their rose bushes or post pictures of green towhees.

But birds and prowlers won't pay the bills. Now I get five emails a week from the site telling me about all the potential business I am losing out on for not promoting my store through their website with ads. Thanks for your concern but isn't that my problem?

Ditto Linked In. 

What is the actual point of this website? The only utility I can think of is that it is a public place for white collar professionals to post their CV and look for a new job. Or stupid rah rah messages like this:

I honestly can't think of anything I have ever gleaned that was valuable on the site short of wishing somebody congratulations for being x years in on their job or engaging in serious personal aggrandizement. Am I missing something there? Seems like a total waste of time to me. 

I get an email a week from Linked In telling me about the people searching for me. I get an occasional job offer even, but some of the searchers are rather suspect.

Good thing I am not overly paranoid but please, stop looking for me. I will let you know if I am looking for a job or want to make friends. 

Which is what a lot of these sites apparently do, create new effortless virtual fake friendships for those poor souls that don't happen to have any.

These websites start out as networking tools but all quickly figure out that if they are to survive they need to monetize and then the shilling starts. 

And it never stops. They are really good at finding ways to hook you. And try to sell you whatever they can. And once they do hook you, you can never get their talons out.

Google Ads can be quite pushy as well. I pulled the plug. 

As the old saying goes, if you don't see something being sold on a website, then you are the one being sold and believe me, everybody in the world and their brother has a grand plan to cash in on you.

I don't Facebook, or Instagram. I know people that say both platform marketplaces really help their business but I don't want to sell that way if I can help it. Churning merch to the multitudes...

Twitter is another animal entirely. Forget the brilliant, demented sociopath at the helm, the platform was tailor made for narcissists who like to bellow in echo chambers and vie for some "wittiest tweeter" award. It is a jackoff session.

Unfortunately a lot of news and sports is getting tweeted these days and it is a tricky game to tune in and see what is going on in the platform after you have deleted your account, like I did. I find myself on the outside looking in but I don't want to support the platform, especially now.

I don't TikTok or Whatsapp either and I guess they have taken the rest of the world by storm. I'll live without them, somehow. Honestly, I even hate texting. I know you like to monologue but couldn't we go back to a short two way phone conversation, just for old times sake? 

A couple more things bug me about this internet business. You use a service, buy a widget, see a doctor and everybody's A.I. bot suddenly instantly demands to know how they did, were you happy, can you give them a rating?

It can be incredibly fatiguing and you should be under no compulsion to respond, twenty first century be damned! If I want to give you a review, believe me, I will, but please don't ask. Yet we are increasingly hammered with these continual demands for our online attention.

I get twenty emails a day from people who have done me the favor of checking out my website and want to let me know that it is grossly deficient. Does anybody actually ever fall for this SEO redesign crap? Sadly they must, or we would not be inundated with the constant spam. I will keep my lousy website as it is, thank you.

The internet is a monster that is slowly but surely sucking all the oxygen out of our collective rooms. Orwell and McLuhan absolutely saw this coming.

Phil Dick certainly did, we are increasingly bound to the machine and until the singularity occurs, a machine still incapable of human thought. But at this point, that might not even be relevant.

Our cybermasters do a very good job keeping us occupied, not to mention very stupid and at each other's throats.

But it might not matter, we are hooked in a giant compulsion loop and whatever real rewards it might actually bestow are meager at best.

I think that both Android Auto and Apple Car Play are a gigantic distraction and certainly responsible for a lot of problems and accidents on the road today. You can't just turn on the radio anymore, it is a phone plug in and several buttons pushed now. Takes your eyes off the road. As do the inevitable texts and emails. What I would not give to be able to just play my cd's again in the car? So simple, so tangible. Nope. We have to be plugged in at all times. 

You get in your car in the morning and maps instantly notifies you how far it is to the office. You go home and it gives you the route back as well, just in case you forgot. Knows where you have been, who you have talked to you and definitely knows your browsing history. Strains your emails for keywords and tries to sell you virtually tailored products. Our lives are an open book and I hate it.

For the last several years we have had a fire stick television, with no ads. Now we have an LG, constant ads. How did that happen?

Lucasfilm

We are in virtual thralldom to our new digital overlords, the technology and its demands on us and our time are ever increasing. 

You don't have a smartphone, you can no longer read a menu in a restaurant. No FasTrak, no ride on the road. 

Your computer will be incapable of functioning on its present OS in about three years and you will be forced to buy a new one. The time span of perpetual obsolescence in our hardware is shrinking at ever decreasing intervals.

Of course, we are forced to use the technology whether we want to or not, try to visit a doctor or lab without a virtual check in sometime. 

Citizens, throw off the yoke of your artificial robotic masters! Unplug that virtual robot puppy, smash your phone, let the air out of your nocturnal robotic companion. Go outside and have a breath of fresh air, dig your toes into the green earth, while you still can. citizens. citizens. ctz   c _____.

Rain continues

Water in the Santa Margarita is really flowing. Need to dig out my culvert this afternoon if I want to get out of my driveway again.

Bobby's first pot roast

I have never been a cook but honestly, have eaten food my entire life, or as long as I remember anyway. Suddenly in the waning years of my sixth decade, I have had a hankering to develop my culinary skills. Osso Buco and duck confit last week. This weekend's project was a pot roast. My first ever. Good cold, rainy weather food.

I went to Major Market the other day and the wonderful butcher, Julio, picked out the perfect chuck roast that he would use. It was a special cut but I can't remember the exact name. I decided to make a pot roast with root vegetables and ended up using carrots, turnips and organic red potatoes.

My mother was an excellent cook and made a great pot roast but honestly, Leslie is not real keen on them and prefers brisket. I think the memory of her grandmother's dry pot roast still lingers. I asked her to bear with me for one attempt and she was a good sport and acquiesced.

I sort of sampled from two or three pot roast recipes I found online. Basic stuff, nothing fancy. I prepped my vegetables. I then cooked some onion and garlic in olive oil in the dutch oven and then browned the carrots and turnips a bit.

Removing the carrots and turnips I then seared the large hunk of beef, which I had already seasoned with a generous amount of kosher salt and pepper.

I added red wine and bone broth and then deglazed all the precious dark bits on the bottom with a whisk. I added the vegetables back in, poured in a few more cups of broth to halfway cover the meat and stuck it in the oven at 275 degrees for a little over three hours. We added fresh rosemary and a bayleaf as well as some dried thyme, not having any fresh around. Leslie added mushrooms.

Some recipes call for tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce, we decided to skip it. I added six cloves of garlic which were also not called for but we are garlic people and so we did anyway. 

It cooked for about two hours and then I added the potatoes, which get mushy if cooked too long. It cooked for another hour and we served.

It was wonderful and my wife loved it too. Needed a bit more salt, which we took care of. Next time if I ever cook turnips again I will wait and put them in with the potatoes as they did get too mushy. I would also add more wine.

But the meal was great nonetheless. Meat falling off the bone and flavorful and the potatoes perfectly done. Carrots caramelized and super sweet. A perfect dinner for a cold January night.  Simple. I am sure you all cook these things with regularity and perhaps this is a yawner but it is all new to me.

And there you have it, my first pot roast. With a lot of help from my wife of course. 

Abbondanza!

Monkeys with typewriters

From the New Yorker:

Field notes on the infinite monkey theorem. By Reuven Perlman

Lee Michaels

Pictures from Te Anau

My friends Bill and Sue are fortunate enough to take really good vacations. I am quite envious, to be quite honest. 

While their neighbors in the Monterey peninsula are battling floods and torrents, they are basking in 80° weather down under.

Their current soiree takes them to South Island, New Zealand for a month.  Very lovely.

They are staying at a place called the Cabot Lodge. I looked it up on Trip Advisor:

Cabot Lodge is a luxury estate situated on a 2000 acre sheep farm overlooking the World Heritage Fiordland National Park in Te Anau. The Lodge accommodates a maximum of ten guests, offering private luxury and an authentic New Zealand escape. Cabot Lodge provides an all-inclusive retreat. Guests are welcomed with an arrival drink, followed by the opportunity to participate in on-farm activities, before enjoying an evening cocktail hour with canapes, and a set-menu evening meal showcasing authentic farm to plate cuisine. Guests are woken each morning with a hearty cooked breakfast, and are provided fresh fruit and baking in their suites daily. Every suite offers panoramic views over Fiordland's vast mountain ranges, Lake Manapouri and the Fiordland National Park. Guests have access to the entire estate, with several private walking trails as well as private fishing access in the National Park. Cabot Lodge can provide individually-crafted itineraries to ensure guests enjoy a Fiordland experience like no other. Cabot Lodge is a luxurious escape on the doorstep of world class hiking, kayaking, fishing, adventure activities, and the renowned Milford and Doubtful Sounds.

Yes, I think that would do.☺

Bill says that this walk up to the glacial Marian Lake was the toughest four hour hike of his life. 

Looks totally worth it. 

Hope they continue to enjoy a wonderful trip.

Sunday Montezuma Mesa Blues

I ventured down to Viejas Arena in the pouring rain last night to see the San Diego State Aztecs play the New Mexico Lobos. It was raining buckets and driving was difficult, a lot of water on the road and a companion who wanted to teach me how to drive in the rain. Quite exhausting.

We stopped at the old Chicken Pie Shop for a bite first, arrived at the game right before tip-off. 

Four block walk from the garage, I brought a raincoat but my shoes and socks were totally soaked.

Aztecs endured a total beatdown. They feel even more miserable today than I do. The New Mexico backcourt includes two NBA players' kids, Jamal Mashburn and Eddie House and they were really good, especially House.

The refs were terrible, let the center #34 foul offensively on every play and the Aztecs shooters lacked their customary touch.

This team was really overhyped, lacks chemistry and intangibles and Butler makes continual bad decisions. 

 Very frustrating.

The best part of the game was the paraplegic exhibition at halftime for a team of military servicemen. Fun and cool. 

I have had better nights and so have the Aztecs. My goal was to return home alive in this weather. I did, but there were mudslides and trees down on my road. Never know what you are going to get.

The river and creek are both raging today. I will try to take some pictures on the way home. It was hard to pull out of my driveway with the rain swale now cut deep into my driveway. Will have to shovel dirt when I return it I want to get my van back in.

I am doing a show in Mesa this week, the Old West Show. I'm not feeling particularly well and came in early to start packing. You would think that I could find a parking spot on an early Sunday morning, right? But with Yoga next door and Pilates across the street there is hardly ever parking anymore, at any time. Very athletic people but they don't like to park in the free parking lot, too inconvenient.

I got a few things done. Will revisit the packing tomorrow, I have the van unloaded now in a dry window. 

I have started to cook, for the first time in my life. Going home to start a pot roast. Wish me luck.

Michael Chapdelaine

I saw this man play once, truly marvelous.

Bottom 10

People like to talk about the best concerts they have ever attended. I think I would like to write a short post about the worst shows I ever saw. It is a funny thing how people can judge an event differently. Millard saw a show by Patti Smith that he despised, another guy I know saw what I believe was the very same show and loved her.

The whole thing is very subjective.

Anyhow, here is my personal bottom ten:

1. Elvis Costello and the Attractions with Aztec Camera, San Francisco Civic Auditorium, 1983

Elvis may have good phrasing but he doesn't always stay in tune. This show was incredibly painful to listen to. I believe the worst of the worst in my concert experience, think two hours of intense dental surgery on heavy meds. Bad PCP wurlitzer carousel ride. Never again.

2. New Barbarians, San Diego Sports Arena, 1979

The most pointless group of decent musicians ever assembled. Keith Richards, Stanley Clarke, Ron Wood etc. Band simply too stoned to play, with terrible material and the results were two hours of my life I very much wish I had back. Absolutely unlistenable drek.

3. Harry Chapin - Miami, 70's exact date forgotten

There are times when you have to think that just one more horrible and depressing shaggy dog ballad will send you out for a revolver. I accompanied my sister Barbara and her husband to this show after a little prodding and have yet to forgive her. 

However she did take me to Madison Square Garden to see the Stones in 1972 on Jagger's birthday so I will cut her a little slack.

4. Kenny Rankin - Schaefer Music Festival, Central Park - 1971?

Kenny played to so many boos that he left the stage in a half hour saying, "Catch you on a better night." Thirty minutes too much, if you ask me.

5. Jeff Beck Band - San Diego Harbor. 1995

This was a tour double billed with Santana. Beck played with Terry Bozzio on this particular night. It was a sonic wankfest with his name continually displayed in glowing pyrotechnics behind the stage. Jeff Beck was a sideman extraordinaire but he had all the magnetic presence of a limp carrot. Quite emotionless. Another night where I left shaking my head.

A great fusion guitar player, in the knob spinning mode of the earlier Roy Buchanan, the late maestro was not particularly interesting to see live, at least in my experience.

6. Marshall Tucker Band - The Outlaws - Sports Arena 1976

Enough southern twang and testosterone for a Nascar race and way more than I would ever need for the entire rest of my life. They were supporting Steve Stills, who was good but not quite enough to get all the stupid out of my ears.

7. Roberta Flack - Dr. Pepper Music Festival, Central Park NYC 1970

This one was different. The music was good. This was back in the day when you didn't have to buy a ticket, could sit on the hill and listen. They brought tear gas in to move us, someone shot a pistol in the air. Cops moved in. Suddenly five thousand people running towards 59th St. at the same time, absolute riotous bedlam. Very scary.

8. Charlie Daniels Band, Spartan Stadium, San Jose. 1979

Somebody had the bad idea to invite Jerry Garcia to play with Daniels during his set. Mr. Daniels took that as an invitation to play so many notes that Jerry could hardly get a single one in. Charlie evidently thought it was a speed competition.

I will never forget Jerry leaving the stage in disgust, palm batting away at Charlie as if to say, what a freaking waste of time. Which it was.

9. Hot Tuna - Winstons, Ocean Beach - Late 1980's?

This was a time that the band was in their drugged, punk phase and pretty awful. I was friends with the sound crew, Vinnie gave me a ticket.

Things got so bad that a guy walked right up to the stage and gave him the finger screaming, "Fuck you, Jorma" to cacophonous applause from the crowd. Later they got better, or you could will yourself into thinking they were anyway if you were stoned enough.

10. Ray Charles, San Diego Civic Center. 1960's

I went to this show with my dad and his then wife. Music was actually very good but Charles was a total asshole. He stopped the show to berate his hired guitar player. "It's an e chord, boy, do you know how to play an e?" Tormented the guy so bad it ruined the show for me.

I went to a lot of shows and I am sure there were many more stinkers but these are the ones that stand out.  David Peel was always real bad. Cockney Rebel at the bandshell. Ian Astbury with the Doors was terrible. Suzanne Vega at the Belly-Up was a very cold fish. Phil Lesh in Albuquerque was awful but doesn't quite sink to this level. Warren Zevon, very drunk and caustic at Santa Barbara, almost made the grade but I kind of dug it in a sick way. What were your worst concerts?

Red Snapper - Koh Phangan

Lena and Ron are two of my best friends and they are in Asia for three months. Lena is really like a sister to me, I miss them both a lot. We pretty much talk every day when they are stateside. But they look to be having themselves a great time in Thailand. Here is a pic of them with our dear friend Shawn.

She blogs her trip at Rice is Sacred. But she sends me nice letters on occasion. I got one last week, they had to change hotels because the Russian tourists were so loud and obnoxious. Go figure.

I got this note from her today which I think is okay to share with you:

We have discovered this small restaurant and it’s a gem in the tiny village by the sea we are staying on another island - Koh Phangan.   We’ve eaten here three outta four nights and it doesn’t disappoint! I asked the Waiter/Owner (his name is Suzi!) if the red snapper was fresh and he looked at me with some level of insult and said with his lisp, yes of course, everyday.  He proceeded to tell us he would deep fry and debone and put all the filets of fish beneath fresh tamarind sauce with pineapple and red peppers and a few pepper corn.  It was in- f*cking incredible.  With fried crispy Thai Basil leaves on top.  Oy!  We feasted!  We had a bowl of acorn squash and chicken in a light red curry sauce with it and rice.  A large bottle of beer rounded out our feast.  Cost 700B - $22 with small tip.

Robert we were wishing you could have been there to share it with us.  It was so good. Gonna have that again for sure.  His other super dish is “tempura prawns” but his batter is more like panco and super krispy.  With sweet chili dipping sauce.  Oy so good. 

Lena does not lie, the meal looks pretty freaking delicious! And I love the plate. Wish I had a bite.