prickly

We had our first snow.  It was white and delicious for about 6 hours.  We didn't have a sale this weekend and so I had a weekend off -- first in a zillion years.  I seemed to have slept a large percentage of it away and now I feel like I have a horrible hangover (never mind my eyes and sinuses are puffy).  The Patriots won no no no let me rephrase that -- Baltimore lost their AFC Championship game.  Even I feel bad for Cundiff -- he looked like a little altar boy in that press conference.  I love football and my team -- but even I feel a bit guilty about going to the Super Bowl.  Such is football -- penalties, turnovers and a little luck.  Or magic.  Or faith -- depending what sect you pay your dues to.

I did manage to bake a pineapple upside down cake this weekend as well.  And cooked a kick ass stir-fry.  I used to love to cook but just don't seem to have the same verve for it right now.  Noot won.  Can you believe it?  I don't think he'll be the nominee but man it sure makes the primaries fun -- well maybe fun isn't exactly the right word.  I was chatting with a friend last night and she said she misses Rick Perry -- he is some dumb he's hard not to kind of love.  If not be utterly frightened of I suppose.

I wrote a poem kind of thing the other day.  It is horrible but at least it was something.  I need to get going on the poem that is due for the exhibit next month.  Sigh.  I don't know why I say yes to those things.  I started to watch, in the middle of the night, a movie called Tom & Viv.  Willem Dafoe playing T.S. Eliot and Miranda Richardson his wife.  I need to watch it when I'm not coming down from a wicked buzz.  I fell asleep though the cigarette smoke alone was intense.   There are several films I want to see this winter now that football season is almost over.   One winter all we watched were movies about painters.  I don't know if there is a theme this year yet.

I've got things to mail.  Why is it so difficult for me to get to the post office I wonder.  I think it is parking and the line and the forms.  I know there is a way to do it from home but I'm too lazy to figure that out as well.  I fear my children have inherited my intense procrastination gene.  Oh and I seemed to have wrenched my left shoulder.   I feel a bit prickly today.  I'm hitting save...

redemption in the USA

Noot was banging someone other than his then-wife while trying to impeach Slick Willie for lying about not having sexual relations with some young intern.  Noot says his affair was basically because of his love of country.  Willy basically said "who cares about what I do with my cigars -- it's the Economy Stupid."  Christians were freaking out -- Character means Everything.

President Obama is, by all accounts, a dedicated family man.  A man full of good, clean character.

The folks on the Right say President Obama and the Dems hang out with "Intelligent, Elitists"

Mitt's named after the dude that owns Marriot hotels -- a good friend (best really) of his downtrodden Pop who was CEO of American Motors.  Mitt is worth billions.  But -- he's obviously not elite.  His money needs that sunlight to grow in the Caymans.

Of course, evangelical Christians love them some Noot and the Corporations are salivating for a confused Mitt who can't keep his opinions straight, like his teeth -- it's the battle, the need to get that horrible guy out of zee Should Always Be Very White, White House.

art snobbery

I have a friend who grew up in Woodstock, NY in the 60's and 70's.  He has incredible stories about Dylan and Joplin and those nutty 60's artists who lived in the colonies up there.  I'd like to tell some here.  He has art he bought or traded for done by artists who now have fairly successful sales records.  His mother recently bought a Larry Rivers at  a garage sale and his parents house is full to the brim with "really, good art."  

I'm angling to get one of his John Ernst's watercolors.   My friend bought a trash bag full of Ernst's rolled up watercolors when John had fallen on hard times and could be found selling his stuff on the streets of Woodstock for cigarette money.  They are crazy looking.

I love getting stoned and listening to his stories and rummaging through his attic and basement -- he has a photograph by Mapplethorpe that he mustered out of a basement in Provincetown twenty years ago among massive stacks of stuff he's traded for, collected over the years.   I ask him for the story behind every thing he shows me.  I sometimes think the story makes the art that much better.

Last night I traded him a 19th C still life exhibited at the World's Columbine Exhibition in 1893 for some local modern art by Victor Candell, an unsigned but authenticated Matisse litho, an Edward Gorey Mystery Theater Poster (Sweeney Todd) from 1982 (for my son) an unbelievably gorgeous Nantucket basket and two original oils by other local, now deceased artists.   There's another I want to trade for -- he just dug it out last night but I have to come up with some goods.  It's really_good.

I am becoming a bit of an art snob.  I think.  Soon I will want to take down anything hanging in the house that isn't "good."  I will be a jerk about it all.  And people will start to think I'm stealing from my clients.  But I almost never exchange money in my gathering up of these treasures.  The world of stuff is weird.  The world of art stuff maybe weirder.  I plan to put all the stories down and in envelopes so that when I'm gone my kids will have the provenance of these things.  Will it matter to them?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe they'll just want the stuff from their grandparents -- those old dutch paintings, the maritime paintings, the portrait of their great-grandfather painted by a Dutchess.  Will their husbands/wives allow them to hang the outlandish modern art in their homes?  What about the growing nude collection and will the even bother to fight over the still life supposedly painted by a kid who new Van Gogh and brought to the states by a serviceman?

Am I an art snob if I don't pay money for the stuff?  I would hate to think I am an art snob.  I can't ever be a real art snob probably.  I don't even have a pension or paid vacation.  I don't have golden handcuffs or a trust fund.

I tell my Woodstock friend it is really all about karma -- give good and get good back.

I was up all night.  Too much stuff laying on my brain.  Going to have a nap.  I hope I dream something good to give.

Demons

Edward Gorey said this -- "Ideally, if anything was any good, it would be indescribable."

pretty much sums it up doesn't it?

Politics Anonymous

Politics are bringing me way down (again).  I need to put them away somewhere.  I can't bear the thought of Romney/Christie -- I can't bear the thought of all those young kids being brainwashed by Ron Paul (doesn't he understand there is a Congress?).

Did anyone see that in Georgia they used slavery references in math word problems?  The teachers thought it was a good mixing of disciplines as they were studying slavery in social studies.  Did you see those math questions?  Fuck.  My kids went to a charter school where they did that sort of thing successfully -- we never had math problems that asked how many beatings a person might  get in a day.... Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.

I need a political hiatus.

I think it is Elvis Presley's birthday -- or nearabouts.  Elvis reminds me of my Pop.  I dreamed about him the other day-- my Pop that is.  It was so real.   In the dream I was lost (though the street in the dream was where I grew up).  He pulled up next to me in a car and rolled down the window -- and smiled and smiled like he did.  He didn't need to say a word.  He was rescuing me.

When I tried to talk about it with my mother -- I cried.   I don't talk about him too much.  It makes me too sad.   I think that's the reason.  

There are lots of Elvis songs I love. I love young black leather clad Elvis and I love portly white jump suit Elvis.

I've got one of these

Poppy

No no no no...not heroin. 

My mac got sick and had to take it to the shop to get fixed.  While at the mac shop I bought an iPad. I think I had a sudden spell of CafeSelavyious.   Then I went to the nearest post office (not a PO I normally frequent) -- while there mailing late Christmas presents I adopted a puppy.  I said "adorable dog -- she said do you want her?"  I said yes.

SOPA, the new Ghosts & Visions of Johanna

I need to keep up on this SOPA stuff.  It bends the brain a bit (at least mine).   I tried to catch up a little on the subject tonight.

Who likes this idea?  What journalists support it?  I can't really find any. Yet I've read the pro-SOPA lobby is is led by various media companies.  The new Ghosts.

"Corporations are people my friends."  Mitt Romney.

"The bank is something more than men, I tell you.  It's the monster.  Men made it, but they can't control it."

John Steinbeck, The Grape of Wrath.




And so when my head hurts, I go here  for a different sort of pain.  Complete with album scratch.  Join me if you care.

art by my son's roommate.  Matt.  He needed money.  I bought it for forty bucks.