Red blues

In case you were not aware, it is presidential election season in the United States of America. Democrat Hillary Clinton is running against Republican Donald Trump and there are also a few third party candidates sprinkled in the mix.

If I may be permitted to opine, I would say that as nasty and vitriolic as the current battle is, the real battle is taking place in the Republican Party, which is close to civil war at present.

And in the long term, that ideological battle will have greater ramifications nationally than the race between our two current front runners.

You see the principles of the Grand Old Party don't seem to resonate with the average american the same way they used to and people are scared. And the in house people can't quite figure it out.

Not that there are no splits or division in the Democratic party but we have seen nothing like this sheitstorm.

By all accounts and past prognostications, Jeb Bush should be the GOP standard bearer right now. But something happened on the way to the coronation; the Tea Party morphed into the Freedom Caucus and declared war on the establishment for not being aggressive enough. The base wanted on outsider.

John Boehner was the first casualty in this range war, trying to herd cats so that the party didn't look like fools with their obstructionist tactics. They begged Paul Ryan to take the speakership, a job he didn't want, now the same folks are calling for his head.

It is a funny mix, you have your social conservatives and evangelicals, the pro trade fiscal types, the anti trade protectionist fiscal types, the pro immigration/cheap labor business folks pitted against the anti immigration, put up a wall crowd that sometimes includes white separatists and racists. Isolationists are squaring up against war hawks. Trump vs. anti Trump. Doesn't seem to be a lot the Repubs agree on, excepting of course their hatred for Democrats and Hillary Clinton.

Now Trump is burning down the whole house, the party close to shambles. Down ballot Republicans are associating and disassociating with Trump like spinning weather vanes. Forty percent of the base are ready to pick up their muskets and start blood watering the liberty tree.

The post election infighting and saga should be real interesting to watch.

Not we democrats' problem. Fix your own house.

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Senators Charles Grassley and Mitch McConnell didn't want to vote for Obama SCOTUS candidate Merrick Garland because they thought that for the first time in history, the next President should get the chance to do it. Now John McCain, Ted Cruz and some yutz at the Cato Institute named Ilya Shapiro think it might be better off to never approve a Supreme Court Justice nominated by a liberal, to let them all die off.

Is this any way to run a republic? Can you imagine the hue and cry if the shoe was on the other foot? But dems of course would never act so cravenly.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz has reportedly got a whole mess of Hillary Clinton investigations on track in the event she becomes President.

Sen. Mitch McConnell started off on the wrong foot with President Obama, immediately signaling that the party strategy was to obstruct and make him a one term President. It is heartbreaking, childish, asinine, ridiculous (insert the adjective of your choice here) behavior. The country deserves better than to be subjected to four more years of partisan bickering and congressional malfeasance.

Good people of both parties need to start working together for the good of the country.

10.26

Rob Zombie

With Italy, Santa Barbara and Palm Springs dropping like dominos in quick succession I have been feeling pretty fried. The bronchial hack that I have been fighting for months hasn't helped matters, nor has the lack of fundage at the shows.

I was so looking forward to the next week off for recuperation before I resumed my show schedule in San Francisco.

Oops. Looked at the schedule and I guess I screwed up. Back on the road in a mere couple days. Feels like the march to Balanga City.



Round and round and round we go
where it stops nobody knows?

Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness

Wisconsin Cheese

As first reported in The Nation, Green Bay City Clerk Kris Teske refused to open a satellite voting office on the campus of University of Wisconsin Green Bay because she said that students tended to vote Democrat and she didn't want to give them an advantage.

Teske was appointed by Republican Mayor Jim Schmitt, who is an ally of Gov. Scott Walker (R), a voting restriction proponent, according to The Nation.

More on the story here at Talking Points Memo.

Can you imagine the hue and cry from the right if a clerk refused to open a voting office at a military base because soldiers tend to vote Republican?

Brian's old trailer

I believe that I took this shot with my Sigma DP2 - Merrill

Little Richard - Rip It Up

The influencers

Isak sent this link over.

I write a widely read blog. I touch a lot of people, especially since I don't push it, don't facebook it or instagram it, or snapchat it, or tweet. I had a lot of opportunities to sell advertising through the years but I resisted. Thought it would or could subtly alter the message. Money has a way of messing things up. Wanted to put something out that was honest and hopefully occasionally beautiful. Missed the very narrow selling out window. Damn.

Guess I missed the boat.

Modern Post Mortem

I am back from my most recent excursion, the Fall Modernism show in Palm Springs.

Unfortunately, for the second week in a row, a show failed to fire for me.

Of course there are a thousand reasons one can glom on to when business is stinky and I can point to a few easy excuses.

The show might be too early in the season, it is dwarfed in the local community by the ever popular Spring show, there weren't enough exhibitors to whet the local or Los Angeles appetites, election tsuris, yadda yadda.

The more probable reason, at least in my case, is that my material is losing its traction with the new generation.

The reality is that I have always been a very reluctant modernist. When I first started doing modernism shows, at the Santa Monica Civic twenty or so years ago, all sorts of styles comfortably fell under the rubric of twentieth century design, including art nouveau, art deco, moderne, arts and crafts, WPA, psychedelia, punk and post modern.

Things have changed. They have become much more parochial. The window of acceptability has shrunk to a narrow crevice located somewhere between MadMen and Kardashian. Nouveau and even deco are dead in the market as are arts and crafts and the wonderful WPA era. Nothing pre 1950.

All of the stuff I actually liked is now as popular as a fart in church. Ethnographic is out, Historical is out. Clutter is of course out. What are we left with? Sort of a machine made space Calvinism.

Walking through the shops was like walking through a cookie cutter jungle of extruded plastic jelly donuts. The worst of fifties pottery, in the favored hues of avocado and ochre, stand across from a tapestry of blotchy bad abstract canvases and vividly enameled copper plates. Oppressive.

With the exception of some very expensive and truly wonderful furniture by Art Carpenter, I saw nothing that resonated with my design sense at the shops. They seem to be selling a certain look by the pound. But the pieces themselves, to my admittedly prejudiced and jaundiced eye, looked quite undistinguished.

I have sold what I think is the best of the best of design, at least of what I could afford, since I first started selling and collecting art in the mid 1970's. Design of any kind.

My philosophy was always that great design fit together, regardless of the era in which it was conceived or executed.

I have sold Natzler and Beato, Maloof and Nakashima, along with Sargent, Redmond and Reynolds.

While I have always kept a foot in both the classic and modern worlds, I have also skewed a little more Flintstones than Jetsons. And always favored craftsmen who knew how to use their brushes and tools over the pure conceptualists.

My day is waning. People simply don't care anymore.

They don't get taught about history, art or design in schools, they buy their mass marketed furnishings at mass marketed stores like Walmart and Ikea and as long as they have ample gruel and a permanent connection to the cyberhive and television, they are happy. Feathering the nest appears to be a relic of the past.

In addition pedigree and authorship seems to be out. The needle has swung from collectable to purely decorative. Not necessarily a bad thing but terrible for my business model. Gary Breitwieser told me twenty years ago; the era of connoisseurship is ending. He was right.

I worked in Palm Springs for two years in the early nineties, doing redevelopment work. I went to boarding school on top of the mountain, had one of my greatest personal sports victories at the Stadium soccer field. But the Palm Springs I loved, the Desert Inn, twenties era rancho-spanish Palm Springs, is now a thing of the past.

Lovely old red tile structures are now boarded up and awaiting their inevitable execution, supplanted by the crushing wave of Space Age Retro. I felt the same sick feeling in Barcelona really, liking the Gaudi but sad for the beautiful baroque buildings that met their end in its onslaught.

I had an older gentleman walk into my booth and question why I had a colored woodblock by Gustave Baumann on the wall? "That's the past," he told me. "We have to look to the future."

Ready and willing to receive the clarion signal from space and future, comrade. It's the present that scares the shit out of me.

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Postscript - My friend Gary called and told me to chillax. He reminded me that I have had a great six months (I have.) I have been on the road without stopping for a solid month and I am toast. Even if the long term fundamentals are dismal, life is good and I need to stfu.

Eva Cassidy

Postcard from heaven

Do you remember the cool catholic sisters that I met at the Salt Pueblo of Qurai in New Mexico this summer?

I had asked them for a blessing for my brother, who remains really sick with serious complications from his kidney transplant.

And they assented graciously and also allowed me to take their picture.

I got this postcard from them the other day:

I am not sure which order these nuns are from but they hailed from Kansas City.

It was very sweet and touching to receive this postcard from them. Please keep my brother Buzz in your thoughts and prayers.

Not a religious person myself but will take any help we can get.

Old friends, Parma B&W

Children at beach

high flyin' bird

Paint can drummer, Ponte Vecchio

He was pretty good. Cops busted him at the end of the song.

El Chicano - Chicano Chant

Friendly Reset

It's not easy for me to write about Israel. I even mention the name of the country and my inbox gets instantly inundated with messages about me being a traitorous fifth column of the Likud.

But having actually lived there for two protracted periods as well as during times of warfare, I believe my perspective and understanding of the reality there is a little better than those people that merely have a conceptual view of the country.

I abhor the WikiLeaks people and have been on record saying so since the first document dumps several years ago. Gentlemen and women don't read each others private conversations and have no right to do so. Our government officials should be able to communicate with each other freely without snooping. And Assange may have gotten people killed in Afghanistan when he injudiciously outed dissidents and informers.

"Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."

Hillary Clinton may actually have helped herself on one issue, at least with me, with the recent Wiki disclosures. She seems to be distancing herself in candid conversations from her predecessor's anti Israel and pro Iranian policies.

According to a speech transcript made public this weekend by WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton on October 28, 2013, told the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago: "I believe that Rouhani was allowed to be elected by the two major power sources in Iran, the supreme leader and the clerics and the Revolutionary Guard … in part because the sanctions were having a quite damaging effect on the economy."She continued: "I don't think anyone should have any illusions as to the motives of the Iranian leadership. What they really want to do is get sanction relief and give as little as possible for that sanction relief."

Which leads me to my topic for the afternoon, Iran. I am trying to wrap my head around the rationale for President Barack Obama to want to fund the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps. On the same day that the four Iranian hostages were released and the Iranians were given the $400 million dollars in cash, the Obama Administration lifted the sanctions on Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International from the sanctions list.

Bank Sepah has been the historical funding arm for the Iranian missile program and many other covert weapon systems as well as the IRGC.

The Obama administration had told Congress that under the deal the U.S. would lift sanctions only on companies and individuals tied to Iran’s nuclear development. Sanctions on those involved in missile development were to remain in place, these critics said.The Obama administration has repeatedly said it is committed to rolling back Iran’s ballistic missile program.“By agreeing to remove U.N. and EU sanctions eight years early on Iran’s main missile financing bank, the administration effectively greenlighted their nuclear warhead-capable ballistic missile program,” said Mark Dubowitz, a top critic of the Iran nuclear deal at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.

The Bank had been sanctioned in 2007 for funding Iran's ballistic missile program. According to National Review, the removal of sanctions may violate the U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, passed in July 2015, which endorsed the JCPOA or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This resolution stipulated that U.N. missile-related sanctions against Iran would remain in place for eight years.

In July, the President praised his Iran deal, saying, "We are not taking the pressure off Iran ... with respect to ballistic missiles. As I just explained ... we maintain the eight years on the ballistic missiles under this particular UN resolution. ... So we have not lost those legal authorities."

Well whoops, what the hell happened to the eight years? Why does this President want to help Iran finance this type of activity and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which it previously refused to denote as a terrorist group? The same Revolutionary Guard that is backing the Houthi rebels in Yemen currently lobbing missiles at our destroyers and was once implicated in killing 19 Americans at the Khobar Towers?

Let us sincerely hope that a more realistic Hillary can undue some of the the damage that Barack Obama has wrought in the middle east by allowing himself to be suckered so by the Iranians.

New Beginnings

Ready for a nice story? Read Eli Saslow's tale of Derek Black, a white supremacist kid and scion of a KKK Grand Dragon, befriended by an orthodox jewish student at college, a courageous young man who actually had his mind changed, and heart opened, a very rare event in today's world.

Firenze Tower at dusk

Tomorrow is a long time

Surf Shack, Rincon Point

Judy Roderick

10-17

I knew the week was going to be tough but I didn't think that tough. I was up doing a show in Santa Barbara, a week after coming back from Italy. Sales slow, my never effervescent personality even more disagreeable and discordant than usual due to a persistent bad cough and bronchial condition.

I was human kryptonite in the booth and I think the underlying message to the public was DO NOT ENGAGE. They did not. Got into a pissy perimeter squabble with a full of himself neighbor who insists on blocking the entrance to my space with his stuff and then took petulant umbrage when I nicely asked him to vacate my space.

Purportedly the normal advertising for the show was bumped by the local stations so that they could run higher paying political ads. Great. Another reason to hate politicians as if we aren't all sick to death of them already. The whole country mucking through the fetid sewer together at this point.

Anyway lots of regulars never showed and I just might have broke even, well not if you figure cost of goods, which most of us don't have the luxury of thinking about, cashflow being king or at least crown prince at this point in the game.

I stayed in my normal shithole, Motel 6 Carpenteria South, the only motel any normal human can afford in the Santa Barbara area. Transparent towels, bunk-bed thick mattress, no clock, sharp instruments, room decoration or kleenex, made the old Spokane Jail cell seem homey by comparison.

You're not going to get a full blow by blow. I pissed off a good friend by opening up a little too much regarding a personal matter and felt terrible.  Got off on the wrong foot with my wife several times on the phone. I ate, I coughed and hacked, threw up on occasion, often wondered if I could hold up through the next four weeks, which will largely be more of the same. Palm Springs this week.

Hopefully the cough will stop one day soon or I go and see a doctor. Alyssa's mom told me that she was paralyzed and had a stroke last year when she ignored a persistent cough and ended up with a serious auto immune disease. Hope I get hit by a bus first.

I drove to Ojai one day and up the 33, the signs pointing to Maricopa in the distant future. Made it up past the steep Wheeler Gorge to the top of the ridge and the turn off for the Sespe Rendesvous. Beautiful views and a nice drive. Would like to explore the area further one day.

I also drove down to Rincon yesterday morning, one of the best surf spots in California. The waves from this point go on forever, giving surfers really long rides to the shore.

I watched the surfers for a while. Nice to be in the salt air. Unfortunately there is a bush on the trail down to the beach that is now flowering and it has the most noxious smell imaginable.

I have a very sensitive schnozz and stomach at present and I took one whiff and then lost my cookies in the parking lot.

Got home near midnight last night, completely fried. Trip wasn't a total washout, bought a few nice things that might prove worthwhile including one of my favorite colored wood block prints, Zabriskie Point by Anders Aldrin.

Not a lot else I can think of. Lady packing out next to me had a pro Trump sticker on her truck window.

I politely asked her if the general reaction to the sticker had been positive or negative and she said it had only been up for a week but she was happy that the truck hadn't been keyed yet.

Whole country is bummed out, no matter what side you happen to be on.

And no matter how high you happen to riding, the shit sandwich is always just an arms length away.

Girl at Joshua Tree

Paul Winter

Magnus and the fight against the machines

I watched the whole incredible documentary on World Champion chess champion and child prodigy Magnus Carlsen on the flight back from Italy. If you are interested in the human mind, I highly recommend you watch it, whether you have an interest in chess or not.

Magnus plays a positional and intuitive brand of chess and has the highest chess rating ever recorded. Whether he is the equal of Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov is open to some debate.

There is a point in the film that is so fascinating. He is playing Vishy Anand in his first World Championship. Anand is the master at using supercomputers to evaluate moves. Magnus is getting beat up at the beginning of the match and then he does something that the narrator calls going "inside the matrix," he flips the computer on its head, reinvents his game and engages in some completely outside of the box moves, causing the computer to pull its virtual hair out, if not blow a circuit. Ah, humania...

I will not say anymore and play the spoiler but I found the movie incredibly engrossing.

*
Jonathan Hill sent me a link to this interesting talk by the musician T Bone Burnett that sort of continues in the same vein, in talking about art and human potential. A quick and interesting read, it is entitled Music confounds the machines.

*
On another note, a Google self driving car was involved in another accident last week. Google blames it on the human in the other car. But in February it was clearly the machines fault. Now news of another Tesla autopilot death. Elon thinks that there will always be an engineering solution out there but can one truly ever feel confident in taking the human mind completely out of the decision making equation?

Urn, Uffizi

Il Cosa Nostra

Donald Trump paraded out a table of alleged victims of Bill Clinton in St. Louis the other day and warned if any more salacious tapes come out relating to his own bad behavior, he is going to get even dirtier still.

Someone yesterday made the brilliant observation that this was like the scene in The Godfather when "Frankie Pants'" brother Vincenzo is brought back from Italy and Frankie clams up during the Senate trial. Omerta or you know who gets it.

A brutal but effective scorched earth strategy. And I started thinking about just how much this modern day Shakespearean tragedy of an election resembled the Godfather and the machinations of the mafia.

Trump isn't Michael Corleone, he is not quite shrewd enough, but he is a lot like Sonny, a hot head who has his way with and abuses women and knows no limits or discipline. Stay away from bridges, Sonny. The final act is a bitch.

Speaking of bridges, every Don needs a capo or two. While some liken Chris Christie to Luca Brasi, with his prodigious appetite, I vote for Clemenza. Loyal but no moral center.

Every Godfather needs a wasp straight man consigliore that can smooth things over. Mike Spence, meet Tom Hagen.

Then there is the wayward kid partyboy, this time from the other family that goes away and dishonors the clan; Billy Bush aka Fredo. Now quickly being frozen out in the cold like a smelly piece of bacalao.

Then there is Giuliani, the two faced hypocrite. A man who had an affair and told the papers he was leaving his wife before he had the decency to tell her or the rest of his family. Much like the other caporegime, Gingrich, divorcing his wife #1 while she lay on her hospital bed fighting cancer.

Despicable characters.

Two fellows who still have the audacity to attack Hillary Clinton. Giuliani says everybody cheats and that the matter  is between him and his priest. I am sure that Newt has been similarly forgiven.

Are there any characters in the godfather venal and evil enough to represent them? Newt, you get Tessio and I'm sorry Abe, you're better than that.

In Kellyanne Conway we have the perfect enabler Kay Adams, as played by Diane Keaton. See nothing, no nothing, but all the time it is right in front of their face.

Got to have a guy in Vegas. Moe Green - Sheldon Adelson?

There is of course a war going on right now, at least in the GOP. Everybody to the mattress rooms. This thing is going to get real ugly.

Aemilia, it was a false alarm

Sweet Tooth

Trouble in Candyland

So now I'm home, mostly cured of my jet lag but not my upper respiratory tsuris. About to get very busy again with my job. And there's this election thing still happening. We're still hating on each other and in some cases it is getting ugly.

We all know somebody on the other side and we are all walking on eggshells so as not to engage and offend. Sometimes it is even close friends and family.

And unfortunately no matter who wins, it doesn't look like the polarization will abate any time soon. I am busy and have to get going but want to get a few words off my chest without running it into the ground.

Chessmaster and long time Putin nemesis Garry Kasparov had a very pithy tweet today.

He is so right. Where are we, Venezuela? Do we need an oligarch like Hugo Chavez or Putin running the show, threatening to throw his opponent in the clink? Is that American? Rumor has it that the impeachment machine is already lubed up in case Hillary gets the nod. Figure on a continued course of endless paralysis and tooth gnashing for the foreseeable future.

The idea that a spoiled brat rich kid (with the manners of a swine) who has destroyed thousands of lives with his bankruptcies and shifty business deals can suddenly fix the nation's ills with his bravado and supposed negotiating prowess is so preposterous. Sorry, I'll take the bureaucrat. Truthfully, your track record just doesn't look too inspiring, Don.

You want to read something weird that doesn't really get mentioned, try googling Epstein Trump rape.

I lost five bucks today, thought Pence would turn it in after his running mate threw him under the bus last night on Syria. Congrats Mike.

Interesting that both Skittles and Tic Tacs have condemned the Republican nominee this year. He may be doing okay in Biloxi or Wasilla but he is taking a real hit in Candyland.

Grand delusion: What alternate universe does Breitbart live in?

The Republican party is hemorrhaging big time. William Kristol has the serious vapors. The country kin have invaded the big house and stolen all the silverware, now they're fixing to throw the ol' 'stablishment tenants right out on their ear. There's a great big Mason Dixon line running through the GOP and a lot of downstream blood is about to get spilled. Fish or cut bait?

"It's like in the movies where a guy is riding a horse, gets shot, but the horse is still alive so it keeps running while dragging the corpse in its saddle." GOP Operative

Our country needs two healthy parties, as a check, both sides tend to royally fick things up left unabated. But why do so many of us feel that this is exactly how that bad Austrian painter got his start eighty years ago?

I have mentioned this quote from Ken Kesey many times. You won't find it in a book because I heard him say it with my own ears.

"Just remember, in any given situation, there will be more stupid people around then smart ones."

Jeez, help us.

Sleeping beauty, Firenze