Hillsborough Antique Show

 

Merle Travis

Trumpanzee Times

“There was such love at that rally, you had over a million people, they were there for one reason, the rigged election, they felt the election was rigged,” Trump said, while ignoring the widespread violence that occurred on Jan. 6 as a result of his fruitless efforts to overturn the election results. “That’s why they were there and they were peaceful people, these were great people, the crowd was unbelievable and I mentioned the word love, the love in the air I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Trump - lightning rod for animus - interesting study on what motivates his base.

Funny Trump supporter sentencing memorandum.

Doug Manchester, pay to play?

Trumpstock: Rally before Capitol breach was a lovefest and a beautiful thing.

CPAC attendees cheer the fact that U.S. has not met its vaccination goals.

Lauren Boebert accuses Dr. Fauci of "bullying" for telling people to get over the politics and get vaccinated.

National partisan covid split - two maps. More on the subject from the NYT. Infections rise in 42 states.

Janis Joplin

Redistribute sex?

Funny article by Andi Zeisler at Newsweek, The question keeping conservative men up at night; why won't women date us? 

Apparently many women aren't comfortable dating conservative men and it is really pissing the guys off.

Some think it is time for the government to step in and redress their pent up grievances and hormonal overload.

In 2018, Washingtonian magazine reported on young D.C. conservatives who found that working in the Trump White House or for right-wing media outlets were dating-app dealbreakers. A 2017 piece in The Federalist argued that dating sites that allow for “associative mating” — also known as “selecting partners with interests and beliefs in common” — were in fact the reason Trump was elected in the first place. The New York Times’s Ross Douthat applauded the British economist Robin Hanson for advocating the “redistribution” of sex as a remedy for the murderous misogyny of incels.

The newest entry in this pantheon of conservative lonely hearts comes from Eric Kaufmann, whose piece this week in the National Review, “Political Discrimination as Civil-Rights Struggle,” argues that college women’s disinterest in dating Trump supporters doesn’t just hurt their feelings, but is in fact discrimination. This, Kaufmann maintains, is evidence of a “progressive authoritarianism” that’s compelling “young elite Americans” to be turned off by “conservatives' resistance to racial, gender, and sexual progressivism.”

Face it fellows, they just don't dig you. Try to legislate your way out of this one.

Of course, conservatives have repeatedly shown a willingness to dispense with their core principles when market forces turn against them. And Ross Douthat and Robin Hanson prove that when access to sex is at stake, conservatives get downright socialist real fast.

Just Can't Be

Call me oversensitive.

When I was a young art/architecture student in college I had a commercial art teacher named Jim Hulbert. Jim was an illustrator for Ford in Detroit for thirty years and he tried to work us to death best he could. 

Taught us a lot about becoming professional artists though and some of his lessons I will never forget. He was a very good teacher, no b.s..

Anyway one of the main things he tried to emphasize was the need to create your own reference library using your own source material so that you weren't stealing or appropriating other people's work. Take your own source pictures.

With a quarter million of my own images on my drives it is easier for me than some but there are admittedly times that I slip.

And this blogpost is such an occasion. I could run down to Hillcrest and covertly take some pictures but I won't, was there this morning and frankly I don't feel so hot. So I am doing a visual smash and grab off the net instead.

Anyhow, about two weeks ago I was awaiting a procedure and I was hungry and I slipped over to Einstein Bagels on Robinson for a cup of coffee and a nova on sesame, no onion, no capers, squeeze of lemon.

And I noticed that the large arty murals covering the walls all had a central theme, namely what I clearly perceived were old world Jews in bowler hats cavorting around in a fanciful Jewish like manner like they are wont to do. Happy, well fed Jews eating standard Jewish fare.

And I wish that I had taken pictures of the art because I was plainly getting pissed at them. Not that they were offensive, the graphics were actually quite well done and charming. It was instead the fact the knowledge that the founding owners of the people that now own Einstein Bagels were actually Nazi sympathizers. 

And the Jews that they had working in forced labor for them were not quite so well fed. And now they were profiting from their pleasant caricature, not to mention a business name which hearkens to one of the most famous jews that has ever lived.

The German family whose holding company owns controlling stakes in companies such as Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Panera Bread, Pret a Manger and Einstein Bros. Bagels profited from the horrors of the Nazi regime, according to a bombshell report in a German newspaper.

The tabloid Bild, one of Germany’s most popular papers, reported that Albert Reimann Sr. and Albert Reimann Jr., whose family backs JAB Holdings, had significant links to the Third Reich.

The company, which also owns Noah's (which has its own hebraic etymology) and Manhattan Bagel, got into the bagel game in 2014. Sort of like George Lincoln Rockwell buying Aunt Jemima.

The report found that Russian civilians and French prisoners of war were used as forced laborers in the family’s factories and private villas around World War II, when it was involved in chemicals-related manufacturing mostly for the food industry, according to Deutsche Welle.

I talk, somewhat dismissively, about people getting needlessly sore and oversensitive about cultural patrimony issues but it feels a little different when it is your tuchas being co-opted. I lost over 80% of my father's family at Auschwitz, after a last train ride from Wyszkove.

And I feel angry somehow that an advertising campaign, can obliquely portray and fetishize these happy and rotund quasi Jews as their totemic icons, when the founders of the company were complicit in a movement that placed my own family in the ovens.

Peter Harf - JAB President

Now don't  get me wrong, I love the Germans today, seriously. I admire them and consider them fully contrite and repentant. I just think this advertising is too much. I will stop off at the next Einsteins I see and try to grab some shots. Tell me if I am off base here. But I personally find their advertising campaign a bit obscene. Make the bagels but don't sell them with cartoon Jews, the subtle shtick is a little too much.

Will give you better examples at a later date.

Autumn Leaves

Narcissistic indulgence #10450

 

Admitting photograph 6:30 a.m.

On account of today's biopsy I had to cancel the Del Mar Antique Show, which opened this morning, runs through Sunday.

It was sad, several clients had written and called and wondered if I would exhibit? Unfortunately there are times in your life where you don't set the agenda and I had no room to negotiate on this one.

In any case, a small story.

I got a call last month from an antique dealer that I have probably known for over 25 years. She also wanted to talk about the show but made the point that she had read about my medical travails on the blog and was concerned.

"The blog?" I said. "You read the blog?"

"Every day," she answered.

Now it was not exactly earth shattering news but I had no clue. We have been friends and colleagues for many years, my life is an open book, not too outlandish that she is reading me. Lots of people read the blast, well over a thousand a day. 

The point is, that I did not know and really have no idea just exactly who is digesting this fourteen year old rundown on my life. Many people never let on.

I had to make a delivery to the show yesterday to return some auction consignments and I ran into my lurker friend. I told her that I was taken aback that she was a long time blast reader and she said something rather interesting to me.

She said that I was much more sophisticated and intellectually focused in real life. Intimated that I dumbed down somewhat on the blog. Due to all sorts of laws of nature and physics, Heisenberg immediately comes to mind, I think she actually may have a point. 

She watches me in action selling at the shows and seems to think there is more worldliness and nuance in the tangible Robert Sommers than the corporeal, virtual version that comes across on the printed page. Certainly less crudity and boorish humor. 

She said that the depth or breadth that she purports to see does show up in my photography consistently, but in the writing, not so much.

It would be an indulgence in sesquipedalian snobbery for me to write solely for the eggheads in my world. I think that Joe Lunchpail would feel somewhat left out and I would end up feeling like an elitist swine, albeit a kosher one. And I certainly don't think people want a steady diet of heavy and certainly not politics at this point.

I guess I am flattered by her observation. Me, deep? Well, now... Is there more to me than meets the eye? Can anybody honestly ever get a correct read on themselves in this regard? Isn't that for others to discern? For the record, I think I am rather juvenile and am honestly surprised that anybody still wallows in this collective mud with me. Except for the pretty pictures of course.

For an antisocial cat, I do believe I have a quiver of pretty decent social skills. And there is a reason for that. I went to twelve schools growing up before college. Jack and Jill, Lemon Avenue, Lancaster, Mariposa in Las Cruces, MacCarthur Elementary in El Paso, Southwoods in Syosset, Hauppauge Middle School, Lewis Junior High, Desert Sun, Dwight York and Walden in New York and Oxnard High to finish it off. Did I forget any?

When you are moving nearly every year and sometimes every six months, you become a chameleon. You learn to not only adapt but to modify the persona as needed, depending on locale. I got really good at it. You stay in one place your whole life you get saddled with all sorts of past shit and history, when you are a gypsy you can start over and retool the narrative, with less fact checking and calls for consistency. Show the world whatever face you damn please!

Quite handy when you are traveling to a new town and don't want to be on the outs or get your ass kicked. And I lived in some rough places, believe me.

Not sure how to respond to such a broadside, not sure if it is true, hopefully if there is a real me, it manages to shine through on occasion like a sporadic ray of sunshine over the cloudy Oregon coast. I think I am still here and hope to be here for at least the immediate future, if not much, much, longer.

But copy all you can of this blog if you like it, as there are no guarantees, no hard copies and Google likes to instantly pull the plug on platforms like this. Before the blast, like me, is a faded memory and so much dust in the wind.

*

I leave for San Francisco early next week. Doctor says no lifting, could risk internal bleeding. Guess what? The heavy lifting starts tomorrow. I have no options and the show must go on. Wish me luck.

Superstar

Karen Carpenter called herself a drummer who sang. Beloved by such luminaries as Buddy Rich and Sinatra, she had a unique voice and musical ability and skill set that may never be matched. A lot of her material was lame for my taste but the melancholy singer could sure nail it on occasion, as she does on this Leon Russell classic.

David Willey

I had my cancer biopsy surgery this morning. Had some minor complications but got through it. Will know something in a week. When I came out of anesthesia I saw that I had a message on my phone from David Willey's sister.

David Willey was my longtime Hung Gar and Wing Chun kung fu teacher at Hidden Valley Kung Fu. He was the best and most proficient martial artist I have ever known. We called him "the hammer." 

Believe me, this 145 lb. man could hit you harder than you have ever been hit and he did it in the most beautiful of fashion. Watching David fight was like watching Nureyev dance. Hit you with a smile, he was and is a genuinely beautiful person.

He is a fabulous teacher and was particularly good with teaching children and young students, extremely patient and always imparting his wisdom and technique with the greatest warmth and understanding.

Absolutely brilliant at a variety of skills including forms, sparring and weapons. Could fight mantis and dragon as well as the five animals methods and Wing Chun. Great with a staff.

The nicest, most lovable and peaceful human being you could ever encounter in the world but he was an absolute terrifying monster on the mat and his technique was impeccable. Wednesday night "back to back" sparring sessions were particularly grueling when you were paired off with David, he was fierce and plainly loved his craft, would give or expect no quarter.

I competed in the 1989 World Championships in San Francisco and watched David become Seven Star Grand Champion that day, beating the heavily favored and brilliant martial artist Shane Lacey in a major upset. 

The school had its ups and downs. Financial woes. Our Sifu, John Vihildal, came down with major heart issues that forced him to stop teaching. The school had several moves and name changes. I had to stop working out as my knees could no longer take getting swept. I got cancer, remember training the same day as chemo, if you can believe that? Finally had to call it quits.

Sort of lost touch with the old gang.

I would occasionally run into David while shopping in Escondido. David had shifted his focus to fencing and became nationally ranked in the foil, a competent and beloved teacher locally and a USA Fencing referee. 

This was interesting to me because in martial arts we preached bilateral symmetry and fencers tend to get large lead legs.

I was saddened to hear today that David is now fighting pancreatic cancer. It doesn't sound too good. There is a Go Fund Me page. 

Say a prayer for him, light a candle, make a donation, or think a good thought for a great human being, whatever is your custom or inclination. I hope that he can make a recovery but I recognize the enormous battle he is now fighting.

Danko

Always in my heart

 

David "Buzz" Sommers - 6/19/1959 - 7/7/2017

Jack and Jorma Sing a long

Save yourselves

The breathy warning from the right wing-o-sphere is bleak. Taliban surges as Biden pulls US troops out of Afghanistan, with experts warning of 'foreign policy disaster' reads the Fox headline.

 President Biden is “going to own” the “ugly images” resulting from the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) on Sunday.

How convenient to forget that then President Trump explicitly called for this draw down way back in February of 2020.

“Everybody’s tired of war,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “It’s been a very long journey. It’s been a hard journey for everybody."

It's called intellectual integrity. You call them the same way from either side of the plate, not just when your team is leading the charge. Or you end up looking like hypocritical idiots.

*

Getty - Time

Ex Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants to blame the United States for the problems in his country. What a joke. 

This is a guy whose late brother ran the opium trade and was known as a CIA operative before he was gunned down by his own security guard.

Western officials pointed to evidence that Ahmed Wali Karzai orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots for his brother’s re-election effort in August. He is also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots.

“The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone,” General Flynn said.

In the interview in which he denied a role in the drug trade or taking money from the C.I.A., Ahmed Wali Karzai said he received regular payments from his brother, the president, for “expenses,” but said he did not know where the money came from. He has, among other things, introduced Americans to insurgents considering changing sides. And he has given the Americans intelligence, he said. But he said he was not compensated for that assistance.

These people are as dirty as sin, corrupt as hell. Follow the money.

If they want to blame somebody they need to look in the mirror. Twenty years in the Afghan hellhole is long enough. But tell me, why is it that the U.S. trained Afghani military forces have always been so inept, they can't seem to get out of their own way? Yet the Taliban are some of the most ruthless and efficient fighters on the planet. Something is wrong with this picture. The fault does not lie with the United States or the Western World. The fault rests solely with the afghanis, who are not sure if they want to join the 20th century yet, let alone the present.

How can these be the same people, that is unless they have been playing us the whole time. They played Obama, the played Trump, who believed that the Taliban would reform. The only person who has not been played is the current occupant of the White House. Time for the Afghanis to do their own dirty work.

America

Happy Fourth!

 

Interesting take on our country's founders and immigration by Ilya Somin at Reason.

And David French on Christians and patriotism.

What we get wrong about the Founders - Albert Hunt

Brigitte sent this nice photo down from Washington.

True patriots are rebels, not bootlickers - Daily Kos

Samuel Johnson famously wrote in 1775 that “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce made the appropriate correction: “With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.”

Don't tread on me.

Saw this beautiful red diamond rattler, crotalus ruber, crossing the road near my house the other day.

Van Ronk

New wheels

The situation was not really dire as much as it was excessively restraining. My old van probably will go another 100k miles easy but the load capacity is so small that it is starting to hurt.

If they don't stick me back in a serious immunotherapy protocol after the biopsy next Thursday I have a show in San Francisco and three in New Mexico scheduled in short order. It will be tough in the Caravan and I haven't been driving it lately and it worries me to think about a long roadie. So much inventory and so little space.

So I started looking into my options. I could rent a cargo van. But I called Penske and they wanted five hundred a week plus sixty four bucks a day for commercial insurance plus mileage. Over 5k for three weeks.  Rental prices have skyrocketed. My old pals at Miramar Truck took great care of me in the old days but they sold out to Velocity a couple years back and it has became impossible to work with them anymore.

I started looking at vans to buy. I thought about the Ford Transit and then watched this video and said no way. The Mercedes was out, I don't have the money to fix them. My friend Shlomo is on the second engine on his and frankly, it has been a nightmare.

The Nissan cargo van is okay, Rick has one, terrible on gas and the front end looks awkward to me. Warmboe has a Ram ProMaster he has been very happy with so I decided to look in that direction. I have had very good luck with Dodge.

I thought about a high roof model but encountered many of them up in the Sierras and they didn't really look aerodynamically stable in the wind. I really didn't need the height so much and was envisioning nightmare wind scenarios in the Grapevine. Plus they are worse on gas mileage.

So I decided to look for a low roof 136" wheelbase Ram ProMaster. They come in three lengths and I would go with the middle option between 118" and 154". I went up to the Ram dealer in Temecula. To my surprise and chagrin they had exactly none of them. Ram pulled all the commercial vehicles from the normal dealerships a while back.

I would have to go to Ontario or San Diego if I wanted one. I met two girls at a party with one that they bought in Wisconsin for 7k under MSRP. I called the dealer and they said I was a week too late.

Due to the Nomadland/live in your van phenomenon, there is no inventory, all the dealer incentives have been withdrawn and the dealers are putting a surcharge on the vans, if you are lucky enough to find one. The chip shortage has not helped the situation either.

I called Carl Burger Dodge Ram and they said that they had two coming in supposedly that they had been ordered last November and it would be another month before delivery at the minimum, the price would be over 40k and they would most probably be sold sight unseen before they got there. I couldn't risk them being off on their date and that was a lot of gelt.

I couldn't afford to buy a new van at this point honestly, maybe I could but didn't want to be stretched that far so I started looking for used inventory. A guy in Fontana had some at his lot but his one star reviews screamed shyster and I was in no mood for the b.s..

So I bit the bullet and bought a 2019 from Enterprise the other day with 40k on it, 136" low roof. A few hundred dollars under blue book, just north of 31k. The van was in Ventura so I would forego the heavy transfer charge. They sent it to Long Beach and the guy I was working with drove up and got it and I paid no extra surcharge.

I would like to say that I was in love with it, it had the rear window I wanted as I prefer to see behind me without a camera if I want to and that runs about seven hundred additional bucks to install. But there was a horrible rattle in the rear door. 

I asked my bud about the rattle and he said they all rattle and to live with it. I couldn't. So I looked it up on google and discovered the rear hatch was missing a rubber bushing that kept the door tight and apparently stopped the incessant clanking.

It was fairly clean, one ding, which I was not allowed to mention on the contract or the salesman said he would kill the deal. He had a Chevy Supercargo on the lot, for 2k less and less miles, but no bluetooth, no radio or USB and I just did not want to go back to the stone age. I have rented the Chevy before and it was great, actually had an extra foot of cargo length but just way to luddite for long distance trips in the new millennium.

I was told that Amazon has tried (quite successfully apparently) to buy every cargo van on the planet and I can tell you that there is very little inventory out there. The salesman said that people tell him that they aren't going to pay these prices for a used vehicle and he says he laughs at them, the truth is there is very little out there. Try to buy a new vehicle right now.

My van went to the dealer to get the door fixed and I picked it up yesterday. Rattle is gone.

Buying a used vehicle is a little bit like getting a new girlfriend who has already slept with the offensive line and half the backfield, lacks that new car smell, shall we say? 

I would be driving something with a little more experience. No problem.

These vehicles are tools, as Bill informs me. In its two years of life it has probably been rented by various contractors who didn't care what they did to the interior and you can see some marks on the paint. 

But it drives like a dream and the infotainment system seems to work pretty well. All in all I think it will be okay, inshallah.

It didn't take long to put it to use, stopping at Steinberg's office and picking up a small refrigerator and delivering it to his home. 

I have ordered a mat and need to buy some bungees and outfit it with ropes and a stepstool, learn its ins and outs but I think it will be a valuable addition and should soon pay for its keep with its added payload.

I think I made the right decision on the height, Not being able to stand up fully in my van has never been a deal killer for me to date. 

Should dramatically increase my carrying capacity and that should mean more money made at the shows. I am going to sell the Caravan to a friend, few pesky warts notwithstanding.

Will add it to the insurance policy Tuesday, no, you can't borrow it.

Judee Sill - Crayon Angels

Going Gearhart

 

Nightbird

Coastal Elitist and proud of it!

I try my damnedest to stay non partisan and even handed but sometimes things just slip and the gloves come off.

I wanted to give my friend Brett a little business and so I told him about a t-shirt idea I had that is sure to piss people off, one of my specialties. This one is tongue in cheek, of course.

I am getting mighty tired of the red state tale wagging the blue state dog. So I created the rough concept for this Coastal Elite t-shirt.

That is yours truly with his nose in the air, giving dumbf*ckistan a timely sprinkle. 

Really bad taste I admit, I have sunk to new depths with this one, I know. Robert, taking matters in hand. Better to straddle the problem and be pissed off than pissed on, I always say.

Anyhow, we have some revisions to make, trying to explain the proper blue red split in Florida, which is not adequately expressed here. Jersey, Virginia, Maryland and parts of North Carolina need to go blue. 

Texas is a little wimpy here from a geographic/cartoonist perspective. The curly hair and hawaiian shirt are good. Nice popeye arms.

But we will get there. If there is enough interest and you aren't afraid to own one let me know and maybe I will print them up. It is a four color job so they won't be cheap but are sure to be a collector's item. By the way, my wife hates it and many of my peeps feel that it is childish and below me. So be it!

If they are going to call us coastal elitists I say wear the sobriquet proudly. Should have it cleaned up in no time.

Move along, nothing to see here...

regards to J. Scott Applewhite

It is pretty rich to hear the Republicans decry the inchoate January 6 investigation as overall partisan. 

Because as everybody knows, they were offered equal participation, like the 9-11 hearings were conducted and they quickly turned it down.

Truth is, they just want to forget the whole thing happened and the quicker the better. 

The "it was antifa plants the whole time" explanation didn't fly with anybody and last week they pivoted to a FBI deep state plot that went over like a fart in church.

Of course, they have no problems engaging in their own partisan witch hunts, like the thirty two Benghazi investigations.

Here is Kevin McCarthy talking to Hannity in 2015:

What you’re going to see is a conservative speaker, that takes a conservative Congress, that puts a strategy to fight and win. And let me give you one example. Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?

But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.

"I give you credit for that," Hannity responded. "I'll give you credit where credit is due."

So you reject the bipartisan investigation you were offered on the January insurrection and when the Dems go it alone you revert to the it's not bipartisan crying card. Got to give the GOP credit, you are consistent in your despicableness.

The House Minority leader McCarthy is now threatening members who want to get to the bottom of the attack on our nation's capitol by serving on the committee. Because he is afraid that his beloved fuhrer, Donald Trump, will be once again unfairly attacked and we all know how far Kevin's nose rests up Trump's ass.

Don't shoot your parents and then whine about being an orphan Kevin. You had your chance to do this thing the right way, for America and you passed. It saddens me to realize that so many Americans are stupid enough to believe you.

Allen Pants

 

One has to wonder if longtime Trump capo Allen Weisselberg is getting ready to do his best Frank Pentangeli impression for the good of the entire Trump crime syndicate.

"Take care of my family, Jr."

No problem Frankie Pants. You've been a good soldier. 

Personally, I don't think the guy ever cracks.

Steve Earle and the V-Roys

Bernard spins down the totalitarian rabbit hole

 

Slippery People

The Spoke and Word

© Roy Cohen

Roy Cohen is an athletic trainer, writer, music aficionado and a great photographer. In fact, truth be told, he is the best cell phone photographer I have ever met, by far.

He has had a blog in one form or another as long if not longer than I have and he is almost as prolific, if not more so. He can often be found riding his bike around town. It was his only transportation for a fair amount of time, by choice. 

When he found himself more responsible for his aging mother he started driving again because it was the responsible thing to do.

The man was my trainer for a period of time many years ago when I was working out regularly and he is excellent. He preaches the concept of functional strength. High reps, relatively low weight to burnout.

Roy's blog is called The Spoke and Word. Roy is a very ethical and moral guy and he frets about things a bit more than I do. I would find it personally very difficult to live up to the standards he sets for himself. But I am glad that somebody is trying to.

He wrote a piece yesterday on "wokism" that I found interesting, the word getting bandied around so much these days.

He has a small cadre of regular commenters so it is a pretty intimate conversation around friends. One of his regs, Dr. J., I think hails from Florida.

You can read the comments if you click on the post. Anyhow the subject was the schism between the young woke and the old guard and he had this to say:

Very thoughtful essay, Roy! In many ways, I don’t see real progress, just an extreme pendulum swinging back and forth. but jumping over the middle. We have the 50s extreme and the 60s extreme with no large middle ground.

I found this interesting in this sense;  He, quite correctly I think, posits the chasm as a fight between the fifties paradigm and the sixties paradigm. Sixty or seventy years have passed and could it be that we are still fighting the same cultural and philosophical war between two distant decades? 

If true, it is truly astounding if you think about it. Shows you how cataclysmic the psychedelic revolution was and also how vapid things have been ever since. Well, we have had disco, jazzercise, kambucha, facial tattoos, the war against gluten as well as plenty of new repetitive stress injuries in the interim but really, what else? Emo? The Talking Heads for sure. But seriously, mostly we have been living in a cultural wasteland and a time of complete political opposition and stalemate.

The Battle continues...

Eat those mushrooms kids, you are going to need them.

Robbie Robertson

Don't leave me alone in the twilight...

 

Neural kineticwaveform #27

I haven't painted or scribbled for a while so I thought I would indulge myself a bit this morning. I purloined Ralph's mother's old quilt and some of Bill's silver jewelry and used wave generators of various amplitudes and a few other brushes and came up with this number. Paul Klee meets Tron in a Texas Cage match.

We need to give ourselves space to play now and then, don't we?

Ellen McIlwaine

Nicer subjects

 

The Bromelia balensae flower spike continues to grow and evolve.

There are now not one, but four pups sprouting up around the mother plant so I think I will be in very good shape in the future.

*

Vlad and Natasha are enjoying another wonderful trip up in the Olympic Peninsula area.

I ran into one of the best writers and smartest and nicest people I know the other day, Helen. 

I think she is coming back after a brief hiatus.

Check out her writing on her excellent blog, Guacamole Gulch. Her last post was funny, she says that she is done with gardening. Likes planting, it is the maintenance that is the pain. I can relate.

Rick Danko & Richard Manuel

Shit list?

 

I got to the shop yesterday and was greeted by two fresh steamers at my back door.

The indigents that like to hang out behind my shop at night apparently gifted me a couple wet turds.

It was as disgusting as you could imagine and the flies were already having an absolute field day going to town when I arrived for work.

I only wish that my phantom crapper could have had a little better aim as the gross effluence nicked the corner of my welcome mat and it was frankly a bitch to clean up.

This was my third uninvited doodie in two weeks and I wonder if I had somehow provoked it? 

In any case, the pooper looks like they have a miserable diet and I would definitely recommend more vegetables and roughage.

I have been at my wit's end about this and short of spending the night in the parking lot of the building that I own, really don't know what more I can do?

I alerted the volunteer sheriffs the other day and they said they would talk to somebody. 

Of course, I have never heard from anyone, the sheriffs in this town are, shall I say, pretty detached and I am not sure what I could do to get them to patrol the alleys and take a look downtown.

Been trying for years. If Frank and McBroom were still around I know the problem would be solved by now and very quickly. I miss Clyde too.

Anyhow, the aluminum foil to the right of the poop patty looks like it is for cooking heroin. I know a street person named S--- who is a good guy and who I have hired for odd jobs. I told him about my situation and he said that he knows one guy named T--- who does smack and would ask him to refrain if it was indeed him smoking and producing the crap behind my place.

Perhaps it was a bad move as yesterday there were not one crap extant but now three. Had word got around of my disdain and unhappiness? Am I being subjected to an anal vendetta?

I went down to Joe's/Hank's/Ace and bought a square shovel and a new hose and went to work cleaning things up as best as I could. I wanted to puke, honestly. An absolutely disgusting job. I threw away the socks and paper towels the shitter (s) were using to clean themselves and washed things down as best as I could. 

I hired an electrician today and he replaced the old photovoltaic with one that can hopefully not be so easily disabled.

I resent the bleeding hearts who are enabling the homeless in our town. Call me heartless but I don't think my "squatters" are some poor woman and her kid who lost her job and couldn't pay the rent. I think they are more likely drug addicts and alcoholics and I don't think it is my job to clean up after them in this way. 

It might be hard to believe but the homeless or deranged crapping at my back doorstep does not make me feel more charitable towards these people. I will wipe my own ass, you take care of yours, capiche? At least try not to aim for the welcome mat, that is plainly passive aggressive.

This shit has to stop.

Yosemite View

 

Sandy Denny

Just another Mono Friday

Gut shots

I ain't gonna lie. It has been a tough week. 

I have slipped a few punches but definitely taken a few nasty jabs and crosses too. 

A few gut punches. But I am still standing. And I got some good news yesterday to boot.

Not to go full pity party on you but let me clue you in to a partial laundry list of the b.s.. 

Coming home Sunday I saw a letter in my mailbox. I decided to wait until the next day to grab it. 

Bad move. 

Monday morning all the mailboxes on the corner open and empty. Letter missing. Same thing today. Mail thieves struck again. There might be a camera that grabbed their license plate numbers, I am hoping. I am going to have to go to one of those expensive heavy duty locking boxes. Shame, most of our mail comes to the office but some bills do come to the house and I will have to wait and see what they stole.

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As if the vagrants defecating behind my store is not enough it appears that they are now smoking heroin back there too. 

Or so I surmise by the aluminum foil with the burn marks that they left anyway.

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Brigitte wrote today, someone is sending out spam links with my name on them.

Don't open them!

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Assholes somewhere close by are still shooting off fireworks at night. What kind of moron would shoot off a roman candle when it is this dry?

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The troll weighed in on the blog today:

Obviously this person has zero credibility.

Hydroxychloroquine has been completely debunked, at least fourteen studies have said it was completely worthless in the fight against Covid 19, as does the World Health Organization.

I usually caution your ilk not to drink the koolaid but if you want to drink the bleach, troll, well, have at it.

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I bought a beautiful 19th century watercolor from Florida recently, fairly expensive, over a grand but not enough to hit my policy deductible. The man I bought it from shipped it from UPS and purchased insurance. It arrived completely destroyed today. UPS told me that they will deny the claim because they did not pack it.

They don't tell you that when they take your money, funny. SOL.

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I got my biopsy scheduled today, smack in the middle of the Del Mar Antique Show, which I will now have to miss. But I said I had good news and I do, they can find no cancer cells in the urinary cytology, so maybe I will get through this thing relatively unscathed. Been hanging out in purgatory since my cystoscopy, not able to make any plans, not knowing what the hell. Hopefully things will become clearer.

We shall see.

Curtis Mayfield - Superfly

Thursday's child

 

Joel sent a nice sunset picture from last night.

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I met Lena at Anderson's nursery on La Costa Blvd. after I came home from San Clemente.

Bought some interesting material including this rare form of Crassula. 

I enjoyed walking around and looking at all the nice material.

I am on the list there for a spiral aloe if and when they get another one in. Definitely a plant I would like to try to grow although they are tough down here.

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Transgender soccer player playing in a ladies league surfaced the other day. How ridiculous and unfair to the other players. Not about identity, about plain biology.

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Bought three seventies laguna style surf assemblages the other day at the swap meet. 

Signed Barbour, Philip C. Barbour, Laguna Graphics.

None of my Laguna artist compatriots know anything about the guy.

The work looks very much like other artists of the time, Terry Lamb, Bill Ogden, Lance Jost and Jim Evans.

Need some restoration but really not too bad.

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I watched a video of shoplifters in San Francisco the other day stealing with total impunity, in front of guards, in broad daylight.

It is out of control and it is not the fault of Joe Biden.

But it might be the fault of people like Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón. George wants to let violent offenders out of jail, wants to give young murderers another shot. I am all for redemption but it takes serious contrition first. 

And right now, in many places, it is wolves and lambs. And if the predators do not see a major stick bearing down on their heads, I fear their behavior will never change. Anything else is wishful thinking.

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I found a beautiful and original Uncle Sam Wants you poster by James Montgomery Flagg in an estate I am working with recently. 

My paper restorer Jaime Mendez is going to make it look beautiful. 

It is a very valuable and iconic poster. 

I have another different Flagg marine poster going up for auction in New York in August.

I have some wonderful posters in right now from this particular estate including works by Howard Chandler Christy and  Matisse.

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I have been watching an old favorite series on YouTube, the Hornblower movies based on C.S. Forester.

It was created in 1998 and ran through 2003 and won a prime time Emmy.

Great acting by Ioan Gruffudd and Robert Lyndsay. Eight episodes in all, I watch them on my lap top. Check them out, if you like this historical fiction sort of thing.

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Never would have believed that I would see a display like this at my local farm supply, Grangettos.

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I stopped by and saw my old friend Lance Jost when I was up north yesterday.

The longtime Laguna artist has created so much, from the murals at Electric Ladyland studios to the more recent Cabrillo Arch murals in Dana Point.

We have been friends for well over forty years. A great artist who never stops creating beautiful things.

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