Jewel Eyed Judy

I have been listening to a lot of early Fleetwood Mac lately. They could be so good. A band that has seen its share of bad luck. They talk about Badfinger winning the all time rock tragedy prize but Fleetwood Mac had more than its fair share of tsoris.

Danny Kirwan

Peter Green flipped out on acid, Spencer joined the Children of God cult, Danny Kirwan, who is singing here, breaks down and becomes an alcoholic, Bob Welch commits suicide.

I was never a huge Buckingham/Nicks fan so I won't even go into that incarnation but the early stuff was great. There were other guitarists that had a cup of coffee with the band, including Dave Mason, Rick Vito, Bob Weston and Billy Burnette. They didn't make much of a dent.

Peter Green is an amazingly lyrical player who deserves all the accolades he gets but I myself am inexorably drawn to the underrated Kirwan and Welch. The band had such a lovely sound during their tenure.

Bob wrote this fabulous song for his solo album before FM did their version.

Wait up

Trump dismisses a poll that doesn’t exist for coming from an inaccurate pollster that wasn’t.

Dystopian Fiction Is Selling Like There’s No Tomorrow.

Couple great headlines out there. Although the times are certainly nutty they do give you ample opportunities to laugh.

We lost quite a few souls this week that left big footprints on the universal timestream. Jimmy Breslin, one of the best writers to ever come out of the big apple. James Cotton, a harmonica player that blew true. Chuck Berry, a major influence on Beatles and Stones, who did things in his own inimitable way.

Bernie Wrightson, an incredible comic illustrator I was lucky enough to catch at the early days of the San Diego Comic Con, along with other immense talents and peers like Kaluta, Jeff Jones, Chaykin, Stout and Corben.

I feel very blessed to have been able to meet so many of my artistic heroes in my life. And the Con was a big portal, met Sturgeon, Zelazny, Kirby, Mouse, so many incredibly talented people there, people that stretched the boundaries. The late Dr. Leonard Shlain, who I was also privileged to meet, who wrote Art and Physics, among other books, said that artists got the word about the portents of the future before anybody else did.

Said life is a little rocky right now, am attempting to right my own ship. Am astounded by this new invention we have, they call it a television. Small life like figures dance around a screen and entertain you, seemingly at all hours of the day or night.

Watched the Twilight Zone episode Judgement Night where the german U-Boat captain gets to relive the killing of the people on the British ship every day for the rest of eternity. Ninety nine percent of the crap on t.v. is absolute sheit, but I am finding myself drawn to the early black and whites.

These days will drive you crazy. Best to find a good diversion.

Putin critic turned green - New York Times

“This strange assumption of the Kremlin: to pour brilliant green on me so that I don’t travel around the country and call rallies,” he wrote on Facebook. “It’s way cooler that way. Barnaul and Biysk volunteers (where we are opening two campaign headquarters these days) will get the most stylish selfies ever, and I’ll be the star of any rally.”
He did, however, seem more concerned about his new green teeth. “Lemon won’t help you remove brilliant green,” he wrote. “Formic acid is way better. But I’ll remain light-green for quite some time. What worries me is my teeth. They are also green so far, but I hope they’ll discolor.”

Suspicion of complicity in Russian shenanigans is falling once again on Paul Manafort, except for in the Trump White House anyway. Spicer today said that he only had a limited role for a limited time. He was the Campaign Manager for goodness sakes. Doesn't get much closer than that.

A friend of the friend had these bumper stickers made. Leslie asked me not to put it on my car. Might not be a safe move in this town.

Chuck Berry - Hoochie Coochie Man

Maxfield wakes up from his nap.

Maxfield wakes up from his nap.

Early light, Zabriskie Point

I had been camped out on the ledge since four in the morning with an english photographer. At sunrise 200 members of the Contra Costa Camera Club charged us from their bus like a herd of rhino, stepping in our line, jostling our tripods, yelling and making a general racket and on one occasion, dropping their camera gear accidentally off the cliff. For me, photography works best as a solitary pursuit.

Here nature decided I needed a mid ground focus, a stripe of luminosity interrupting an otherwise slumbering landscape.

New Year's plunge - Grandview

If You Live

Dust

Flora

Infinity seeks our attention from the most humble of her creations.

Nuke shots

A physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Labs has declassified a huge trove of nuclear bomb footage. Greg Spriggs has released footage of 210 atmospheric tests shot at 2400 frames per second.

If you like watching magnificent explosions check out their YouTube site here before they decide to reclassify it. As an aside, my father was involved in the transmission of the first nuclear photograph as an Army photographer in World War II.

Moon's a harsh mistress

Give the gift of life!

My buddy BigDave recently celebrated a major anniversary with the pioneering kidney transplant software he developed. Over a hundred paired donations using his software, now owned by BiologicTx.

As a guy with one kidney, with a brother who has undergone a transplant, we know how precious they are to our well being. Needless to say, I am very proud of my friend David Jacobs. A guy who fought kidney disease and then gave back.




Please watch this video and listen to his story. Sign your organ donor's card.

Death Valley

Dawn

Sometimes you have to mess with them and there are times you don't. This one to the left is pretty raw. Keep seeing the hills like flowing earthen hips from a Grant Wood landscape.

Free money

Nice.

Nicholas' story

Trump is slashing Community Block Grant funding. Some of that funding goes to feed poor kids after school. Here are the words of his Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as to why the program is getting  defunded:

“They’re supposed to be educational programs right? They’re supposed to help kids who don’t get fed at home get fed so they do better at school,” he said. “Guess what, there’s no demonstrable evidence they’re doing that, helping results, helping kids do better in school … which, when we took the money from you, the way we justified it was these programs are going to help children do better in school and get better jobs. We can’t prove that is happening.”

So let me get this straight; the poor kids' grades didn't go up as much as we thought they should so we will now let them go hungry? Nice.

Mulvaney is using the same logic to cut Meals on Wheels. "It's not showing results," he says. What does that mean exactly? What kind of result beyond keeping people from starving do you need?

Max Frost and the Troopers

Shape of things to come.

Vlad said that the recent yellow color of the blog borders was scorching his retinas so I decided to go easy on you today with a touch of soothing gray. Now the spooky stuff.

The Trump budget is out and it is one scary wish list. Not going to reiterate or go through the whole thing but some of the cuts really do border on the inhumane. Heating oil subsidies, training for the disabled and seniors, Osha funding, major environmental rehab projects are getting axed, the Chemical Safety Board, Public Housing, Meals on Wheels, draconian cuts at the National Institute of Health, Rural clean water funding like the Water and Wastewater loan and grant programs, coal miner assistance programs in Appalachia, PBS, Legal Services, legal aid for domestic abuse, all gone. Cuts everything that doesn't have to do with the military and then takes a big hack to the State Department and soft diplomacy as well. Take a big sword to everything that smacks of humanity and then lets the unfortunate fend for themselves.

And we get a country that resembles its leader, a big bully with one tool in its quiver, a big hard stick. Let's see how that works down the road. But at least we will have a very expensive but shiny new wall across our southern border. Unless we get the contractor to throw in Canada too for free, Donald is quite the negotiator...

The elderly are really going to be taking a lot of hits in Trumpworld and I genuinely feel for them. Trumpcare will have a devastating effect on them.The gloves are off, according to Sean Spicer the AARP and the AMA are merely special interest groups. Now they can be sick, hungry and cold.

Made me think of the sixties movie, Wild in the Streets. In this great 1968 tale of the counterculture, people over 40 are termed the "Old Guard." Mandatory retirement is instituted at the age of thirty, then you are sent to a re-education camp at thirty five, where you are then narcotized and knocked off. All is good in this allegorical film, that is until the pre-teens take power.

And I can't help thinking that that is what this President is going to do the aged in this country. Restrict them from healthcare, keep them cold in the winter, take any free food they may have been leeching off the young and productive and then finally, take them out in the backyard and shoot them when they outlive their productivity and usefulness, like you would euthanize a farm animal.

WildBill had a catchy quote of unknown origin he shared with me the other day:

"A republican cannot enjoy their steak unless they know that somewhere out there, there is someone who wants steak but can't have it."

I don't like being a partisan hack. There was plenty I disliked about Obama and I was regular and emphatic in my criticism. But I could never have imagined having such a fundamental national discussion about who we are as a people and how we should care for the least among us. You know, it used to be a Christian thing, if you can remember that far back.

Bernie scared me and Hillary had her faults but welcome to the national nightmare. We will get through it eventually and hopefully people will have better memories in the future and remember that the message of the snake oil salesmen somehow never changes.
But someone you know, unless you live a highly prosperous and extremely hermetically sealed position, is about to get hurt real bad.

Seppuku

Senators Feinstein and Grassley left the intel meeting with Comey today looking drawn, grim, gray and battered. Seriously whacked. Somebody said something in there that totally freaked them out. Or showed them something. Wonder if our spooks really do have the Moscow Golden Shower vid? If I was a hypothetical Chief Executive of a big country and a compromising vid like that surfaced I would do the honorable thing and blow my own brains out in the Lincoln Bedroom for the good of the nation. Just saying...

Baby Let Me Take You (In My Arms)

More work from Utah (you have my permission to steal it.)

Time Has Come Today - Steve Earle

Blogpost to be named later

Never impose your language on people you wish to reach. Abbie Hoffman

Kind of tough getting back into the swing after the long roadie, have to settle down easy as they say. Grab some disjointed low hanging fruit and not get too literate.

So Steve Bannon was a Deadhead? Horrors. I wrote an article on the subject of racist republicans proclaiming eternal allegiance to the dead quite a few years ago. Here it is. Whatever I said then.

Seriously, it always cracks me up to hear the same guys now talking about Friedrich Hayak, in Bannon's case Toynbee or Raspail, cutting off Grandma's food stamps and the superiority of the Aryan race are maybe the same ones that you once saw bobbing their heads to Ramble on Rose during the first set and snorting up half of the annual Andean snowfall supply.

It used to be, enjoy the music, be kind, don't hurt anybody and don't step on the grass, Sam. Not lets bring on the fourth Reich. Jerry would be very unhappy with you, Steve. You weren't the one that got into that bad batch of the black hits with Ann Coulter were you? They were supposed to be off limits.

I know far too many radically gop deadheads. One guy who was lit up on liquid acid for two decades and more who turned his own son in for smoking pot. The kid did six months in the slam. A tripster that once cut Elston Gunn's lawn and now loves the Orange one.

Hard to figure people once espousing a band that tolerated recreational drug use, gays, bi's, tri's and whatevers, religious beliefs of all stripes, not to mention personal freedom and responsibility, turning into such total dicks. Whose party wants to roll back all sorts of rights and pleasures that you take for granted.

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Good article at Politico on Trump and the new dictator chic.

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Cutting mine safety inspections in Coal Country. Goodbye Meals on Wheels. Trump slashes funds for EPA, State Department, the complete elimination of the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, USAID, what am I forgetting? NEA, PBS, etc. Let Exxon and Duke run the country, for god's sakes, they have your best interests at heart and companies will police themselves.

Tough to stick it to the elderly on food at the same time we are jacking their insurance payments up to 20k or so a year. But don't worry folks. They will just do without and die quicker and your Malthusian problems are solved! And remember, if the stock market is up, everything is good!

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Everybody is writing about the health care bill and I certainly don't need to join the party. But I find it funny that the act in three parts bill is getting more conservative in the house to placate the "Freedom" wing right before it is slated to get real moderate for the Senate Republicans. Getting dizzy.

Lets get another thing straight. There is no federal law right now forbidding health insurers to cross state lines. You can't insure the old, weak and infirm without participation of the young and healthy in a mandate of some sort.

Lot of bullshit out there. Obamacare could be fixed with both hands on the oars but it is not in a death spiral and enjoys the support of the majority, not that that means anything anymore. Obamacare premiums went up for three percent of the population, not a huge plurality. In any case, the Republican "cure" is much worse than the disease. Ho hum, doesn't matter, they promised...

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Has Russia penetrated the United States Spy System? The NERDS and Vault 7.

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Was Monsanto colluding with the EPA on the severity of Glyphosate dangers? Dying scientist Marion Copley appeared to think exactly that. I created this logo years ago. Found it on the internet where I left it.

Dr. Copley’s letter points at corruption within EPA; she asks that Mr. Rowland consider her scientific assertions rather that “play your political conniving games with the science to favor the registrants [pesticide manufacturers].” Dr. Copley confronts Mr. Rowland with allegations that he and Anna Lowit, who still works at EPA, “intimidated staff on CARC and changed HIARC and HASPOC final reports to favor industry.” Dr. Copley’s letter closes with an additional accusation toward Ms. Lowit: “If anyone in OPP is taking bribes, it is her.” She requests that Mr. Rowland “for once do the right thing and don’t make decisions based on how it affects your bonus.”
Dr. Copley’s letter, discovered after the filing of this Motion, substantiates many of Plaintiffs’ suspicions regarding EPA’s improper relationship with Monsanto. It highlights the need to take the testimony of Mr. Rowland on these issues now. Plaintiffs have explored the issues as much as they can with party witnesses; indeed, several witnesses acknowledge knowing Mr. Rowland but are unable (or unwilling) to provide any details of his relationship with Monsanto.
Dr. Copley’s dying request was that Mr. Rowland “for once do the right thing and don’t make decisions based on how it affects your bonus. You and Anna Lowit intimidated staff on CARC and changed HIARC and HASPOC final reports to favor industry.”

More here at Bloomberg. 

The Environmental Protection Agency official who was in charge of evaluating the cancer risk of Monsanto Co.’s Roundup allegedly bragged to a company executive that he deserved a medal if he could kill another agency’s investigation into the herbicide’s key chemical.
The boast was made during an April 2015 phone conversation, according to farmers and others who say they’ve been sickened by the weed killer. After leaving his job as a manager in the EPA’s pesticide division last year, Jess Rowland has become a central figure in more than 20 lawsuits in the U.S. accusing the company of failing to warn consumers and regulators of the risk that its glyphosate-based herbicide can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“If I can kill this I should get a medal,” Rowland told a Monsanto regulatory affairs manager who recounted the conversation in an email to his colleagues, according to a court filing made public Tuesday. The company was seeking Rowland’s help stopping an investigation of glyphosate by a separate office, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, that is part of the U.S. Health and Human Service Department, according to the filing.
A federal judge overseeing the glyphosate litigation in San Francisco said last month he’s inclined to order Rowland to submit to questioning by lawyers for the plaintiffs, who contend he had a "highly suspicious" relationship with Monsanto. Rowland oversaw a committee that found insufficient evidence to conclude glyphosate causes cancer and quit last year shortly after his report was leaked to the press.

While Scott Pruitt denies human complicity in climate change as well as the phenomenon of mercury poisoning over at EPA, atmospheric C02 rises to a record rate. Yea!

Atmospheric CO2 levels measured at the Mauna Loa Baseline Atmospheric Observatory in Hawaii, the world’s marquee site for carbon dioxide monitoring, soared by a record-breaking 3 parts per million in both 2015 and 2016, according to data that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released on Friday.
Carbon dioxide concentrations measured at the facility hit 405.1 parts per million last year, the agency said, adding that similar observations had been recorded at dozens of other sites all over the world.

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Trump administration rolling back Obama era requirements that energy companies disclose the chemicals that they use when fracking on public land. Surprised?

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I think that's all I've got. Bob DeGoff told me that he can no longer send my blog to his friends, it upsets them. Sorry, Bob.

Didn't get shit done today with the exception of an oil change, frame repair, mailed a package, not much else. Need a day off, wanted to go out to the desert and photograph wildflowers but it may not happen. Tomorrow I get to deal with another car dealership.

Johnny's Garden

Black Peter, 10/29/77 ☮ Grateful Dead

In spades

I heard once that only one question goes unanswered in the bible. Am I my brother's keeper? It's a good question. No one has ever figured out the right answer. Never will. Paul Ryan surely doesn't feel like he is, a libertarian and disciple of Ayn Rand, the crown queen of selfishness. Never met a Rand devotee I could trust.

So what was the push number, 56 million out of insurance or something like that? But make sure you raise the rates fivefold for the elderly, young and the infirm and of course we will have to give the plus 200k folks a big fat tax break. The GOP isn't content unless they are punishing somebody and it looks like the little guys are going to get it good.

My favorite illustrative moment was at the Republican Townhall debate in Tampa in 2011. CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul a hypothetical question about a young man without insurance who is severely injured and requires hospitalization for six months. Who would pay for his care? Should society "just let him die?"

And the foaming crowd starts screaming feverishy, "Yes, yes, let him die."

And there's the split.

Life goes on just the same...

I painted with my friend Kerry Brown in college. He is really good. He painted a great painting of Muddy Waters. He would like to sell it. Will give more info later...

Strange cloud formation, Death Valley

An unfortunate incident occurred that day on Titan's moon, it was quickly hushed up by the ILLUMINARIES.

Coco Montoya

Same old thing.

I am back from San Francisco, the incredibly shrinking show in the incredibly shrinking business.

Funny place, the people in the Bay Area don't generally smoke tobacco but the crows in the region are up to two packs a day. Might have to wrestle a butt from one of these guys...

The mighty Hillsborough Antique Show, once bustling with dealers and filling two great rooms and adjacent hallways to the brim, is now coughing like an old camel smoker, half lunged, existing on mere fumes, barely filling half a hall. Can't catch a breath, can't catch a break.

The writing is on the wall that it is going to twice a year from its present three times, Del Mar as well is two shows this year. Los Angeles barely supports a show, Bustamante,  feeble but a faint pulse thanks to a few remaining Persian buyers but the Los Angeles Modernism show is pretty much toast. Believe that one is now gone. Same story all over the country. Shows shriveling up and dying, dealers going broke and getting out of the business, never to be seen again. Old is out.

Kids today aren't into the old, the historical, the ethnic, art, antiques, the classic.

Even fifties and sixties was tough this year in Palm Springs, the needle slipping forward into the dreaded seventies and eighties. My god, I haven't seen Corian like that since the 90's...Will look so good with the hanging macrame shell ensemble and the vintage plastic.

What the hell happened? Damned if I know, they stopped teaching art in the schools, their parents were into drugs or therapy, there were never any items of value or historic import on the shelves of their favorite television shows, the Ikea functional and minimalist plastic lab rat with electronics lifestyle won the race, as I said I have no clue how the thing is supposed to turn out.

Saw something today that said the kids weren't even into drugs anymore, they preferred their telephones, god help us.

Play on your phones, tattoo your epidermis until their isn't an inch of native skin left, put the cute little thing through your nose, vote Republican, do whatever the fuck you want, you little bastard muggles. I can take solace in being part of the last generation with taste on my way to the cemetery.

Met some lurkers and hidden blast readers recently, down here and up there. Thank you. Doctor Rick says he likes when I am bitching and moaning the best, so this is for you babe.

I managed to sell some things, not enough of them. Crowds were sparse, weather was too nice. People are too broke. Sky is too blue.

My car took another shit. I am not sure if I shared my story of Palm Springs, wherein my driver side door stopped locking and then even closing? After miles of holding it closed with brute force, the local dealer thought they fixed it but two weeks later, bingo, it happens again, so I can't lock my car for three days in a big city and can't even get a hotel on the way home.

Thank you Michael for putting me up. The Chrysler dealer up there charged me another $175 to look at it and then said it would be about 700 more to fix and by the way they can't get the part until this week. So we will see what the locals say and then I will contact the lemon law attorney who sent me the nice letter last month. Because the same thing happened to the side door two years ago. Mad as hell, not gonna take it blah, blah, blah...

Discovered the New England Lobster Company on Cowan in Burlingame. Been driving by, missing it for years, where the hell have I been?

Better lobster rolls than I had in Maine.

Expensive but worth it. Had good Szechuan with Rick one night.

If I wanted to continue to write I would but I don't so adios for now, muchachas and muchachos. Catch you when I feel perky and human again.

Drove all day yesterday and unpacked today. Put away wet and wrung out to dry, knocked down like a three pin taking a brooklyn dive.

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© Rick Griffin Estate

I got interviewed on KPFA's Grateful Dead Marathon on Saturday regarding the John "Marmaduke" Dawson record. It was a lot of fun and went pretty smoothly. Simulcast all over. Thanks to all involved.

The late Rick Griffin was an old and very good friend of mine. He was not above purloining an image from the public bank when he felt it artistically necessary.

He kiped the crow for the Wake of the Flood album from a black board game from the 1920's or 30's. I have one around someplace. It was on a playing card. Love you Rick.

Rick called Jeff, Dave and I the three musketeers. We used to sit around and point out things to him that he never knew he put in his paintings. Occasionally we and sometimes I would work all nighters with him in the studio. At times an ordeal but always real mind blowing. An amazing man.

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cough

I've got a mind to give up living (and go shopping instead)

Hitting the road again for another show. The weeds are getting pretty high at my place on account of all that rain. I'm not complaining, you don't like them, too bad, we ain't on the home or garden tour anytime soon... Wisteria starting to bloom as are the 450 gladiolus I got sent from Michigan and there's the rub, they are so intertwined with the weeds that you can't take care of one without decimating the other, already accidentally nailed four or five shoots and I don't want to stand accused of being a callous and un repentant flower killer so we will leave things scruffy for a piece. Tom brought over a couple old trucks to add some character to the back pasture and I look forward to watching them turn to rust, hopefully before I do. He broke a main line today and it was a real adventure getting back to the main shutoff. Happy to hear that there is a new George Smiley book coming out from John Le Carre September 5th. Something to look forward to after the summer of my discontent. I think that it will be called Legacy of Spies. Good for Cornwall. Thought he was out to pasture too. Now if he could only secure the video of Trump with the Russian waterwench... The GOP is about to start cannibalizing each other with the health rollout. Mark my words soon they will come hat in hands to the dems to get them to fix their problem and neutralize the Freedom wing. Working in a bipartisan manner is a two way street and I wouldn't start now if I was Schumer. The House and Senate GOP are about to start going for each other's jugulars and Drumpf will have no freaking idea what to do. This should be fun.

Bizarro