Happy Easter

Well, I hope everyone is in fine fettle, and regardless of religious persuasion, had a nice Easter. A good day, the pirate scourge has been temporarily scuttled, and with an excellent result. Beautiful here in Southern California - Leslie and I went into town and had sunday brunch at Le Bistro, with our friends, the Fish and the Cades. I then lounged around the Fish (fishes?) residence and watched the pirate saga play out.  They had a bowl of candy and Connie, a Ph.D. principal and superintendent, showed us her talent and proclivity at blowing multiple bubbles inside bubblegum bubbles. This multifaceted educator is also capable of tying the cherry stem in her mouth, no hands. A great huzzah!  Of course, my friend Garry Cohen the glassblower is the hands down winner in such feats of magic, since he can loft a saliva bubble into the ether at will, where it will float into the heavens.  Never seen anyone else do that one...

Had a bit of a start today when my mother in Pennsylvania left a message that she is now reading the blog.  I don't know who ratted me out but she is on to me.  My mother, Adelle Fisher Rosenberg, for all her peccadilloes, is one of the brightest, most talented people on earth.  Her curriculum vitae includes managing the rock group Kiss at inception, writing the first african american curriculum in New York, managing various newscasters including Roger Mudd for ICM, was the editor of Pinnacle Books and dramatically increased their production of crappy fiction, worked as a high school history teacher and guidance counselor, employed as a muckety muck at the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, where she palled around with a lot of big shots, being a regular at Elaines and Le Veau d'or in their heyday and engaging in a million other high powered pursuits. Worked at a battered women's shelter. All while raising from five to eleven kids, depending on the circumstance.  She often took people in off the street in my childhood, instilled a passion for civil rights and justice in her children as a lifelong unitarian, and always valued people over the material.  Helped run Eugene McCarthy's campaign in Texas when I was a kid.

She was a health freak and gourmand, before it became fashionable, can make five different kinds of scratch biscuits, and is a master of the forgotten art of the casserole. She can pilot an automobile in a forward direction without looking while simultaneously taking off her shoe to throttle the passenger in the back seat and engaging in a conversation with the creator in Esperanto.

Now we can't necessarily be in the same room for five minutes without fighting but I love her and we don't have the option to pick and choose real well regarding our relatives in this life.  So now she's reading the blog so I will have to watch my punctuation and taste my words a bit prior to publication.  So hi mom!  Welcome on board, I guess...

Ray Davies - I'm Not Like Everybody Else

The Kinks

2009 Japanese Penis Festival (豊年祭)

more from the penis festival.

National Penis Day

Don Perry sent this over. Although I don't know how I missed it, evidently March 15 was National Penis Day in Japan. In honor of my own sad appendage, I offer up the photographs in commemoration of the blessed event.

Ode to a forlorn buddy.

Plastic Parts

Its not a pistol I'm packing
but a warm latex friend
the tubes that are extending
have a personal bend.

With a kidney now missing
and a piece of my heart
my southern component
looks like
strange modern art.

There's no coming or going
with my new rubber pal
just a big fear of knotting or getting snagged
by the towel.

So you lucky old fellows
who can grab it and stand
treasure your pleasures
take your matters in hand.

For I am hooked up to
an inglorious beast
in all matters of pissing
I like the Foley the least.

Robert Sommers © 2009

Little Feat - Willin'

Captain Hareblower

Wither Hornblower?

I have been following the Somali pirate/United States Navy fiasco with concern and a hint of shame.  Our billion dollar navy looks like a bunch of eunuchs on the high seas.  

It is a tragedy that the captain actually made it off the boat and swam helplessly under the view of his majesty's ship.  If this had been an Israeli vessel, the guy would be drinking hot chicken soup right now back on the moshav. 

They might fire a sound weapon to stun and destabilize everybody or sink the skiff and take their chances saving the captain.  Encase the whole thing in foam.  Make them listen to rap music. Hornblower would certainly figure it out. Shouldn't they at least have had divers under the boat? Maybe it's time to send out dummy ships masquerading as freighters and shiver their timbers?

Drop the gloves. Lie to them. Confetti money. Hang them from the yard arm if anyone knows what one actually is and if it can be found. Forget Marquis of Queensbury.  Airlift a bunch of our worst wackos from Sing Sing for a weekend no holds barred pajama party on the Somali coastline.  The Russians would be rounding up some pirate relatives on the coast and do some real trading. Of parts.

Time to allow merchant vessels to arm themselves in open sea.  These Somali buccaneers are getting fat because the maritime companies puss out and pay the ransoms every time.  How will this poor behavior ever stop?  In this case, we already know they are not true to their word because they backtracked on releasing Phillips after the pirate hostage was swapped.

Another tragedy is that the boat was carrying aid to starving Africans, including Somalians.  I know it's cold but I would cut off all our aid to the continent.   They use us, bite the hand that feeds them, cannibalize each other, and decent african countries should have been at the forefront of solving this Somali problem.  They have the resources to take care of themselves. Guess it's easier to always have your hand out as a global welfare baby. Do they have the civility required to act like human beings? Doubtful.

The pirates' bravado and strategy has been pretty spot on.  Smart to bring additional hostages into the lion's mouth for cover.  Hornblower would have the marines on land in Eyl wiping out the warlord's million dollar mansions about now.  Then tell the hostage that we're sorry and blow everyone away.  They are banking on and exploiting our innate sense of fair play and propriety.  Be interesting to see it play out.  A-r-r-r-g-h!

Janis Joplin

down to the threads

Kerry and Jasmine sent me this great card from the Canyon, managed to take a shot with my laptop. Today was one of those shitty little days that will live in infamy like my own personal Pearl Harbor. Last night was the third night without sleep in a row, but whatever was happening to my urinary tract was spinning out of control like a man eating fractal on steroids, reducing me to a quivering crying mess. I thought about going to the emergency room at about 3:00 a.m. but didn't want to get another doctor into the mix so soon after a surgery.

I have had some communication problems with my doctor's staff and have been directed to fall on my sword before, which I have done repeatedly, graciously and pragmatically. Yesterday I called the office and reported my pain and my problems and she replied that my app was for today. I tried to get the extreme nature and degree of my pain across but guess it didn't take so good. And I must shoulder the blame for trying to self diagnose and blame the meds or a tract infection when it turned out to be something completely different. Me, with my tremendous amount of medical training.

I called en route on the hour plus ride to the coast to let them know that I was in total agony. Peed all over myself in the car in a short nasty loss of control. When the doctor took a look at me, he was shocked, immediately hit me with a shot of valium and reinserted a foley catheter. He said that I was suffering from Prostatitas. The doctor said for the umpteenth time that I was directed not to use any more adjectives with his staff, that I was too smart, he preferred to work with truck drivers (sorry truck drivers!) I do bare some responsibility for trying to work beyond my skill set. And plead guilty for that nuanced alliterative thing. Must be hard to be in an office with a bunch of whiny sick people all the time. I would build a shell of in compassion pretty quick.

I am now on an antibiotic that may/may not fix the prostatitas according to a quick online search. Sutures, staples and stitches are removed. Had my first bath in a while. And am free for now from that excruciating pain. Am directed to remove catheter next thursday morning early and see what gives.

Might try to get into the shop a little saturday but am basically still a basket case and incapable of much. Have been really bad at answering the phones. Got a great email this morning from one of my oldest friends from childhood in New York, Doug Garn, who works in treatment and rehab. Doug can be so sarcastic he makes me look like a piker but gave it to me straight and real in a little message about some old associates. You can never go wrong with the people who have known you forever. He said something I like today from treatment "who you are with, is who you are" Words to ponder. So once again, in the spirit of Yom Kippor, months away on the horizon, let me apologize to all that I have wronged and forgive me for any felony level gross offenses and shortcomings.

Make Yourself Easy

It is a hard task right now to take the blog by the horns and to give it a go.  I have been recuperating since Sunday at Bill and Jean's house, under their excellent care, and Leslie came and picked me up this evening and brought me home.  A week today I guess since the surgery, which isn't a very long time.  I lay on my couch as I type, with Mac perched on my own very legs.

Unfortunately I have had some setbacks and haven't slept the last two nights.  To get right into the muck I will tell you that after a week of false alarms, the North Koreans were not the only ones to launch or lose a rocket on Monday, and it was a cause of real rejoicing for me at least after six days of dry fire. Fuck the Koreans. Anyway, the heavens opened up and I heard angels trumpeting.  Hallelujah!

Now I am completely miserable. Again. I am either reacting to the Norco pain med, whose contraindications I have discovered after a little research include causing urination problems or I have a severe urinary tract infection.  In any case, the reality is that I have to pee every 90 seconds or so and usually manage to get a little burning tortured dribble for my efforts.  I am about to go nuts.

I took a few cranberry capsules when I got home, not having the saw palmetto around any more and get to see the urologist tomorrow to get the staples and sutures out.  Hope he has some swell ideas to get me back on track.  His assistant today said that it can take weeks if the culprit really is the pain meds.  The doctor did inform me the other days that our collective Russian grandparents would never have made it to 51 in the first place so that I should consider myself somewhat lucky.  An interesting guy,  I got a full concert review of the Felix Mendelssohn symphony performance he attended last week that included some boss licks by Raspigi.

I have been chilling and trying to heal, with short daily walks interspersed with my trips to the loo.  Jean has kept me well fed, a little too well fed, with her pie, biscuits, etc. Dang, guess my big operative diet plans have been dashed.  We have played dice and rummy and I have enjoyed their incredible gardens.  So nice to have such wonderful friends, and that includes all of you.  We have been overwhelmed with your messages and phone calls and I thank you from the bottom of my slightly enlarged heart.  I haven't actually been answering the phone but will start to in the days ahead.  Big Dave is trying to schedule a trip down the first of the week but don't know if I have the strength to deal with much right now but short and sweet should be ok. Won't show up at Del Mar, hopefully yes at the Film Festival.

My floozy dog Maddie, the sole survivor, has been whoring around the town, plying her canine charms for any tom, dick or harry that will pet her.  She likes to walk into people's houses or take an invigorating swim in the random Koi pond, sometimes miles from our pad.  I got four different Maddie calls yesterday as my cell pone number is unfortunately printed onto her collar.  Most people are nice, a couple assholes.  I think I will have to put her into a harness restraint until I can dial in the fence she is jumping over and its no work for me for six weeks, per physician.  We got Maddie from an 80 year old woman, Missie, who passed away last week and who couldn't handle her so at least I don't have to take total responsibility for her errant ways.

Since I have literally not slept for two and one half days, I have been forced to view the idiot box, something blog readers know I only do in hotels and hospitals.  Same horrible realization that the human condition is totally collapsing into the venal swamp that I always get along with a couple boring NCAA basketball tournaments and a bunch of car fix it shows. Or wealthy tatted skateboarders performing crassly or shows dedicated to whorey slutty chicks clawing into each other to win Rock/Hip Hop prize.  Best thing was Manhunter - reality U. S. Marshall show and the Sopranos, which is always superb. 

 I know that Roger Ailes from Fox News declared war on Obama last month, but it is amazing how slanted the thing has really been set up.  Couple beauties caught my eye - yesterday it was that Obama had campaigned as a christian but not been to church yet and that people should be up in arms. Oh, Brother!  Every subtitle is designed to invoke maximum harm as in George Soros, Far Left Financier.  Today was about the poor doctors who might get their panties bunched for refusing to provide birth control.  Uh folks, there was an election.

Had a great dream the other night where I was in Africa, at Olduvai Gorge, the cradle of humanity, homo sapiens style, muscling up an impossible escarpment with my bulging biceps.  When I finally reached my quest, I was transported into a little gift shop with a bunch of old jewish yentas from Miami Beach accompanied by my brother in law Andrew, replete with a seventies era Tony Orlando coiffure and mustache.  Now don't ask me what that one means!

I am going to cut this short but want to thank you all again.  If I can fix these few remaining issues,  I think I will be in reasonably good shape to reintegrate into polite society and get back with you soon.

Cheers,

Robert

Emerging

I am sitting down here at Scripps Encinitas, fourth day away and a little lighter and a little worse for wear.  Well maybe not that much lighter as a kidney is only a bit larger than an ear and the ureter probably doesn't have much cubic mass at all. Things have gone well but it's not a picnic.  I have a lot of abdominal pain where they cut muscle above the groin.  The other large incision was right over the top of the last one and doesn't seem to hurt as much since the nerves and muscles had already been previously cut.  I got off the dilaudid yesterday - had that little monkey on my back years ago and am trying to do it solely with Tylenol this time.  They are forcing me to walk about five times a day, pushing my i.v. machine around the floor.

My urologist just left and said that he is thinking about sending me home tomorrow. My creatinine levels are at the highest rung of normal and according to him I am going to have to modify my life style somewhat. He says that I can never get dehydrated. I am anemic at the moment and I must make certain that I stay away from medical procedures that will put die in my body, which apparently is very damaging to the kidney.

I don't remember much from my procedure - I met the highly recommended anesthesiologist Maxwell and he asked me about religious preference. I said that the closest I have come was being a follower of the Grateful Dead. Lo and behold when I got wheeled into the operating room, New, New, Minglewood Blues was playing for me and the surgeons. Nice touch. I guess I was almost coherent at the end of the procedure and fairly demanding. Got dead throughout the surgery. Didn't have any major complications. I can turn to the right but not to the left. There is a trapeze bar on top of the bed which I am using to respirate with. Really hard to lose phlegm without ittitating the abs. People keep asking me about my bowels and flatulence. Sorry but after 6 days of all liquid diet, I am all out of both.  I have just been released to regular food.

I started hallucinating the two days following the surgery. There was a photo in the room that I was forced to cover with a towel because it was changing sizes and shapes. When I told the Doctor, he laughed and said that he had hallucinated too at the end of the arduous eight hour procedure.  The doctor removed the chest plug yesterday, which looped over a rib and caused great discomfort.  He also pulled the foley catheter.  Today, they removed another drain bulb - one more to go tomorrow.  He told me not to expect to be right for about six more weeks. Some of the staff has  been exceptional, some not so good.

Thanks to all the well wishers, and those that have visited. Leslie just came by with the computer and the phone charger. I am tired and will keep this short.

If you don't believe me, you're gonna make it hard to believe in you...

Upcoming week - Skype?

So tomorrow it's all coming down - found out they have to remove a ureter and a small piece of bladder as well as the kidney - two new gashes and a return date with Mr. Catheter. Three to ten days in the hospital which I know sounds like a hell of a spread and who knows on recovery although I am sure that the stairs in my home will be an absolute bitch for a while. Surgery should start about 1:30, don't know how long.

The wake was a resounding success, downed many bottles of wine - thanks to all the blog readers who showed - what a treat - you know who you are. And thanks to all the rest of you lushes as well. Just kidding.

I will probably start the 24 hour kidneycam on the second day. If you skype, I think it's Robert Sommers. Let's video conference - if I got an epidural I could be the first to do play by play on my own nephrectomy.

I am, on doctors recommendation, on a liquid diet, which not withstanding the booze is getting a little old. Boy a brownie sure would taste good in the hospital - hint, hint.

Don't know the hospital scene but promise no journal like last time - will probably play my old blues guitar if the bunkmate is cool with out of tune jewish blues. Best way to get in touch is through Leslie - you know how to get in touch with her. Thanks to all the well wishers - what a great community I live in and great bunch of friends I have. My neighbor took me jeeping off road to some really magic areas sunday - thanks, Brian!

Mountains of the Moon

Faithful Friend

We lost our steadfast pal, Odin, today, three weeks to the day after his brother Max's passing. At the risk of undue anthropomorphizing, he couldn't get over Max. They were best friends for life. Odin was a Great Pyrenees/Retriever cross and going on 15. He got cancer of the lungs. Nonsmoker. Never chased cats, always a model citizen. You couldn't ask for more in a dog or friend. He was always there for us - protected the pad without being an asshole. Did bite a jogger on the ass once.

Leslie called me with the news after lunch and I came home and we buried him next to his brother. Near the giant oak that Tom Pecore and I planted as a sapling twenty years ago. Last week, Willy/Lilly, the gender conflicted black cat, walked off into the sunset for a final exit.

I have a fleeting thought as to the pharoah's death where they put all members of his household into the tomb with him for his journey on the ship of the night. Wife might want to stay on her toes.

I am almost navajo in my feelings toward dead things. I feel the chindi or ghost of the being and have a really hard time touching corpses. Could never go into medicine.

It's been a strange surreal week. Coupled with a nagging feeling that I am going to run out of money is a sudden huge spike in blood pressure. The urologist couldn't get a hold of the cardiologist and I had to put out fires all this morning. All has now stabilized and things appear to be moving along. On Doctors orders, all liquid diet until the surgery with a minor amount of cheating. Leslie will be the bad cop gatekeeper so please arrange all hospital visits with her.

We had a wonderful meeting with the R&L club in Rancho Santa Fe last night - a great moroccan meal, some good red wine and wonderful friends. I discovered the secret identity of my blog reader in St. Thomas.

I slept until nine this morning - unusual for me. Storing up energy for the day's events. Made it to the gym for a cursory workout. Someone threw white paint all over the window of my shop which I had to clean off, mostly.

Dogs and cats are such a value in today's world. Fresh water, a bowl of food and a pat on the head will give you exponential returns on your investment. But they can also break your heart.

La Nina Blanca

Mexico has embarked on a campaign to tear down shrines dedicated to some rather different personal saints, Santa Muerte, The Saint of Death and Malverde, the Patron Saint of the narcotrafficantes. Santos are very important in latin america, with a strong etymological link to afro-caribbean nations as well.

I read recently that Jesus is the fifth most prayed to figure in catholicism, a fact I find astounding. Here is a link to an excellent article in yesterday's San Diego Union Tribune by Sandra Dibble and another from the Washington Post.
Kind of interesting when a government takes on religious mythology. The upshot can't be good.

A link to a wikipedia entry on Jesus Malverde.

From Wiki:
Saint Death (also known as La Santísima Muerte (Holy Death), and Doña Sebastiana (Lady Sebastianne), is a religious figure who receives petitions for love, luck, and protection. Saint Death is often depicted as a female figure. In some Mexican traditions, most notably among the descendants of Austrian immigrants, Saint Death is believed to be the wife of Krampus. She is sometimes referred to as Virgin Mary's twisted sister.

Although the Catholic Church has attacked the worship of Saint Death as a pagan tradition contrary to the Christian belief of Christ defeating death, many people insist on praying to this figure for miracles. Saint Death is venerated by a wide variety of people from many different backgrounds. Often, those who pray to this figure are seeking the recovery of health, stolen items, or kidnapped family members.

A recently uncovered scroll states that all followers of La Niña Blanca or 'saint death' should lead a virtuous life. Those who disregard moral law and take advantage of their fellow humans will feel real pain in death. Their souls will languish in pain long after their deaths. The pain they inflicted in life will be magnified and their souls will be tortured for eternity in death.

"Destroying these chapels is not going to do anything to diminish crime... someone who's going to commit a crime could just as easily go to a Catholic church as a Santa Muerte shrine, or go nowhere at all.” Jose Arce

Vaya con Dios, Roberto!!!!

Roberto.... The best to you on your upcoming surgery!! I know that all of your friends and readers wish you the best. And, yes, you are going to be fine... in fact, better than ever!!

Be sure to take your lap top to the hospital and keep us all informed.

Your friend,  

Mike the Sano Guy!!!

Steve Earle

Wake Invite

Blog readers are invited to stop by the gallery monday evening, the 30th of March for a glass of wine. Kick off at 6, 6:30, short gathering. Most people have to die to visit their own wake, I thought I would be presumptuous and attend. Believe me, I have no intentions of checking out but one never knows when the errant F-18 will come hurtling through the skylight. Hope you can make it. I know it's crass and slightly maudlin but when has bad taste ever stopped me?

blockhead

dada vision

Robert's Art History 101 - Robert Henri and Walter Keane

In my opinion, Robert Henri was the most pathetically overhyped American artist and the Ash Can School only possibly matched by the Oakland Society of Six in it's members lack of artistic merit and their overblown popularity. In fact, the latter day artist that most favorably compares to Henri is Walter (Margaret) Keane. They both liked to paint syrupy portraits of children with big eyes, however Keane was never under the illusion that he was creating great art. Like Keane, Henri's subjects always had the same rosy cheeks and monotonous and unwavering emotional palette. He used thick impasto and big sloppy brushwork.

From Wikipedia:

In Philadelphia, Henri began to attract a group of followers who met in his studio to discuss art and culture, including several illustrators for the Philadelphia Press newspaper who would become known as the 'Philadelphia Four': William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and John French Sloan. The gatherings became known as the "Charcoal Club", featuring life drawing and readings in the social philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Émile Zola, and Henry David Thoreau. By 1895, Henri had come to reconsider Impressionism, calling it a new academicism. In 1906, he was elected to the National Academy of Design, but when painters in his circle were rejected for the Academy's 1907 exhibition, he accused fellow jurors of bias and walked off the jury, resolving to organize a show of his own. He would later refer to the Academy as "a cemetery of art."


In February 1908, Henri organized a landmark show entitled "The Eight" (after the eight painters displaying their works) at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. Besides his own works and those produced by the "Philadelphia Four" (who had followed Henri to New York by this time), there were paintings by Maurice Prendergast, Ernest Lawson, and Arthur B. Davies. These painters and this exhibition would become associated with the Ashcan School, although the content of the show was diverse and that term was not coined until 1934. In May 1908, he married 22-year old Irish-born Marjorie Organ.


In 1910, Henri organized the Exhibition of Independent Artists, a no-jury, no-prize show modeled after the Salon des Independants in France. Works were hung alphabetically to emphasize the egalitarian philosophy. Walt Kuhn, who took part in this show, would come to play a key role in the Armory Show, an exhibition mounted in 1913 that introduced many American viewers to avant-garde European art. Five of Henri's paintings were included in the Armory Show.


Now the salient question is how the American public, exposed and nurtured on the brilliance of Hassam, Eakins, Whistler and Sargent, could fall for these bogus antecedents of 50's clown genre painting. I think the answer is the New York centricism that both then and now pervades the art market. You could have a blind chihuaha tap dancing on a canvas with paint on its paws and someone in the five boroughs would proclaim it an artistic tour de force. And the American public would buy it. The rest of the eight, with the possible exception of Glackens, were similar one trick pony nogoodniks, whose exalted status has been fraudulently foisted on the American public. Sloan lacked rudimentary drawing skills, Prendergrast's work was thin and repetitive, Luks and Shinn were interesting artists in a regional sense, sort of second rate corollaries to the European Schiele and Klimt, but not deserving of the acclaim they ultimately achieved. These painters were awarded the sobriquet "Apostles of Ugliness" by the public, based on their gritty representation of life during the time. That verite is well and good if the image is at least rendered well or imaginatively. Bellows and Hopper are sometimes associated with the Ash Can school but their work stands head and shoulders above the original eight in it's brilliance.

From Wikipedia:
Walter Keane was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Walter Keane became a highly-popular post World War II figure painter of wide-eyed "lost" children, waif-like and sympathy provoking. These images were reproduced throughout the world with originals in many collections including the United Nations, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, Spain, and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, Japan. At the age of fifteen, he moved to Los Angeles to live with an uncle, and as a young adult, seemed headed towards a business career, following in the footsteps of his father. However, he began painting on his own, and in 1938, abandoned the business idea to attend college in Berkeley from where he graduated three years laterHe became so torn emotionally between the pressure of his father to be practical and go into business and his own inner drive to be an artist that he developed ulcers. But late in 1943, he made the final decision to become an artist and painted full time for a year in Berkeley and then enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where he lived a raucous Bohemian-style life. In Paris, he painted street scenes and figures including nudes, and from 1946 to 1947, he went to Berlin where he began his signature theme of "Lost Children." These paintings were inspired by his shock at seeing the thousands of war-orphaned, poverty-stricken children. Wanting to capture the realism of these people, he abandoned the Abstract Expressionism he had flirted with and focused on a style that more closely resembled Realism with elements of Modernism. He stayed in Europe until 1949 and then returned to Berkeley where he worked from his Berlin drawings and did a lot of painting in Sausalito, living at North Beach. He married his wife, Margaret, also an artist, and they lived in Oakland, and became public personalities because his work was collected by so many movie stars. By 1956, he and Margaret opened a gallery at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, and again his work got much attention. Shortly after, the couple returned to San Francisco where they had a gallery at 494 Broadway for two years and then opened a gallery in New York City. Again he had many collectors but also received criticism for being repetitious with every canvas having a "lost" child. In 1965, Walter and Margaret Keane divorced, and a judge ruled against him when he made claims that certain paintings of waif-like children signed Keane were by him. When the judge asked Margaret and Walter to each produce a painting in that style and subject matter, he declined and she readily performed. The conclusion, according to "Artnews" November, 2000 is that some of the paintings attributed to him are in fact by his former wife.

When I was taking art history in college, I dared to ask if these guys were in fact wearing clothes. Some of the abstractionists seemed to be lousy painters looking for an "easy" venue to hide their natural lack of talent. This would tend to enrage the professors, who said that of course they knew how to draw, but they had gone beyond the yeoman's craft of drawing and painting. The truth is that many never learned how to draw. Look at Selden Connor Gile and compare his draftsmanship to your average second grader and tell me honestly who has the superior skills? And you may want to find a couple of those neat Keane paintings. If Henri is such a big splash, they are bound to appreciate.

SANTANA AFRO BLUE CHICK COREA HERBIE HANCOCK JOHN MAC LAUGHLIN WAYNE SHORTER RAVI COLTRANE DENNIS CHAMBERS BENNY RIETVELD KARL

Dedicated follower of fashion

I have to admit I'm not much of a fashionista. My fashion sense has barely moved a twitch since the seventh grade. Although the Clark's have given way to New Balance sneakers.

I came of age listening to blue jean music, Dead, Band, Allman Brothers, and the look was decidedly more pirate than glam. My wife always wants me to buy goofy looking hip shoes but I admit I am pretty much a dork.

We went to the Nordstrom's Rack last month and I was looking with bewilderment at the plaid bermuda shorts, as in who would wear these unless they were gay and bingo, this gay guy walks up and buys a pair. There is definitely a sexual preference split when it comes to clothes.

Now it appears that there is a political and social chasm as well. Daniel Akst writes in this week's Wall Street Journal, "If there is a silver lining to a financial crisis that threatens to leave the entire country dressed only in a barrel, it is this: At least we won't be wearing denim."

He goes on - Never has a single fabric done so little for so many. Denim is hot, uncomfortable and uniquely unsuited to people who spend most of their waking hours punching keys instead of cows. It looks bad on almost everyone who isn't thin, yet has somehow made itself the unofficial uniform of the fattest people in the world.

It's time denim was called on the carpet, for its crimes are legion. Denim, for instance, is an essential co-conspirator in the modern trend toward undifferentiated dressing, in which we all strive to look equally shabby no matter what the occasion. Despite its air of innocence, no fabric has ever been so insidiously effective at undermining national discipline.

Did Levi Strauss realize the havoc his creation would wreak on the modern world?
If hypocrisy had a flag, it would be cut from denim, for it is in denim that we invest our most nostalgic and destructive agrarian longings -- the ones that prompted all those exurban McMansions now sliding off their manicured lawns and into foreclosure, dragging down the global financial system with them. Denim is the SUV of fabrics, the wardrobe equivalent of driving a hulking Land Rover to the Whole Foods Market. Our fussily tailored blue jeans, prewashed and acid-treated to look not just old but even dirty, are really a sad disguise. They're like Mao jackets, an unusually dreary form of sartorial conformity by means of which we reassure one another of our purity and good intentions.

There was a time, of course, when not everyone wore denim. In the 1950s, Bing Crosby was even refused entry to a Los Angeles hotel because he was wearing the stuff. (Levi Strauss obligingly ran him up a custom denim tuxedo so he wouldn't have that problem again.) By then denim was a symbol of youthful defiance, embraced by Marlon Brando, James Dean and -- well, just about every self-respecting rebel without a cause. Even Elvis, who didn't often wear denim in public during the early part of his career (like many Southerners, he associated it with rural poverty), eventually succumbed. Now we're all rebels, even a billionaire CEO like Steve Jobs, who wears blue jeans and a black turtleneck whenever unveiling new Apple Computer products.

Although a powerful force for evil, denim has achieved a status that will come as no surprise to fashion historians. Like camouflage fabric, aviator sunglasses and work boots, blue jeans were probably destined for ubiquity thanks to an iron-clad rule of attire adoption. "The sort of garments that become fashionable most rapidly and most completely," Alison Lurie reminds us in "The Language of Clothes," "are those which were originally designed for warfare, dangerous work or strenuous sports."

I can only hope the Obama administration sees denim for what it is: a ghastly but potentially lucrative source of much-needed revenue. Let's waste no time in imposing a hefty sumptuary tax on the stuff. It's a great example of "soft paternalism" (especially if the pants are pre-washed). We can close the budget deficit at the same time we eradicate the fashion deficit. All we've got to do is impose a federal levy on Levi's.

Now if this isn't an opening salvo in the culture war I don't know what is, Mr. Daniel Akst, but you'll get my levis with my cold dead fingers clutched around them and it will take a hell of a fight. If you want to set the two hundred dollar a pair sequined stone wash jeans with the holes in them in your sights, have at them. But hands off my 501's.

Apparently, Mr. Akst's column has struck a corduroy with some - here is a letter from yesterday's WSJ:

It was good to read an article exposing denim for what it is. I would like to add a few bits of information regarding the product. I grew up in the 1930s and we wore denim "overall pants" strictly for playtime. These pants were like bib overalls, with the bib cut off. At one time I remember a fad when pants were stitched with a colored triangular patch at the outside bottom of each leg. The colors were bright reds, yellows, etc., and the leg bottoms were flared. These were called "whoopee pants." In the Navy during World War II, I was issued a pair of denim pants. They were for work or recreation only.

What's more offensive than denim are the athletic shoes that are in fashion. People even wear this stuff to church. I wouldn't cut my grass in that trash apparel.

Walter Graham - Omaha

Now Mr. Graham won't even cut the grass in his jeans and sneakers! Probably wears his cravat in the shower. Just another sign of imminent end times and the fact that the earth is populated by two distinct species. A pox on all you fuddyduddies.

Antony and the Johnsons

Bird flees the cage

Today I decided to go cruising for antiques. I am going to be a captive audience for a while starting next week and thought I would test my wings and get away. I rarely shop anymore and depend mostly on other dealers, customers, pickers and estate sale people to bring me things.

When I first started in the business about 16 years ago, I was a shopping fool, no antique shop, thrift store or possible turn was left unstoned. I cut my teeth on the back roads of America, from Maine to Florida and all parts in between.

Things changed in the late nineties. The advent of the internet drastically cut down on merchandise in the shops, both from spreading relevant information to the uninformed and the use of ebay. Things that we thought were once rare became decidedly less so when Aunt Martha in Dubuque found one in her dresser and put it on line. This also had the unfortunate consequence of both taking the antique dealer out of the equation since objects went straight to end users and taking some of the mystique out of the biz that caused values to escalate in the first place.

There was once a time when I would tell one and all that you could drop me in any city in America with antique malls and five hundred bucks and I would make ten times the money in a month. Now I'm not so sure.

I coined an axiom once I call Robert's law and it goes something like this - we reject the art of our parents and we embrace the art of our grandparents. When I was starting, the people that were, for want of a better word, expiring, collected in the twenties and thirties, a fertile time. Now the estates we see are from people who collected in the fifties and sixties, dreary decades where the majority of good art was very scarce and inaccessible - who can afford a DeKooning painting or a Nakashima butterflied conoid table?

Kids today are sort of an Ikea lot, soundly rejecting the warmth of Victorian, Mission, Spanish Revival, and pretty much everything else short of chrome and paper lamps. The 18th and 19th century have ben relegated to the ashbin of history. Regurgitations of the disgusting seventies have been appearing for a few years (anyone want a Jack Daniel's coke mirror?) but the last couple decades of the twentieth century haven't shown me a lot. Fads quickly come and go (Dunbar, Parzinger, Duquette, anyone?) largely defined by a select gay subculture of aesthetic popes.

So I went shopping today, thinking that I would hit some malls in Redlands, Riverside and San Bernardino. I checked out Escondido earlier this week. And found nothing. Anywhere. Today I sauntered through scary little towns like Colton and Loma Linda, Rialto, Fontana, Grand Terrace, Perris and Highland. Probably once very nice places but the bloom long since gone from the bud. The Inland Empire gone to seed. Billboards for lusty gentleman's clubs beckon. Pawn shops galore hawking for cheap gold. Rehab cases in their twenties and thirties on spider bikes, scavenging anything that might offer any value like untouchables in Mumbai. Malls closing down all over the place - shops largely undistinguishable from Goodwills, Snoopy bathmats and velvet paintings. Weeds growing up outside dank shops where the merchandise never changes from decade to decade.

I know that I am a snob and that there are things that I would have bought twenty years ago that I wouldn't go near now but it's really sick out there. Things don't have to be expensive but there should be some element of good taste involved. And it's not just my region - I think the story is repeated throughout the country.

We have lost whole banks of institutional knowledge in some fields, oriental pottery coming first to mind, but european porcelain, pewter, empire furniture, there are lots of experts expiring with all of their knowledge and no one to replace them. There is an appalling lack of scholarship. Some reputable dealers never crack a book. Much of our great silver has been melted down unconsciously and cavalierly with the latest price rise in the commodity.

I have tended to focus on paintings and prints the last six or seven years. It will be certainly interesting to see if the current dismal economy will continue to support my vocation. I know that my shop is a special place and I say that with all the humility I can muster. I wish that more people would appreciate the treasures of our past. But also understand that the first order of business right now is food and shelter. I started out on the pavement and guess that I can maybe return one day. But think I would blow my brains out first.

Some People Shots - click for zoom.

All photos © 2009 Robert Sommers