Sake House

We had thrown around a few ideas for our anniversary dinner. Pampelmousse, 333, a few other places. My great pal Lena asked,"Why not try Sake House? That's where I would go. But get there at five. It's tiny and always packed and you will never get a seat if you get there late. Very hip."

We took Lena's advice and got there just as they were opening the doors. Sake House is not a sushi bar, think little japanese tapas and whole lot of sake. Located now in Hillcrest in addition to the six year tenure at 1246 N. Coast Highway in Encinitas this place was everything that she had promised and more. I illustrate with funky cell phone pictures.

Our great server Yuka, taught us the ropes about the dining experience at Sake House. Osaka street food style cuisine. Showed us to drink from both sides of the overflowing sake glass, a method that promised us future abundance.

I started with string beans in sesame paste. Leslie had seaweed salad. Both good, she scoffed at the idea that mine had any paste at all and I asked her to mind her own culinary business. I was liking it anyway.

We got a taster flight with three cups of the finest of the three grades of sake. All very flavorful and different, licorice gave way to melon. Yuka heard us talking about Hokkaido, the cool northern province that we wish to travel to one day and gave a cup from the region gratis. We also drank a cup from Hyogo prefecture, where one of my favorite mythical detectives, Inspector Otani, hails from.

We first ordered potato croquets with shrimp, quite wonderful, a new textural discovery on the first bite!

Next we ordered a takoyaki, a deep fried octopus ball with bonita flakes shimmering and dancing on the hot edges of the molten orb. Fantastic as well.

We followed that course with a broiled cod plate with kyoto miso that was delectable and had a nice piece of gobo on top..

Our sakes were Kan Chiku, flowery and smooth. Kame tsuru, with flavors of anise. Kubota Hekiju, Osaka Ja, all Jinmai Dai Ginjo, or the finest cut.

We also tried a lesser sake, Tsuru Kamen nigata, only fair. Tai satsu, from Hokkaido, named big snow, luscious and smooth.

We finished the meal, utterly happy and satisfied with a red bean mochi dessert. If we can, we are going back next week with friends. Lots more to discover!

small faces

Flame Flower

Talented Fallbrook Sculptor Michael Stutz yesterday celebrated the dedication of his mammoth new sculpture Flame Flower at the Westin Hotel in San Diego.

Michael is an artist with both vision and integrity, not to mention damn good taste in music. Congratulations to him for all of his recent and continued future success.

Midweek Amalgam

J called yesterday. He was uncomfortable with the Feeding Time cartoon that I posted by the Los Angeles Times'  brilliant opinion writer and political cartoonist, David Horsey. The cartoon depicts the gop suckling the teat of big business.

J wondered about the lack of balance I was showing. Where was the cartoon illustrating the pernicious influence of the unions on the democratic party and society in general?

When I posted the thing I just thought that it was really well done. I don't think that I need to take the middle line with every thing I post on this blog. And yes, I do think that on the heels of a wretched Citizens United ruling, the threat of big business interests now masquerading as "persons" is a greater threat to our country than evil teacher, fire and police unions, as bad as they maybe are.

J can't stand the president, it seems he is in good company with about half the electorate. He is an ex small businessman who is now an investor and he sees the president through that perspective. Everything is about business.

The problem is that the GOP ran a stealth campaign that was supposedly "it's about the economy" last time and it turned out to be bullshit. When they got the power we got anti gay and personhood  amendments and a full broadside in the culture war. Forgive me for thinking that the same thing will happen once again. You can't just look at only the future of business considering the radical social agenda of the right.

I don't care for Barack Obama. I think he lied if not misled us on a multitude of issues, endless war, medical marijuana, civil liberties, etc. Unfortunately it is now all about the Supreme Court. One more member of the evil axis of Scalitothomasrobertskennedy will further sink the Federalist Society dagger now poised above our nation's heart. Mitt, given the opportunity, will finish the job.  Bye Bye Roe. Hello, massive effort to turn us back into a religious society with no respect for any border between church and state and also a place where the poor take their permanent place as feudal serfs existing at the whim of the lucky one percent.

I worry about my good friends that can't look at the other issues besetting our country besides the economy. As important as it is, it just can't be the only thing. We agree to disagree. I know what the unions did in Vallejo and San Diego. And even Fallbrook, to some degree. But that is why they call it collective bargaining. Bargain.

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I won my battle with the ebay guy this morning. Called ebay and pled my case. The investigator agrees with me. He gets nothing. Unfortunately, she told me that he will now sully my perfect feedback record. In ebayland only buyers can leave feedback these days. I told her that I would wear my ignominious mark proudly, for taking a principled stand against a jerk who was trying to get something for nothing.

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Interesting article on Mitt and family re: Gay Marriage. Apparently Mitt, once extremely gay rights, found himself crossways with his wife Ann as well as his son and daughter in law, all who signed a 2002 Massachusetts petition that recommended denying gays domestic partner benefits. That's one of the things I hate about a large sector of the right, their mean spirited interference in other people's personal business. Like forcing the government to watch a poor woman's pap smear.

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We had a great anniversary yesterday. Fantastic dinner at Sake House in Leucadia and then Cirque de Soleil's Totem performance in Del Mar. It was really incredible. A juggler weaving seven balls in a cone. A pair of plains hoop dancers. Great aerials. The touring shows like totem rely less on gadgets on more on individual artistry. Two girls each pididdling four whirling scarves.  Great chinese unicycle team stacking cups. The show is playing for another week and you can get half price right before the performance. We were second row. An amazing time.

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Two paraplegics move robot arm with mind.

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Wells Fargo mistakenly forecloses, man commits suicide.

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The hawks were temporarily aloft, according to a neighbor who called me. The young hawks were walking on the road yesterday. Walk a little, fly a little...

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Ever get the urge to walk around the world in Roman times? Now you can with Orbis. The  Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World.

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Researchers discover a new atomic structure in metallic glasses.

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I dug the Avengers movie but a couple questions. Where in the hell was Ant-man, Hank Pym? Vision, The Black Panther, Scarlet Witch and Pietro? They sure take a lot of liberties.

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Don Bauder has written great economic columns for years. He nails it here on the stadium financing issue.
Did you know that stadiums have an economic life of about ten years? Leaving communities on the hook for decades, while the rich owners capitalize on sucker fan's atavistic team/clan bond to extract lucre from their wallets.

Vroom, vroom.

I got a chuckle reading the newspaper yesterday. Apparently BMW has put noise dampers on the powerful new M5 and its 560 horsepower, twin-scroll, twin-turbocharged V-8  engine.

To compensate they are piping prerecorded engine noise into the cab so that the alpha adolescents who require such a power steed can still feel like the baddest ass on the block. This simulated noise corresponds with the rpm and speed that you are driving, ostensibly so that you don't have to do anything so bourgeois as to actually roll down the window.

What happened to the old days when all it took was a few playing cards in the spokes? Kids and their toys...

Lose what you never had.

Muddy Waters with Michael Bloomfield, Duck Dunn, Paul Butterfield, Sam Lay and Otis Spann. Not sure about Sam Lay but the rest of these cats are now all sadly gone.

Personal Accounting

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln 
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Leslie and I went to Temecula yesterday to see the Avengers movie (awesome!). The theater is next the mall and we had time to kill before the three o'clock 3-D showing so we took a stroll around the place. There is nothing like walking through a mall to give you a good idea of where you fit into the American social maelstrom. I kept looking around for a woman without an ankle tattoo but if they actually existed they were few and far between. I had the instant realization that America is suffering from some disease of terminal hipness. And of course when everybody is hip, nobody is hip, if you know what I mean?

We had dinner with a bunch of friends friday night, one of whom was enjoying time with her stepdaughter, fresh from rehab. She said that the younger generation was deathly afraid of not being hip enough, hence all the ink and alterations. Whatever, I have talked that stuff to death.

I ran into Helen from Guacamole Gulch at the mall, one of my favorite bloggers and all around nice person. She complimented Leslie's picture on the Blast (which my wife doesn't like) and made the observation that it was interesting to see somebody, me, that she knew everything about, thanks to this new medium, but seldom saw in the physical flesh.

Blogging, and maybe the Blast in particular, has to be one of the most narcissistic, self absorbed pursuits known to man. My worst nightmare is that some cave dweller in Bhutan is organizing a calorie counter this very minute with all of my last month's meals charted out on an excel spreadsheet. A daily blow by blow of a rather insignificant life.

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I just got off the blower with my dear mother, second day in a row, she was very upbeat and happy and wants to get a new cat. All of her children called yesterday, even Liz, her firstborn, the one who lives forty five minutes away from her in Maryland and has never taken the time to visit. We chitchatted a bit, she is apparently reading the blog every day but her location and name aren't being tracked so I suppose from now on I have to be on my very best behavior.

The conversation eventually drifted into something that resembled this: "You know, it seems like all your friends are getting sick, could it be from your horrible diet? I am sure that you know that pate de fois gras is all grease and fat..." I forget my stuttered retort but it was probably merely a weak backhand as I quickly changed the subject. Besides if there is anyone to blame for my gustatory indulgences, it is my dearest mother. While the other kids ate their waffles, we were the only ones on the block forced to eat calves' brains and eggs, tripe and quiche, before anyone else had even heard of the stuff. The only mom I knew who had her own table at Le Veau d'or.

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I, of course have a pretty good take on my list of deficiencies. I am a serial interrupter. Wanton exaggerator. I occasionally use my business card, if not my little finger, to dislodge the little bits of foodstuff caught between my teeth at the dinner table. I have been known after bathing to sit my wet ass down on the toilet seat, even after repeated warnings. I have limited facility with hand tools. I could no sooner fix a car than I could write the Magna Carta. My rule in life is buy nothing that you have to either fix or back up. I can't cook. Little tolerance for the mentally weak. My cursive writing is near impossible to decipher. I have gotten so fat that a sideways look in the mirror will send me into some sort of paralytic shock so I don't. Toenail trimming has also become exceedingly more difficult.

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I also possess some phobias, imperfect creature that I am. I don't like heights or driving on bridges. Hate driving next to the highway barricades known as k-rail. Abhor driving in low ceilinged parking garages. Obsessive about spelling or syntaxual errors, unless of course they are of my own making. ´and others say that my slow Mr. Magoo style of conservative driving reminds them of the motoring of an old lady.

I can't stand large crowds of people surrounding me, hence I can't go to estate sales or things like that. Always need to sit in a corner with my back to the wall in a restaurant. Can't drink scotch or gin. Never learned to dance properly. Horrible sense of rhythm. My glasses are always dirty. I snore. Continuously flatulent. Leslie says that I can even do both at the same time. Won't hang my own shirts up or put the cd's away.

I could go on and on but you get the idea. If Honest Abe was right and a multitude of vices are indeed a true measure of a man's good character, with my laundry list I rank right up there with MLK and Mother Theresa.

Yours in deficiency,

Robert

hand me down my walking cane

This is my buddy Arnold Briscoe. Arnold is an ex angeleno who besides being a good musician was a hell of a baseball player in his youth.

Arnold was in some cool Los Angeles bands in the 1960's, close friends with Arthur Lee, Pacific Gas and Electric and Little Feat's Paul Barrere. Couldn't meet a nicer human being.

Cardiac kid

I have been feeling a bit out of sorts the last couple days. I felt my heart rhythm do some strange things early one morning on the boat and have felt not only a general lack of energy but a  bit of discomfort in my chest. Since I have already had the experience of not only a heart attack but a murmur and a bad mitral valve requiring open heart surgery, I thought that the prudent thing to do would be to check with my cardiologist.  I'm not a hypochondriac but it had been a while since I have had things checked out so I went in yesterday.

Got some strange results back on my EKG. It is titled abnormal. While I have always fought atrial fibrillation and take a medicine to control it, I am now in a very odd but apparently harmless rhythm pattern called ectopic atrial rhythm with an unusual P axis. In layman's terms, where my baseline parabolas normally head south, now they are tending north or something like that. We compared this EKG with past graphs and I have never been in this rhythm before. Hopefully with more exercise in the coming months, sinus rhythm will take over again and I will feel better and have more energy.

My cardiologist, Neil, was frankly amazed that I could feel the subtle difference but I definitely could, sensitive sort that I am. Now I am scheduled for a bunch of blood work and baseline testing but it is nothing significant I can assure you. As you know I keep an immaculate regimen and am at the peak of physical condition. Might have to add more fat and heavy whipping cream to my diet.

This might be a good time for those of you who do not believe me to pony up for a little life insurance policy on me, just in case. But if it pays off, you owe me big time next incarnation, capiche?

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The picture you see is a picture of my nurse's unusual piercing. Being the nosy sort, I espied something odd when she was hooking the leads for the EKG and asked her about it. It is called a madison and she had it done when she was 24. Now it is healed over and can't be removed without serious lancing. I asked her what her mother thought about it and it was about what you would expect. I surmised that it must really help her get better reception and she laughed.

I have one of those horrible cultural taboos about piercing and tattoos but realize that it is my trip, the rest of the world awash in ink and self expression. Vive la differénce.

Summertime

Doc, David and Jack.

5.11.12

I have been thinking a bit about style of late. And fashion as it relates to the decorative arts. I am in a business where shifting tastes can put an ardent devotee on his or her own destitute deserted island, so it pays for us to keep on our toes and make the right bets. It is possible to misjudge the duration of a trend and end up swimming against the current in the stale detritus of a fading age.

When I was young the word antique summoned an image of something victorian. Victoriana became death in the market at some point and very difficult to sell. Before that empire, soon after that colonial revival and eastlake. The excess of victoriana was smacked right in the teeth by the revolution against ornamentation that was called by the colloquial expression mission or arts and crafts, a child of spanish mission style and 14th century dutch farmhouse furniture with its exposed keys and tenons. This whole design style had the briefest of days in the sun and was not to be revisited for another sixty odd years.

In regard to this aesthetic motif, material and workmanship became paramount, gaudy ornamentation verboten, adopting an aesthetic tempered by the fire of the guilds and decorative gods of England, Ruskin, Ashbee and Morris, championing the handwork of the individual against the insidious industrial machine. Which oddly found its own place later in the cubic sensibilities of bauhaus, itself a product of evil designs for malthusian working housing.

The rather heavy weight and machismo of arts and crafts eventually slimmed down a tad and got lighter on its feet with the work of the brilliant alcoholic designer Harvey Ellis, who worked for Stickley for a very short time before he slipped into eventual oblivion. Vertical elements were tapered and shrunk and his sometimes bowed stiles evoked a Fleischer like sense of humour under Harvey.

I remember reading a furniture book from the nineteens that snidely derided the arts and crafts movement as a bastard amalgamation of this and that. Ghetto trash. Next thing you know Barbara Streisand is spending millions on the stuff. The patrician mantique establishment hated the populist or egalitarian undertones of the movement. It's ascendence was preceded and sometimes segued into older nouveau movement which morphed into secessionism in Germany and Austria, also known as jugendstil as well as the more florid english arts and crafts movement.

Nouveau, with its sinewy tendrils and elegant line died a natural death both under its slight pretension and own weight and the ascendance of the next thing, which turned out to be art deco. Jazz, flappers, hip flasks, more fun. Suffragette city. Instead of a reliance on nature's forms for inspiration in deco its adherents now celebrated the machine and the new budding age of technology and motion.

Nouveau came back on the scene in the 1960's, in the work of Stanley Mouse and Bill Ogden and other members of the wonderful psychedelic schools. I was talking to a big  conventional poster dealer I know the other day and she says that she rarely sells any nouveau posters anymore, any Lautrecs, Cheret's or Mucha's, it just doesn't really resonate with the youth today. Things just don't stay hip for ever.

There is a great scene in Patrick Dennis's 1930's era book Auntie Mame where Mame is talking about those dreadful Tiffany lamps with all the bats and spiders on them. I always laughed at the passage. There was a definite departure in the thirties.Because these lamps that were selling for a million dollars a few years ago were being given away for peanuts for a large part of the last century. Now the market is getting tough again. Tastes change. And recycle, morphing slightly with each new rebirth and iteration.

I could do a scholarly dissertation and trace the lines of arts and crafts into its descendent modernism but will spare you. And finish up by once more invoking the supreme rule of the collecting business that I like to call Robert's rule since I came up with it in some long forgotten epiphany. The rule goes like this. People reject the art of their parents and embrace the art of their grandparents.

When I got an idea about what I thought design cool was, the people that were leaving this mortal coil did their collecting in the teens through the thirties, my grandfather's generation. A fertile time full of deco and the revivals, mediterranean, spanish, italianate, gothic, mission, WPA. There was a lot of great material. Lots of great paintings. They even paid artists to paint in the Works Progress times, hired them all over the place.

Now we run into a problem today. The mid century, for all the glamour bestowed upon it by madmen, was a pretty vacant period for the decorative arts. Unless melmac and banlon come back. And the truth is that we seem to be regurgitating the most godawful artifacts of the modern period, from Parzinger, Dickinson and Dunbar to boomerang tables. The truly great artists of the fifties and sixties work was and is exceedingly expensive, Nakashima, Esherick and Maloof to name a few. Most people's parents couldn't afford a Ruscha or a Diebenkorn or an Arneson, even if they were hip enough to know what one actually was.

I love all design periods but have to admit to being only a grudging modernist. It is a flavor of the week thing now at the modernism shows, horrific seventies now becoming hip, white shag and cork and  horrid lamps not fit for a Ramada Inn. Just because something was once created doesn't mean it's not an abomination and that it is worthy of eventual resuscitation. Some of the work is just plain terrible.

But modernism was a definite aesthetic departure. Sam Maloof used to buy Indian rugs from me that no one else wanted but he loved. Wide Ruins and Chinle's in dissonant and vulgar tones of pink and ochre and coral. He and Millard Sheets, his one time boss, and the Scripps artists had ventured into a radically different palette and rules of engagement and had made a conscious decision to leave the past behind. Took me a while to see what a genius and trailblazer he really was.

I also notice fewer and fewer kids and older and older dealers at the shows, as hand crafted work in metal, wood or painted canvas has less and less resonation with kids born in a world formed of plastic and metal and the latest electric toy. Antique shops are closing all over the country as ebay and horrible material and lack of interest take their toll. Ce'st la vie. A new generation born on over sweetened breakfast cereal and too much television that has the attention span of a hyperlink.

My trajectory has been in more of a classical direction the last five years, feeling more comfortable in the 18th and 19th century than a present I have to pretend to like or understand. Jarre wall sculptures and Nelson and all of this stuff that feels so synthetic and cold to me. But that's just me. I was talking about this general subject with a friend a few weeks ago and we came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as important art, high art or low art or antiques and objects d'art. In a certain sense, everything is visceral and everything is decorative at some level.

A couple in their twenties walked into my store the other day and started laughing at an old sony discman near my P.A. "My dad had one of those," he explained in wonder. The one thing they appreciated for being old and I didn't even realize what a find I really had in the old walkman. Only thing they could relate to. Could have cared less about the rest of the contents of my store. I guess I come from a different age.

I have watched a lot of collecting waves come and go in my years in the business. China, porcelain, sterling, Sascha Brastoff, Bauer, bakelite, the mexican silver boom, Fahrner, cookie jars, Loetz, Pillin, Rolex bubble backs, Griswold, Roycoft, Heinz, the list goes on and on. Each generation creates its own fads. So as dealers we sometimes find ourselves tying our rope to a specific dock only to untie our  rope when that boat maybe leaves the shore, maybe never to be seen again. Tying and untying, trying to stay a step ahead and keep food on the table. It can be a real problem, especially trying to read the future when you wake up one morning and maybe find out that everybody suddenly stopped caring.

So I guess the moral of the story for those of us hardy souls still in the business, is that make sure that you really like it when you buy it cause you just might have it for a very long time.

Bumble Bee

Here is the Searchers' take on Bumble Bee. LaVern Baker released the original version in 1960.

Golden State Gestapo

California Department of Fish and Game stormtroopers are at it again. Removing stuffed animals that have sat on a shelf in a bar for over fifty years. Thanks to reader Brent for sending this over.

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Another State Fish and Game story in the local paper today. Lindy O'Leary, a Poway area doctor, had to surrender the birds that she had rescued and was rehabilitating at her Wildlife Center of San Diego to authorities yesterday. If Fish and Game, who had concerns about her program, can not find homes for the raptors they will of course euthanize them, like they did after the last seizure in 2004. Sounds a bit screwy to me but what do I know?

"Veterinarian Jeffrey Jenkins, who has known O’Leary for about 20 years through his practice, the Avian & Exotic Animal Hospital in San Diego, knows first hand the medical condition of the birds O’Leary has cared for because he has provided avian checkups to the birds in her care, he said.
“Her animals have never been sick, except during the time they were taken by Fish and Game, when some of them died in the agency’s facility,” Jenkins said.
He added, “She just wants the animals to live out their lives in a place (the Wildlife Center in Poway) where they are comfortable.”

Help Me Make It Through The Night

Stringing non sequiturs

This will be a slow spill.

Evangelical divorce rate leads nation.

Great story of kitchen violence from Helen McHargue.

Don't hang rubber testicles from your rear view mirror in this part of town, son.

China’s state TV claims the Philippines is part of China.

Bravo to Al Franken for calling out the Justice Department and requesting information on cell phone gps data obtained that was obtained without a legal warrant.

War on the infidels. Time to bomb mecca?

Kudos to Howard Stern for his comments regarding the timidity of our president on the gay marriage issue. Being a vice president is a godawful thankless job. I applaud Joe Biden for getting off the fence and speaking from his heart. It is a shame that our equivocator in chief was forced to take a stand by his cabinet rather than doing the right thing of his own volition. Calculating to the point of nausea. Mitt of course we now find doing his best lord of the flies impression in high school, nothing says fun in America like beating up a gay guy and cutting off his hair. I sure miss the old days, don't you? Mitt doesn't even want to recognize something so decent as civil unions, guaranteeing the most basic right of survivorship. The new dark ages.

I have had readers tell me that they want to know what is happening with my ebay rant. Should I put it back up and keep you informed or was the harsh robert just too much to take?

The new blogger interface is terrible. I switched back to the old today and it was so easy. Everything lined up in front of you. Soon they will kill the old one and I will be forced to use the crappy new one.

New phone next week. They are trading me in for a bionic. Won't swap for an iphone 4gs because of some apple agreement. bummer.

Leslie follows the world much better than I obviously do. She pointed out yesterday that the stop light on Mission and Ammunition has a green left turn, a forward and then another green left turn signal before traffic goes in the opposite direction. never have seen that before. Marine traffic.

Ate at the wonderful Bayside restaurant in Newport Beach for lunch. ´'s favorite. I had a salad, great bread and then venison medallions with caramelized pear in demi. ´had very fresh tartare and baby quail that tasted like fois gras. Incredible. I pulled the silver dodge into a minyan of black power cars.  Got to have a black car up there.

Stop the presses. Mayans now say that the world won't end.

James Brown & Robert Palmer

It takes quite a singer to share the stage with the godfather and Palmer hangs quite well.

North County Hills and Oaks, Maurice Braun

I have a beautiful new painting. Check it out.

groove is in the heart

Isla de Santa Catherina

Leslie and I have just returned from a rather epic voyage to Catalina courtesy of our buddies R & D. Accompanied by accent aigu´ and friend Kent, we left early Friday morning on a four day trip to the neighboring island where I spent so much time in my misspent youth. Thankfully the statute of limitations and all known warrants have expired and I was allowed to travel around the atoll freely and unmolested.

This was the best trip to Santa Catalina that I have ever had, for a variety of reasons, including good friends, copious quantities of liquid refreshment, fin whales, huge boiling pods of dolphins, my sweetheart, an orgy of food and last but not least, a good book.

If I had any complaints at all it is merely the mild discomfort of the disease known in sailor's circles as landsickness, my legs and equilibrium still swaying at present to the gentle rocking of a now nonexistent sea.

The trip started out with a bang, a large rogue wave slamming the boat just outside of Oceanside Harbor, spilling the contents of the refrigerator and giving us all a good shake, with me starting to whistle the "three hour tour" song. We all personally regrouped, then set our course and sped through a mild chop at about 12 knots for the four hour boat ride.

It was a bit overcast but after a pretty non eventful ride, spied land ahead and saw the famed casino come into view as we motored into Avalon. The casino is the perfect marriage of art deco and spanish revival. Built by Wrigley on a spot known as Sugarloaf Point, the casino was once a dance floor and high school. The original casino was razed and this current, splendid building was built in 1929, designed by architects Sumner A. Spaulding and Walter Weber.

I love the graceful line of the corbels with the top ellipse so playfully squashed.

´'s brother and his boyfriend were by chance on the island on their own yacht and he came over to say hello, a wonderful fellow.

Leslie made a lovely beef, barley and mushroom soup and we were replenished. We lined up and staged the wine bottles for the trip, pinot's on the left, cabs on the right, stolid meritage's proudly making up the rear. A flotilla of wine, no way we could drink all that. (guess again? ed.)

After a brief rest we took the tender to shore and decided to rent a golf car and take a quick tour of the Island and give the legs a stretch. We headed up to the Wrigley Memorial, one of my favorite native gardens and places to walk.

Here is a picture of a frieze of an interlocking cackle of rooks at the memorial that has always enchanted me. We were walking back to the gardens when we got a real treat. Leslie spied a Santa Catalina Island fox. She motioned to the lovely, diminutive creature and it seemed tame and froze in its tracks. Unfortunately my camera is acting up, something that continued to bedevil me throughout the trip and I never got the shot that I desired, but I am sure that you get the general idea. It fled into the bushes after a moment. A charming little critter indeed. We felt blessed to have caught a glimpse.

Besides the imported bison, sheep, goats and russian boars, Catalina has a small host of native or endemic inhabitants including the Beechey's ground squirrel, Santa Catalina Island deer mouse, Santa Catalina Island shrew, Beurick's wren, Hutton's vireo and California quail, all only extant in this one special locale.

Native plants include the Catalina Bedstraw, Catalina Ironwood, Catalina Live forever (great name), Catalina Mahogany, Catalina Manzanita and St. Catherine's Lace. By the way, the island was named for St. Catherine, it being her saint's day the day Vizcaino sailed to her shores and proclaimed her a new possession of Spain.

After our walk we stopped off at the old Bird Park and I took a few shots of the classic catalina tile murals.

We went out to dinner. I can hear the cries already. Anytime I speak of food, the cries and protestations about my sybaritic excesses rise up from the din and into the peanut gallery. Patrician swine, glutton, dionysion fatso, I can hear it now. "You are always broke and yet you eat like a king." If I may, we have no children, no expensive college tuition, orthodontics or ritalin bills, can't you leave me to my few vices in peace? Diet starts next week...

In any case, the meal at the Avalon Grill was marginal at best anyway, impossible to get a decent meal on the island past pancakes so I won't bore you with the particulars, a too sweet tomato ragu, an over salted pot roast, pretty much as expected. And the last and only meal we had off the boat, my shipmates all being exceedingly great cooks who kept us in a constant eating regimen; oatmeal, then breakfast, morning snack, pre lunch, lunch, well you get the idea.

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We all were tired and sacked in early. The Catalina Fim Festival was in full swing, the guest of honor Marvel's Stan Lee. There was an eleven o'clock p.m. showing af the Avengers in 3D with Lee moderating but we just couldn't suck it up and all quickly crashed. Leslie and I had the stateroom near the bow. It had a nice window aloft and we had nice salt air the whole trip and an occasional big fat moon. We were very comfortable and I slept like an innocent baby.

*

The next day was truly wonderful, one of the best days in recent memory. Firstly, I forgot to tell you that I swore off phones, newspapers, computers and any other communication devices or electronic instruments for the entire trip. Total disconnect. Wrote with an actual pen. Loved it, never even tempted to reach out, cut off from letters and emails and blogs and bills and phone calls. It was frankly heaven. Didn't want to know.

Secondly my hostess R gave me an incredible book, as a gift. The book was James Lipton's 1968 tour de force, An Exaltation of Larks, fairly recently revised. This book plumbs the deep and rewarding expanse of the literary convention known as terms of venery. These terms are words for nouns in common and spring from ancient english manuscripts like the Book of St. Albans pub. 1486 by the schoolmaster printer.

Venereal terms, if I may quote a few of the more pedestrian usages from the book for illustrative purposes only, are phrases like a skulk of foxes, a baptism of fire, a hand of bananas. Some of my favorites from the book include; a tissue of lies, a thrave of threshers, neverthriving of jugglers, siege of herons, illusion of painters, gam of whales, cry of players. Gam of whales, we are informed was originally a term for the infrequent gathering of whalers, who might be at sea for years before seeing an old comrade but was eventually used to describe the whales themselves. This book was a master work and would be an incredible gift for anyone who appreciates the beauty of language. I even came up with one of my own, a fauntelroying of yachts, what do you think?

Somebody asked me if I was a wordsmith this weekend and I had to reluctantly admit that maybe I was. A junior league wordsmith. Make up for lack of quality with sheer volume.  Can't hide from it. I believe that I have nearly earned the sobriquet although that is hard to proclaim for oneself without sounding like an arrogant and conceited bore. Whatever. Collector magazine calls me in this month's edition "a ferocious blogger with a wicked sense of style." I kind of like that. I'm no William Safire but I do believe that I can almost see his house from here.

*

I saw the novelist Ann Patchett speak last night. She was very bright and a great speaker, fresh from her stint on the Colbert Report. She like I, does not watch television, me going on 20 years. She talked about how she sketches out an outline for a story and fights the urge to deviate halfway for a sexier idea. Never profane or too ribald. She says that she writes the kind of books that she would want to read, one of the best pointers for a writer I could ever imagine.

*

Others came and went but Leslie and I stayed on the boat in bliss, reading and talking. She had purchased some vanilla scented blood orange hybrid at the Friday Farmer's Market and I discovered that it made a beautiful marriage with Sky pineapple vodka and a dash of tangelo juice. Extremely complex and fantastic. I ate and drank so much that day and me a teetoller. I kept thinking of that great Hemingway quote. "An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools." I really let it go in both departments. At one point the hostess looked at me and cocked her head, asking me if I was eating again?

*

Living in tight quarters with five other individuals can be tricky. Bathrooms must be shared, privacy must be respected, space must be allocated, things must be cleaned, cleared and organized. Showers squeegeed. Hot water must by preserved. I took the spartan route, in keeping with my new ascetic mold and limited myself to cold showers, a process made easier by visualizing past showers under the Kalalau waterfall in Kauai from many moons ago. Chores must be shared (a department my wife said that I sadly came up short in.) I think that we all did a very good job and got along well. The most important thing is being comfortable with each other and I think that we all are.

*

Saturday was the celebration of Buddha's birth, death and lifetime among his devotees. In asia the large, full moon that we enjoyed is known as the Full Flower Moon. We took the tender out after our delicious steak dinner, replete with Kent's fantastic hand rub of cinnamon and various other spices and nosed our way out of the harbor towards Jewfish Point. My camera was fighting the low light, even at the highest ISO but I got a few tolerable shots, which I hope to process soon.

*

I could go on and on and will mostly spare you after just a bit more. Our neighbor was a rather large man who liked to stride upon his scowl sporting nothing much more than a red codpiece. Meals were simply superb, salmon from Alaska, pesto pasta and scampi, fresh eggs from home, yoghurt and fruit for  breakfast, could not have been better. We knocked down frame after frame of wine bottles stacked like tenpins on the shelf. Got to kind of loving and never reached sloppy drunk.

*

Avalon is such a small portion of Catalina. There are so many interesting spots on the vast island that can only be reached by off road vehicle or hard work. The next morning we motored around past the isthmus to the other side of the Isle and docked at Little Harbor. It was difficult to find a suitable mooring for the large craft, the first buoy's stern line hopelessly entangled. A man putted out on his boat, said that he had just retired after 14 years as the harbor master's boat. Just when I try to leave, they pull me back in... He was a nice guy and told us to go have a cocktail while he cut and unravelled, dragged the lines and put things back in order. We did.

*

This side of the island is more to my personal taste, untouched and free from the mediterranean hustle and bustle of Avalon. A map gives clues to some wonderful areas in which to explore; Valley of the Moon, Sheep Chute, Valley of Ollas, Rancho Escondido (hidden ranch). We took the tender to the dock, ´and Kent went on a strenuous hike up a mountain and we walked to the isthmus to pay our mooring fee. The place was filled with hikers and backpackers, looked a bit like a parking lot at a Phish concert.

*

Speaking of ollas, I read that the native inhabitants travelled back and forth to the mainland to bring back the giant steatite jars that they used. The Gabrielinos were said to have created a native religious order that drew followers amongst natives throughout Southern California.

*

I noticed that a specimen of my favorite palm was growing in a meadow to our left. Jubaea Chilensis, the chilean wine palm. The one stood about 42' high, with its fat trunk. I didn't bring a camera but here is a picture of some of the jubaeas in Mission Bay near the Bahia.

Palm fanciers like yours truly can tell you where most of these palms reside in San Diego county. The true king of palms, cut down for wine in its native country. One of the few palms that is reported to grow in the snow. Fat trunk, shaving brush frond head. Rare. Planted extensively in San Francisco and Fresno area in the 1920's if I can remember correctly. Shawn in Thailand got my palm books.

Oddly enough, I took a wrong turn in Burlingame last week and ran into another great specimen in a residential neighborhood. We have a small one growing but it is a notoriously slow grower.

We were some of the very few inhabitants of the harbor and it was pretty epic. Clear sky and great music, we were banging out Quicksilver Messenger Service at a volume probably rarely heard in the vicinity.

*

Yesterday we had a quick breakfast and got under way. Faster now, the ocean was flat as a pancake and we were making good time. First a small pod of dolphins, then a larger species, and then a new venereal term, a boil of dolphins, dolphins everywhere, bow riding, surfing our wake, jumping all over the place. Hundreds of them.

Soon after our get together with our dolphin buddies we had an even more extraordinary experience. Three enormous whales popped up and circled our boat, herding us into the middle of the pen. We were not harassing them and left them to their peace as soon as we were able. Consulting our reference books, they were either Sei, Bryde of Fin whales. I estimate their length at 60 to 80 feet. We never saw their tail section as is typical for this type of whale. Their spouting was loud and powerful.

After about a half hour the gentle giants submerged and sailed into the ether. So incredible.

I want to thank both our hosts, my wife and both of our other friends for helping make a very memorable weekend! Cheers. One week from today is our eighteenth wedding anniversary. We wish to let all of our friends know how much we love them and how important all of you out there are to me and Leslie. Peace/ love and all the other anachronisms.

The time to put on sail is when you feel the breeze

Sail on Sailor © Rick Griffin

Heading out to open seas. Catch you next week.

Going Up To The Country, Gonna Paint My Mailbox Blue

LG Lucid, the L stands for lemon

Have you ever noticed how in general, customer service just stinks these days? Let me introduce you to my own version of Verizon hell.

The story starts when I dropped my original droid April 2, shattering the glass. My fault. I would have continued to use the darned thing but didn't want to get cut so I took a trip to the local Verizon store. I was looking for a reliable phone with a small footprint and the lady at the Via Rancho Escondido location told me that I would be better off with the new LG Lucid than the iphone 4s I had been contemplating purchasing.

This was a new model that I believe had been released the last week of March and I was sold. Small package and 4g to boot. A very nice man there named Oscar helped me synch all my contacts and get me rolling. Unfortunately within five minutes of plugging it in to the car the battery got exceedingly hot and a message flashed that due to excessive heat it was entering shutdown mode. A half an hour later I returned the phone which Oscar deemed defective. Not an auspicious start but hey, things happen.

I get a new LG Lucid and it seems okay. I notice a few sniggling little problems. Bad microphone, terrible audibility and less signal reception than even my old dinosaur, the original droid. That's okay, I will deal. I also notice that battery life quickly becomes nonexistent, even worse than the old motorola. You get two weeks to return the phone on the locked in contract and I gave it serious consideration but didn't.

Four days later the second phone goes down with its own battery/port problems. Can't be fixed. I asked them to change me out to the iphone 4s, after all this is two failures in 19 days. No can do, they tell me.

"Why didn't you bring it back four days ago?" the girl asked.

"Uh, because it broke yesterday."

My attempts at logical discourse failed to fire. The fact that they were selling a defective instrument that had broken down twice in less than three weeks didn't fire the faintest cognitive spark in their noggins. Can't trade you out, we will mail you yet another one soon. Great. You would think that they might consider actully testing these instruments before rushing them to market but what do I know?

I bit my lip at their attitude and asked to speak to a superior or at least to get an email address so that I could write a letter to a person at an executive level to tell them what I thought about the quality of their technology. Sorry sir, not feasible, call customer service and try to get the manager of a manager of a manager of a manager. This is Google style customer service and unfortunately the way that things are going these days. Either get on a chat board and have other incompetent people equally if not dumber than myself try to solve a technological problem or talk to some tech brahmin in New Delhi that you can't understand.

I get an email from Verizon that my phone could be picked up this week from Escondido. I returned from San Francisco monday night and drove down to the store today. And it was shackled. The store had been closed down, no forwarding address. Went out for a pack of smokes and never came back.

There was a sign for a San Marcos location. I called the number. "You got my phone?" They said no, it probably went to Carmel Valley. I was really getting steamed by this point and called the customer service number and vented and received the evaluation survey when I was not exactly in the best of moods.

I got a representative on the phone and let them have it. No credibility or accountability either for that matter. And no crappy phone replacement either. Might be in the vacated store's mailbox, they would try to get me another one next week.

Now I had driven forty minutes each way in traffic from Fallbrook, losing gas money and time. Why couldn't they have just sent an email saying hey, the store is now closed down. I was told that was an automated message, humans don't get involved in such common courtesies. Glad I didn't drive to San Marcos or Carmel Valley. Guy said that there was no chance that I could change to an iphone, apple wouldn't let them. I am pretty much stuck with a phone that breaks down and dies, at least for the next two years or until I get fed up enough to pony up the gelt needed to change to a competitor.

You might remember my last Verizon rant, the one where they put insurance payments on my phone without telling me, charges that I had specifically declined. They would only refund three months of my overcharges, said I should have read my bill better. I started wondering if Verizon was a con man operation. Fellow in Carlsbad gave me a third line upgrade and without my knowledge or complicity said I was a veteran and now I can't get my deceased mother's line off my bill.

I could and would go to ATT but I would be hit with a whopper of early termination fees and equipment charges. So they have me right where they want me, delivering crappy technology that repeatedly breaks down, larcenously overcharging me for services that I sufficiently declined and not having the decency to let me even know that they had moved.

*

I can't do much. I am only one guy. They obviously could care less about the quality of their products and service. But I can tell all of you who have even given a glimmer of thought to buying an LG Lucid not to do it. Save yourself the trouble. It is a piece of crap. The battery will overheat and fail. And Verizon will do nothing about it. Can't wait to get phone number three. Anybody want to take the over on how long it lasts?

I would love to get some responses with your own Verizon and LG horror stories. I know that you must have quite a few of your own.

Bad phone, caveat emptor!

Bobjoke

Robert DeGoff sent this one over:

A Knock on the Door 
An old man goes to answer a knock at the door one evening.... he finds two sheriff deputy's standing there.
"Sir, are you married?" one deputy asked. "Why yes" the old man replied," for 48 years."
"Do you have a photograph of your wife sir?" the second deputy questioned.
The old man pulled a picture out his wallet and handed to the officers. They looked it over and handed it back to him.
"Sir, I'm sorry but it looks like your wife has been hit by a truck."
The old man says, "I know sir, but she's got a wonderful personality and she's a great cook." 

Your Time Is Gonna Come

Checking out the hot young chicks

It is amazing how fast the hawks have matured. When I left monday before last they were still mostly white with variegated dark speckles like appaloosas or chocolate chip ice cream. Now they are mostly brown and quite large.

I rushed to my site overlooking the nest this morning to make sure that the condor hadn't nailed any of these defenseless birds. I don't think a red tailed hawk could hold its own against the large bird. Thankfully all three were present and accounted for. Shortly after I stopped, mother flew back into the now crowded nest.

Sisters are doing it

Read a great story in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, City Insider by Heather Knight entitled Gathering of dem women turns into angry showdown. Poor feminists get mad at rich feminists but in the end, of course men are to blame. Read it, it's priceless.

Audra Mcdonald

May Day

I had driven all day and was tired. I had delivered a sold painting to a beautiful home near the Stanislaus River earlier but the day had gotten very long after a grueling, albeit successful week. After the drop I visited a friend and colleague in Oakdale who is unfortunately now forced to raise his grandchildren due to some unfortunate familial disfunction. Bought a few nice things from him, too.

I pulled up to the Veterans Administration building in Fresno around two o'clock. A lone and frail figure sat in a shaded area out in front of the complex.

My eyes focussed and I quickly realized that the diminutive figure was my own father. I slowly walked towards him and felt waves of recognition, a good thing. I ran up to him and embraced the once stout but now very thin man. He may not have known who I was exactly but I felt recognition and joy.

There is no question that Alzheimers is an insidious disease. My dad is in a very innocent state right now that has its own strange beauty. If it is even permissible to use such an optimistic term when talking about a malady that is so cruel to the host and difficult and terrible for the surviving family members. I will say that he doesn't seem to have deteriorated much since my last visit, he asked about my brother in Canada and even called me by my name once. Stopped with the continual mnemonic chanting activity from last time. Actually seemed better and more cogent. Maybe the medication is helping?

We had a meeting with dad's psychiatrist. It is mandatory protocol when there is a medication change. My pop has been acting out lately, shoved somebody, apparently doesn't like being changed. I listened to the litany of transgressions and decided to spill to the doctor. "Hey, he sort of sounds okay to me. Just like his dad and just like me, the Sommers male line has a short fuse. Sounds like he is just being himself." My grandfather had pulled  somebody out of a car and kicked his ass well into his seventies. Once saw my dad take on a whole bus load of young punks by himself. The tall doctor, who didn't want to shake my hand, claiming some virus, laughed. Neat guy, UCSD, trained in Encinitas. Now he is stuck in Fresno, 90 degrees yesterday.

He told us about the physiologic differences in the over one hundred known types of dementia and Alzheimer's. Some of a frontal lobe origin, some hypothalamus, the Parkinson's type, described the many other forms of it. Unfortunately they can not be determined by any invasive or noninvasive tests at present, it is only able to be categorized during autopsy. So they have to sort of guess regarding proper treatment, throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

My father was a brilliant mathematician, wrote amateur treatises on economic theory and was a very successful businessman. Was a bit of a shit at times but hey, who isn't?

My pop is in the unenviable position of getting close to outliving his long term health policy. Then I don't know what we will do. This level of care is very expensive. But in some ways the guy is a horse and might have the lost laugh and outlive us all. Shit. I worry about his wife. She misses him but the doctor doesn't want that to happen anymore, says that the transition is too disorienting for him. I said goodbye to the doctor and my step mother again but pulled back my hand at the last second and told him that I had forgotten about his phobia. Just kidding and a bit nasty but it was fun to goof on the good natured doctor.

It was good to see my dad. He told me that I needed to lose thirty pounds. Nice.

I left the hospital and was very hungry. Kind of a rough neighborhood a block away I found a barbecue that looked real funky and dangerous. I stopped. Ruben's Rib Shack on Clinton.

I hadn't eaten all day and I was famished and thirsty. Left Marin at 7 that morning.

A decrepit bmw pulled up to the curb in front of me. Junkie white girl, black dude driving. I followed her into the restaurant.

"They don't own the place now. We bought it three months ago."

The girl slurred something under her addled breath and left.

I ordered a rib sandwich and gave the place the once over. Miles Davis poster. Nice and funky. Cambodian jeweler next door a couple inner city churches.

I looked at the menu again and saw that they had smoked salmon. Really smoked, sounded interesting, had to get some for the trip. The nice kid behind the counter led me to their spic and span bathroom and when I got back started telling me about the operation. No flame touches anything, proprietary house rub. UNlike the previous owner, no msg. The rib sandwich was extraordinary, bit through a few soft bones and chewed them right up. Very spicy, perfectly fatty.The pasta salad was fantastic as well, with olives and hearts of palm. I really was digging the place. Ate the salmon on the way home, not quite as good as the other but plenty good. Couple pieces of white bread, hadn't eaten any in ages. tasted good and fresh.

*

I see neat patterns that life throws at me all the time. Vivid and overactive imagination. This graphic image was shot from the driver's seat doing seventy when I got behind a pipe truck. The pipe distances helped create a lot of tonal gradations.

Got home at a decent hour, dead tired, without much difficulty.
*

Spent the night before with friend Ron, who lives in San Rafael near a relatively new deli, Millers. Sounds pretty goishe to me.Anyway we go out to dinner and split a cornbeef and each have a cup of matzoh ball soup. Waitress says to me, what kind of bread? I look at my friend, are you serious? I says to the waitress, ma-am did you ever hear what Milton Berle once said; every time a gentile orders cornbeef on white bread, somewhere in the world a jew dies? She laughed nervously and I looked around the table. Uh, you do have brown mustard don't you? Lucky for her she did. Sandwich and soup were good.

*

Leslie was driving down our road and saw a condor in the tree. Right by the hawk nest. Red head, white patch, enormous. My San Diego bird field book says that Gymnogyps californianus (Shaw) or the California Condor is now extirpated in San Diego county. This one evidently never got the word. Scott (1936) heard from an Indian living near Palomar Mountain that in the 1870's you could find fifteen, twenty, fifty in the sky at the same time. Nest near Warner Ranch reported in 1859. Sightings in Poway, Escondido, San Luis Rey, Santa Ysabel, nothing after 1903.

I remember reading a 19th century ethno field guide on the Pala indians that describes the medicine man dressing in a full condor feather suit. Also cutting his tongue out and mysteriously reattaching it. But that is a story for another day.

I told Bruce about Leslie's find. He says that he saw it twice in the last year and as recently as two weeks ago.

*

I saw a bunch of kids on top of the overpass in Berkeley with eat the rich banners and finally figured out it was Mayday weekend. Saw a sign in the Central Valley advertising beyond earth day that I wondered about. Beyond in what way?

This guy was walking downtown in Fallbrook today and I had to grab my camera and take a shot. Mike and his dog Goldie. Why is the earth sold and who bought it? Got a rap about the nasty corporations and how rotten humans are and like who was I to disagree? Great to see a little free expression in our quaint little town.

*

Jon Harwood posted this great shot on Fallbrook Shutters today. He calls it How our clothing gets color. Jon has mastered a lot of esoteric photo techniques like gum bichromate and he likes to play with hand coloring. Very nice. A hand tinted silver print.

© Jon Harwood