And people say that I'm crazy?

Herewith an excerpt from my friend Lance's new blog:

so I'm eating lunch by myself (good thing) on my last day of work. it has finally hit me; a sense of relief. odd, I've never felt this way when leaving a job before...not even when I left augustino's or blimpie's or video maniacs or papacito's or...never mind!
I'm now looking forward to the future; the trail and whatever comes next. go get 'em lunatic. by the way, lunatic is the name jeff gross gave me way back in the day when my friends and I would go to Wichita Wings and Wichita Wind games and I would run around and get the crowd going. yes, I did that many times. lunatic lance. that was after the days of crazy george, obviously!
another by the way: it's not my intention to use this site for posting such personal insights as those mentioned above and below. just the facts ma'am. these are just warm ups intended to loosen up the crowd. this is the opening act. get ready for the headliner...the main event.
thanks to all who have influenced me and helped me along the way (in no particular order below)... I'm sure I'll miss people but I need to mention many because even if I don't hike the entire trail, and I darn well intend to, it has already been a life changing event and so many have helped me get to this point. this is a rambling list, enjoy:
kandra (super K means more to me and has influenced me more than anyone - thank you for being you. no matter what happens I believe we will always be the best and coolest.) sharon and larry (for everything), the dwires, mary lou and jack, vivian and robert/bob, lorraine & doug & shay, tbone/crash/tyler, matthew and wendy, mitch and shanna and their irish kid patty, bill & virginia (thanks for NYC, el parador, and everything else), heidi (like a rock), bill & ruby davis, gene & dodi anderson, ross wichman, gaz briney (it's French and a cobra, I think), jeff and di, curt and melissa (returns food all the time), russ michaels, ryan, double A & V (and the most adorable child in the world-tasker), g & m, david A (thanks for everything-I'll keep an eye out for rattlers, see you at mcsanchez in woodside), elvis presley, meat loaf, journey (with steve perry), the rooneys & chuck knoll & bill cowher & mike tomlin & all of the pittsburgh steelers (the best franchise in the history of professional sports - cowboys and yankees can kiss my very pale white butt), brad and his mother-in-law, wilmer and mary, rich and tawnita, thomas jacobs, duane cramer and crew, the fort hays rodio, fhsu championship basketball team from 1995/1996 , midget buffet, terry cutler, scott boomer, mike cooper, mrs. mastin, mr. tangeman, howard peters, the entire staff at peter mcmanus cafe (more below), carol, crazy stevie, the artist and philosopher - geoffrey raymond (look him up because he does some really cool stuff), bobby the grave digger, jimmy perez (I owe you a shot-and so much more), pierre (keep riding that bike), milton (it's okay to live with mom and dad, I did it), milton's dad (for dealing with milton), lisa the wine lady (good luck with the boys), sean carrol (my favorite Irishman. I think of you daily), joe and james murray (joe owes me money!!! haha), irish donald (tied with gary, mitch, and sean for hardest working man I know), heineken bill, tim the IT guy who doesn't like me, and so many others. PMC CREW: justin, jamo, rich casciato (the artist, look him up), johnny, erin, bruce, ryan, ally, lawrence, howie, edgar, Natasha, joe, mike z.
see you on the trail.

I like his opening use of the word "so" to establish the immediacy of the lunacy he's enacting. When that Irish poet--what's his name?--translated Beowulf a couple of years ago to much critical acclaim, he began the thing with a one word sentence: "So."

Seamus Haney is the guy, by the way.

Also worth noting is Lance's use, about thirty or forty lines down, of the phrase "the artist and philosopher" to describe me. This I'm comfortable with. He also misspelled Ali's (aka "Waitress #5") name, but that's not really that important because Lance, you see, has dropped out of corporate American and, literally, as I write, is placing one foot in front of the other somewhere near the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, somewhere near Atlanta, Georgia. His plan? Having left behind an extremely understanding wife, he is walking to Maine.

This came in yesterday:

you're recieving this message because at some point in my life you influenced me enough that I would feel guilty if I didn't tell you about my upcoming journey.
I am leaving tomorrow morning for the southern trail head of the Appalachian Trail; it's located just north of Atlanta, GA. I will begin my attempt to thru-hike the trail - from Georgia to Maine -sometime in the morning. it will be a difficult journey, only around 30% who start will finish, and it will take about 6 months to complete.
I will be updating a small website when I have cell coverage - for those who want to follow along.
lunaticgame.blogspot.com

think of me often.
thanks.

-lance

I like his e.e.cummings-ish punctuation style.

In case you missed it, his blog is lunaticgame.blogspot.com.

To quote Vin Scelsa quoting David Frike:

Respect the Elders.
Embrace The New.
Encourage The Impractical and Improbable, Without Bias.

God Bless America. When do we eat?

It's in God's hands now, Volume 2

Actually it's no longer in God's hands. "The Enumerated Thain" arrived safely in Illinois this morning. I'm a bit sad, I suppose, to see it go.* I did take the opportunity, as I do with all my little buddies, to whisper something in its ear before sealing the box.

"Don't let anybody ever tell you you're not an important painting."

Me? I've got a big emotional lump just thinking about it.

* The phrase "I'm a bit sad, I suppose, to see it go" is one of those forward looking statements like the ones in financial press releases that the SEC makes companies add disclaimers about. The implication here being that who the hell knows if somebody is going to cough up any figure in excess of $6,500 to buy the damned thing. I know I would, but I'm unusual. Other people? Responsible business people with compromised 401ks to deal with? Who knows.

Post #950

Look how close we're getting to a thousand. That will be a day, dear reader. That will be a day.

Anyway, back to this whole Ash Wednesday thing. I offer for your viewing pleasure, "Lilah S. (Ash Wednesday)":



Lilah's a big one. Six by five and really quite lovely in the flesh:



You can still catch her in person, if I'm not mistaken, at Elmo on Tuesday nights.

Interesting lips, wonderful collection of planes and curves.



And really, a state-of-the-art flume.



Lilah would probably be fun to sculpt.

And here's a detail from the painting:



When I first finished it I stared at the in-your-face feeling of the lips, wondered if I should tone them down, finally didn't. But they really don't quite look like they belong with the rest of the painting. Who cares, I suppose.

Anyway, I still wrestle with my urge to goober on an actual ash on her forehead. The painting, by way of explanation, was finished on Ash Wednesday of maybe 2003. When I first mentioned the idea to her, she resisted. These days, though, I'm feeling more and more like I should just do it.

And check this out: "Lilah S." was one of the first paintings I ever took outside to just show off. Here we are set up below the Greenway, if that's what they call the soon-to-be-opened elevated city park, on perhaps West 22nd street.



This from what art historians will call, someday, "The Formative Years." It wasn't too many jumps from the above pastoral to painting Rupert Murdoch and pitching him up outside The Wall Street Journal. Nor that many more steps to the media circus that surrounded my Fuld painting (or, perhaps more accurately, the environment in which I displayed my Fuld painting).

So this is how things work. Hmmm.

It's in God's hands now

How appropriate, given this is Ash Wednesday, that my portrait of John Thain is in God's hands now.



I prefer to think in these theological terms rather than embracing the more earth-bound reality that it is also in the hands of the United Parcel Service. Lord have mercy.

I was walking up the hill the other day, en route to the UPS store with "The Enumerated Thain" nicely wrapped, tucked under my arm--more or less, when a sense of dread hit me. With each step closer to the store I felt all the more strongly that the painting was not adequately protected from the rigors of the men in brown. So I turned around.

The next morning, the guy at Dyke's Lumber (engaging name for a lumber store in Park Slope) custom cut two pieces of Masonite (Tom Wolfe loves to capitalize words like Masonite) for the grand total of $5.45. I took them back to the studio, unchained The Thain, sandwiched it between the two protective slabs, rewrapped it and marched back up the hill.

Insured for five grand, guaranteed delivery tomorrow in a Chicago suburb, about a hundred twenty five US dollars. Pretty reasonable, I thought. That said, I am experiencing an ongoing state of anxiety while the piece is in transit.

The recipient, as we have probably mentioned, is the Liam Hiatt Foundation. Click here to see what they have to say about me. Once you click in you have to muck around to get to the images, but there you go.

This, as I have mentioned in passing, is The Year of the Non-Profit. And so it begins.

14 days/14movies, Volume 2

Well, it's been six days and here's where we stand:

-The Wrestler
-Rachel Gets Married*
-Underworld 3

"Rachel" gets an asterisk because I have a limited tolerance for junkie/rehab humor these days and walked out after about half an hour. My bad--the talented Ms. Hathaway was already warming up for the cringe-inducing hijinks on which I decided to pass when I split. I snuck into Underworld because: a) it was right next door within the multi-plex and I knew it had only started about 15 minutes prior; b) I'm a sucker for vampire movies, although the Underworld series is a pretty substandard effort; and c) the memory of Kate Beckensale in her skin-tight, black rubber, death-dealer outfit haunts me to this day (even though she was, for purposes of U3, replaced by that British girl with the big lips from "Boston Legal.").

So what is that? Two and a half?

I'm trying to see "Slumdog Millionaire," but am having difficulties doing so. In the meantime, and barring a movie-viewing spasm, I would declare the 14d/14m initiative as a massive failure.

Those pork buns still haunt me

Have you ever had the pork buns at Momofuku? Unbelievable. Supplanting, possibly, the soft-shell crab hand-roll from Nobu, these are the single finest thing you can eat in a restaurant with an Asian name.



Well, that may be an exaggeration. But still, outstanding. More than outstanding. Exemplary, if that's better than outstanding. Superlative (ditto).

Look at that pork. Look how white the bun is. In high school, during the summers, I had a job as a plumber on a construction site. We used to think it was fun to go to the sandwich bar at the nearby drug store and order sandwiches that we would eat with our unwashed hands. It was a guy thing. Or a red-neck thing. Anyway, I can honestly say that our hands were so dirty you could see the fingermarks we made on the buns. Quick reminder: this was construction plumbing, so we're talking dirt and grease, not you-know-what. Looking at the mushroom white/bottom-of-a-fish white of the pork bun above arouses a number of sensations within the old noggin, including the memory of those plumbing days. Like that Proust guy with those cookies.

All of which brings us to this--the computerized reservation page for Momofuku Ko, the supercharged, 14-seat, prix-fixe jewel in the crown of the Momofuku empire. I'd show it to you, but the cutandpaste thing doesn't seem to work for the image. That said, forced to improvise for your benefit, dear reader, it looks something like this:

8- XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
9- XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
10-XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
11- XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The #s indicate seating times and the Xs indicate, of course, seats that are not currently available. There are, I assume, big Os for times when you can actually make a reservation, but in my history of going online and trying to get a reservation (the only way you can actually do so--no phone; no stopping by to say "Hello. And oh, by the way..."), it is the Xs that have prevailed. Exclusively. Or: Xclusively. Without Xception.

This is the line at Momofuku Ko.



You sit at the counter, barely visible on the right side of the image. And even though it is an omakase-style dining experience (お任せ--if you only speak Japanese and are visiting The Year of Magical Painting for the first time), if you are seated with a woman (and you are a man), she gets slightly different stuff than you do. It's a gender-discrimination thing. Or a red-neck thing.

Anyway, the thinking here was that with the damned place now being about a year old, and the economy in pieces and all that grim stuff, a stray O might pop up every once in a while.

Apparently, no. Which Xasperates me.

New Bike Helmet

What's the phrase? Hail Fellow, Helmet?


Anyway, this is a picture of the bicycle helmet I want to buy. It's called a Catlike Whisper.

The only problem is that it's not available in the U.S. Something to do with safety ratings. That said, it is available in Canada, which is hardly the Third World, so come on. Likewise the U.K. So hello. Plus at least two teams in the Tour de France ride with them, so I'm figuring I'm gonna be okay.

But the logistics of getting the damned thing are a bit daunting. There's one on eBay, but it's a medium. Me? My head's so big because it's full of ideas. I think I might be able to get it shipped from England.

Look how cool it looks. This model is done up in the Basque orange for the TdeF Euskatel team:



I think I prefer the white.

14 days/14movies

It is entered here, for the record, that Mickey Rourke should win the Oscar for Best Actor. Today, God willing, I'm seeing Rachel Gets Married and then, after Howie's wife's birthday party at the PMC, Slumdog Millionaire. This gets me one in the bank, which is good because Sunday may be busy.

I'll have in-depth comments on the Marisa Tomei vs. Demi Moore, famous-somewhat-older-actress-plays-a-stripper question, but I can tell you right now that Ms. Tomei was vastly superior. That haunted, just-hanging-on look in her eyes was something. Ms. Moore, on the other hand, was just prancing around looking delighted with the shape of her quads. Nothing could have been less interesting.

Think positive thoughts.

four words:

Four words:

fourteen days, fourteen movies

I'm following President Obama's advice and going to that many movies in that many days, thereby infusing the economy with about $175, not including snacks.

Today: The Wrestler, after lunch at Kenny Shopsin's place.

Let the spectacle begin.

The Geithner Chronicles

Is this a scene the movie where Schwarzeneggar screams "Get on the choppa!"?

No. It's my still-problematic effort to paint Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. And, while I, deep down, believe that I should have started with a different resource photo, this is what it is. And it's moving in the right direction, so what do you do?

I'll tell you what you do. You look at this vintage Captain Beefheart poster.



Now, while you are holding this in your mind, I want to tell you that, lo these forty years later, I'm officially declaring the summer of 2009 as "The Summer of Love, Volume 2."

That said, the preliminary thinking here is that, watermark style, inscribed on the white background where, subsequently, the annotations will be written, will, in psychedelic lettering, be rendered the phrase "By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong."

Man, that's a confusing sentence.
It is, a bit.
I think you should write "By the time I get to Phoenix, she'll be rising."
Not trippy enough. We're trying to invoke the spirit of the Summer of Love, not Glen Fucking Campbell.
Well, technically, the summer of love was not 1969. It was 1967.
Really?
Yeah. And that's when "By the Time I get to Phoenix" reached the #3 slot.
What's with you?
What do you mean?
Mr. Know-It-All. It get old, ya know?
Really?
Really.
Sorry.
Forget about it. When was Woodstock?
1969, you'll be pleased to note.
Well, that's something.

Get on the choppa!

Palazzo Chupi

It's amazing how quickly things happen when you have a lot of money. This is me taking a bath in my new digs.

I'm not immune...

I'm not immune to self-doubt. Second-guessing. Self-flagellation. All the hyphenates, in fact.

And so, when I look at this graph ...



... I do wonder just who will be left to buy the paintings.

The good news? I've been shorting crude since it was at a buck-forty (Insider's tip: I've been using a leveraging device called a variable fulcrum) and I'm up just enough to buy the duplex in Julian Schnabel's pink Zanadu:



Palazzo Chupi. You can read about the particular apartment I'm interested in here. It's since been reduced to, I think, $19 million.

I love the tub. The idea, as I understand it, is that you can sit in the tub with a fire roaring behind you, fling open the doors to the bedroom, then fling open the balcony doors, and then watch the snow come down in the midst of a leisurely ablute.

The mind reels, does it not?

Life is good.

El Toro Negro

Are we watching the Tour of California? We (my double chin and I) are. Heroic effort by Francisco Mancebo in the rain yesterday. Today? 100+ miles of biking through the coastal roads of Marin County in 45 degrees and intermittent driving rain. SF to Santa Cruz. Sounds lovely on a sunny summer day. Less so as currently depicted on the Vs. Channel.

Awakes in me several feelings:

a) Glad I'm sitting in the studio and not riding a bike
b) Wish I was riding a bike (on a sunny summer day)
c) A clarion call to register for the 5-boro bike tour

El Toro Negro. Wow.

Ahhh, Springtime

Clyde Haberman, Timesman, writes of baseball:

You don't have to be a wallower in nostalgia to miss the days when players resorted to performance-hindering drugs, usually liquid. One can only guess at how many of Mantle's 536 career home runs cane while he nursed an epic hangover.

All this while lamenting the state of the Yankees (About whom, really, who gives a shit? I'm a Mets guy.) specifically and baseball in general while cautiously (given the state of baseball today) celebrating the start of spring training. Pitchers and catchers reporting, and all that business.

But for me, spring starts with the Daytona 500. The loudest thing I've ever heard was a Formula 1 car wailing down the straight at Watkins Glen. More specifically, Jackie Stewart, with that red and green tartan stripe ringing the temple of his white helmet, wailing down the straight at Watkins Glen.



I was a slip of a boy, perhaps 18, and I remember it like it was yesterday. The ground shook. And this was back when racing Formula 1 was really dangerous. In fact, Stewart's teammate, Francois Cevert died in qualifying that very day. Stewart, having already won the championship on points, chose not to start the race. This clip opens with Stewart mentoring the younger Cevert (of whom he was extremely fond) on some gear selection questions. It gets unpleasant after that.



Times in F1 have changed. The modern F1 car is designed to absorb unbelievable physical abuse while protecting the driver. Check out Robert Kubica's epic shunt driving a Beemer at Montreal in 2007.



He was racing again five weeks later.

But, since the Formula 1 season doesn't begin for another couple of months, Daytona will have to do. This is Clint Boyer finishing unhurt, upside down:



Same thing from a different angle, just so you know he finished...



Let the spectacle begin. By this I refer to my trip to the studio to continue painting Tim Geithner. Because, hey, this blog is about painting, not race cars.

The Enumerated Thain, Volume 3

Ahhh, victory! Or at least what passes for victory in these parts.

I refer, of course, to the finished "The Enumerated Thain." Which would, of course, be this:



It's small (24"x30"), but it has its moments.

And I know you've never seen this:



Fraught with the spirit of whoever that kid was who painted in the Armani suits--Basquiat!--I painted this when I was still living in Chelsea. I came upon a discarded pallet (which made me think of my friend Dave's father, Bill, who was, as I understood it, up to his elbows in pallets on a regular basis), wrapped it in canvas (which is why it's off center, plus you can see the little feet sticking out of the bottom, on the left), goobered on some photo print-outs of recent work (look at what was passing for recent work at the time!), added some copy and, of course, finished with the same Mastercard joke that informs "The Enumerated Thain."

I showed "Pricelist!" someplace upstate--I think in Phoenecia--and then forgot to go get it. I wonder if they still have it.

Anyway, I love the prices. 17 grand for "The Ecstasy of St. Theresa" (mislabeled on the painting as "The Lamentations of...") showed, I think, great self-confidence at the time (2005, maybe?). Likewise 11 Gs for "Close, But Not Quite." Today? A steal.

The point of the Basquiat thing can be seen here:



Tiny image--sorry--but you can see how he just took some lumber and slapped it together so that it would hold a square of canvas. The stuff was often enough cheap molding or 1x3s. Once you wrap the canvas onto the frame, nail it down and gesso it, it's surprising how well it sticks together.

Bigger image, slightly different story:



But you can see along the bottom how the canvas has conformed to just one plank being laid on top of another at the corners. Can you see it?

Now go back up to "Pricelist" and check it out again. I need to do more of that stuff.

The blue light was my baby... Volume 4

On a more positive note, I received this comment on my post titled "The Blue Light Was My Baby" from a reader named Zizille. The song she (and I) refer to is "Love in Vain."

Gosh. I listened to it last Sunday, four times in a row — how incredibly beautiful! Then I listened to it by Robert Johnson, and then I listened to Violin Concerto Nr. 3 by Paganini, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and blessed the fact I lived in a world where such beauties could be heard.

However, I keep wondering about the blue and red lights. Maybe it is because I am a French native speaker... Anybody could explain what those lights stand for? Blue is the freedom she wants, red is his sorrow?... oping for an answer, should there be one :)

I do very much love stuff like this and just reading it makes my self-loathing diminish slightly.

Zizille, the painter's answer is that blue, being a cool color, recedes while red, being hot, comes to the front. Even though both lights are on the train, it emphasizes that she's leaving and he's staying. Maybe.

Movie Review--an infrequent feature here at TYOMP

I haven't seen "Confessions of a Shopoholic" nor do I plan to. But I've seen the commercial about fifty times, and any movie that contains the line "Oooh, you speak Prada?"--much less one that highlights it in their advertising (the suggestion here being that the producers consider this to be one of cleverer lines in the movie? Really? God help us.)--deserves to be fiercely boycotted.

Candace Bushnell, a person of whom I'm fond in the way we can be fond of public individuals we don't actuallty know, must want to puke.

And then, to add to my woes, emerges this excresance (which isn't even a word, I don't think, but which has been designed by me to describe the image you see below. Helpful hint: it shares the same root as excrement) from my dark and twisted soul:



Titled "The Annotated Treasury," it is supposed to be Tim Geithner. The very fact that I have to explain this speaks volumes.

I mean, look at the man:



He should be EASY to paint. Look at the Cosmo Kramer hair. The Tin Woodsman nose. Are those ears on the side of his head or aerodynamic braking devices? I mean, what more does a painter need?

Granted it is a work in progress. And granted, one of the things that makes me a bigger man than you, dear reader, is my willingness to post images of works in progress and then make shit-references to them. Some permutation of "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," if you will. But still... It looks like the demon spawn of that sitcom actor who also sometimes plays Nixon and Chloe, my daughter's puggle. While we're talking chick movies, he played Alicia Silverstone's father in "Clueless."

Anyway, I guess what really galls me is my inability to get the job done in time to take the damned thing out to Wall Street today. It is 61 degrees and spectacular. The fact that I am not "on line", so to speak, with this painting, on this perfect day to be so, troubles me beyond my ability to convey. Ails me. Plunges me into a fit of remorse, depression, self-flagelation, etc.

I could not be more upset, and the fault is mine. I don't want to get into it any further, other than to say there won't be another day this nice for at least ten days. Prolly longer. Shit!!!

Quick note: Apparently excrescence is a word. I knew it was something like that. It is defined by Wiktionary (God help me if this is where I'm getting my definitions) as "Something, usually abnormal, which grows out of something else."

Merriam-Webster thankfully concurs, saying: "1 : a projection or outgrowth especially when abnormal (excresences in the colon); 2 : a disfiguring, extraneous, or unwanted mark or part (blot)."

To suggest that I am beside myself would be to minimize the issue by multifold degrees.

Final Note on Miracles

...at least for today. 'Cause believe me, sometimes you have to wait for the miracle.

Anyway, the whole Who video is a disaster. I mean, it plays (sort of--although there's a lot of re-buffering), but there doesn't seem to be any video at all. Just the photo and a ringtone advert.

This, I would hasten to add, has nothing to do with the quality of the code I wrote.

Me? I got so fired up I went to iTunes to play some Who and found out, much to my surprise, that I didn't own Who's Next. So I bought it.

Now bear with me and check this out. This, cut and pasted, is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Who's Next entry:

Original release

Side one
#	Title	Length
1.	"Baba O'Riley"	5:11
2.	"Bargain"	5:33
3.	"Love Ain't for Keeping"	2:12
4.	"My Wife" (John Entwistle)	3:41
5.	"The Song Is Over"	6:16

Side two
#	Title	Length
6.	"Getting in Tune"	4:50
7.	"Going Mobile"	3:42
8.	"Behind Blue Eyes"	3:42
9.	"Won't Get Fooled Again"	8:32

1995 CD reissue

#	Title	Length
1.	"Baba O'Riley"	5:11
2.	"Bargain"	5:33
3.	"Love Ain't for Keeping"	2:12
4.	"My Wife" (John Entwistle)	3:41
5.	"The Song Is Over"	6:16
6.	"Getting in Tune"	4:50
7.	"Going Mobile"	3:42
8.	"Behind Blue Eyes"	3:42
9.	"Won't Get Fooled Again"	8:32

Bonus tracks
#	Title	Length
10.	"Pure and Easy"	4:22
11.	"Baby Don't You Do It" (Holland-Dozier-Holland)	5:14
12.	"Naked Eye (live)"	5:31
13.	"Water (live)"	6:25
14.	"Too Much of Anything"	4:25
15.	"I Don't Even Know Myself"	4:56
16.	"Behind Blue Eyes (alternative version)"	3:27

Deluxe edition (2003)

Disc one

The first disc of the Deluxe Edition contains the nine tracks from the original album, followed by six outtakes, of which "Getting in Tune" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" were previously unreleased. Each of the six outtakes were recorded during sessions at the Record Plant in New York in March of 1971 – the group abandoned this material and re-recorded five of the six tracks again in England later in the year.

1. "Baba O'Riley" – 5:01
2. "Bargain" – 5:33
3. "Love Ain't for Keeping" – 2:10
4. "My Wife" – 3:35
5. "The Song Is Over" – 6:17
6. "Getting in Tune" – 4:49
7. "Going Mobile" – 3:43
8. "Behind Blue Eyes" – 3:42
9. "Won't Get Fooled Again" – 8:35
10. "Baby Don't You Do It" – 8:21
    • same version featured on the 1995 CD, but longer.
11. "Getting in Tune" – 6:36
    • Unreleased alternative version.
12. "Pure and Easy" – 4:33
    • Same as the 1995 CD, albeit in an alternative mix.
13. "Love Ain't for Keeping" – 4:06
    • Electric version previously featured on the 1998 reissue of Odds & Sods.
14. "Behind Blue Eyes" – 3:30
    • Alternate with Al Kooper on organ previously featured on the 1995 CD.
15. "Won't Get Fooled Again" – 8:48
    • Original New York sessions version.

Disc two

The tracks on the second disc were recorded live at the Young Vic Theatre, London, on 26 April 1971. All of the tracks were previously unreleased except for "Water" and "Naked Eye". Songs played but not included are "Pinball Wizard", "Bony Moronie", "See Me, Feel Me" and "Baby Don't You Do It".

1. "Love Ain't for Keeping" – 2:57
2. "Pure and Easy" – 6:00
3. "Young Man Blues" – 4:47
4. "Time Is Passing" – 3:59
5. "Behind Blue Eyes" – 4:49
6. "I Don't Even Know Myself" – 5:42
7. "Too Much of Anything" – 4:20
8. "Getting in Tune" – 6:42
9. "Bargain" – 5:46
10. "Water" – 8:19
11. "My Generation" – 2:58
12. "(I'm a) Road Runner" – 3:14
13. "Naked Eye" – 6:21
14. "Won't Get Fooled Again" – 8:50

Disregard any formatting issues above. I'm only human and I can't write code for everything. There are, according to the big W, three versions of the record. The first one (which I own on vinyl and probably could have saved some money if I'd just shipped it to Dave and let him burn it into mp3s for me--but that's another whole story) is the original LP, nine songs long. Because life is good (intermittently) I'm listening to it as I type. Thought to be one of the best rock and roll albums in history. This is correct thinking.

Now look at the 1995 special version, or whatever they call it. They added a bunch of extraneous materials. Personally, I wish they wouldn't do stuff like this. I mean, if you listened to the whole thing from start to finish, would the critical assessment be that it was the greatest rock album ever, or a bloated wreck filled with crap nobody except obsessives really wants to listen to?

Now look at the 2003 version. There's almost 30 songs.

Are you still with me? Okay. iTunes, God blessum, doesn't have the original album for sale. They do have the other two. The 1995 one costs about 15 bucks. The 2003 one--the one for completists, I guess--costs ten.

How stupid is that?

My theory is to buy the ten dollar one, delete all but the original songs, and after a bunch of hassle I will have arrived at the place I set out for.

And sometimes miracles do happen

Back to this whole imbedding thing. Moments ago, after voicing concerns about the likelihood of my Who video actually working, I pushed "publish" and, fast as lightening, got a message that said something to the effect of "Nice try buddy, but no way is anybody ever gonna see that Who video on The Year of Magical Painting." More specifically, it explained that my tag was broken. Why was I not surprised?

Remain calm, I thought. Don't panic. Be a man for once in your life, I thought. Pick up your guitar, a voice in my ear told me, and play. Metaphorically, of course.

More specifically, I decided to fix the tag (what ever that is) by writing some code (whatever that is). I decided, on a flyer, to insert a ">" symbol at the end of the thing.

Strange how the mind works, isn't it?

And it worked! By God it worked! As I type this I'm laughing so hard snot is running down my nose.

Which reminds me of a Jethro Tull song. These would be the complete lyrics, flush-right.

Sitting on the park bench --
eyeing little girls with bad intent.
Snot is running down his nose --
greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.
Aqualung
Drying in the cold sun --
Watching as the frilly panties run.
Aqualung
Feeling like a dead duck --
spitting out pieces of his broken luck.
Whoa, aqualung

Sun streaking cold --
an old man wandering lonely.
Taking time
the only way he knows.
Leg hurting bad,
as he bends to pick a dog-end --
he goes down to the bog
and warms his feet.

Feeling alone --
the army's up the road
salvation a la mode and
a cup of tea.
Aqualung my friend --
don't you start away uneasy
you poor old sod, you see, it's only me.
Do you still remember
The December's foggy freeze --
when the ice that
clings on to your beard was
screaming agony.
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds,
and the flowers bloom like
madness in the spring.

Who knew "Aqualung" was a song about springtime?

My heart soars like a hawk.

Meet the new boss...

Out here in the fields I fight for my meals.



Just for the record. I mean, do you think anybody's giving me a weekly paycheck?

I remember when Tim Geithner's name was first floated as a replacement for my boy the Screaming Pope ...



... some smitten soul from perhaps Fox Business News or perhaps (somewhat less likely but entirely possible) CNBC exclaimed that he was extremely handsome.

Me? I don't get it.

I think he's downright strange looking, what with his asymmetrical wad of hair and correspondingly crooked nose, plus that weird little vein popping out of the side of his temple (like an aneurysm waiting for the next bank to blow to do same). That said, there's kind of an avant garde argument to be made for the fact that the nose cancels out the hair--since they go in opposite directions--creating a kind of dynamic symmetry.

Anyway, meet the new boss...



Same as the old boss.

I'm quoting Townshend here because I think that's going to be my opening annotation on "The Annotated Treasury" -- the portrait I've spent part of the weekend squeezing out with an eye towards embracing a 62 degree Wednesday lunch hour on Wall Street.

These would be the complete lyrics, formated flush-right, just for the fun of it.

We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they were all flown in the last war

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
No, no!

I'll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
Though I know that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?

Yeah!

There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

And yo--check this out:




Although you are reading this at some distant future point, I, as I type, have no idea whether the imbed of the "Won't Get Fooled Again" video is gonna take. Imbedding is trickier than it looks.

Me? I'm leaving the state of the financial world to guys like Geithner. I'm just picking up my guitar and playing (metaphorically speaking).

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

The Enumerated Thain, Volume 2

Here's how we ended up:



Obviously a disaster.

Here we are after a bunch of white-outing.



You can see the lettering under the second layer of gesso for now. Remain calm--the next coat will render that lovely white sheen again. The thinking here is to re-enter the annotations along the top and down the left side, more as running copy than as specific items. This then sets up the Mastercard joke in the bottom right, which, other than the two typographic corrections that are underway, will remain the same.

Once finished, I think I'm going to send this to Chicago for a charity auction benefiting the Liam Hyatt Foundation.

Good News/Bad News

Which do you want first--the good news or the bad?

Okay, try this: "The art world is dead."

Wow. I was still chewing on that (grimly--the way a depressed cow might chew its cud) when I realized that, hey, I don't think I'm part of the art world.

And as I chewed on that, I realized that I'm part of the financial world. So who cares what's going on in the art world? I'm all about Wall Street.

Then I realized that Wall Street is dead too.

I'm not sure which is the good news and which is the bad.

Maybe I should move to DC. Politics, about which I am more than capable of generating paintings for annotation, are hot. Hmmm.

On a light-hearted note...

Making art these days is such a grim endeavor. Dickensian on a number of levels. And I'm not talking the Broadway versions with the cute urchins who can, oddly, sing like ringing bells. I'm talking real Dickens. Why, just moments ago I read the words: "The art world is dead."

Who would write such a mean-spirited thing in a place where I, an artist, might see it? I think it was Alexandra Penney, ex-EIC of Glamour Magazine (maybe) who is posting on The Daily Beast about what it's like to be rich and then realize that all your money was invested in something called Madoff Securities International Limited.

Okay, that's a drag. But stop whining already and just fire the freaking maid. Don't be bringing the rest of us down.

Did you know there is a website called catsinsinks.com?



This is the cat I live with. In the sink. I always thought it was just him.

The question of the day

I've been invited to participate in a charity art auction called ARTrageous, a program sponsored by the Edwin Gould Services for Children and Family. The funds raised go to help foster children. Donald Baechler is the featured artist. This would be one of his:



Baechler embodies big time the famous Picasso line that goes, "It took me four years to paint like Rafael but a lifetime to paint like a child."

Anyway, the point of the story is this: Part of the process that some of the auctioned works are, in fact, collaborations between foster children (ages 8-15, maybe) and artists. Since my work is publicly collaborative anyway, and the way I paint involves throwing paint from wooden sticks (honestly, a child could do it), I'll be one of the kid/painter collaborators.

The question of the day is this: Who should I paint?

Ordinarily, as even the most casual reader of these pages knows, I paint Wall Street machers or politicians. But how many ten year olds can name the Chairman of Citigroup? So the machers are out. And if we paint politicians (some of whom the kids will at least recognize), political polarity means that half the bidders won't want to participate (name a Democrat, for example, who's looking for a portrait of Ronald Reagan for his living room). And, since the whole idea of an auction is to have a bunch of people raising their hands and screaming "I'll take it!" (or some slightly more controlled version of same), we don't want to limit ourselves by political leanings.

Thus, who to paint?

I suggested Picasso, but it seemed like a nonstarter to the organizers. Mike Bloomberg was a second thought (because, really, who knows what party he's in?) but this whole third term thing has taken a bit of the bloom off his rose.

Maybe Derek Jeter? Any thoughts are welcome.

Obituary

Joe Ades, the peeler guy, is dead.

Kindred spirits, he and I. Two hearty souls who step out the door in the morning, set up shop on the streets of New York and let the whatever-it-is-that-washes-over-us wash over us. Experience might be the right word.

"Want to buy a peeler?" ...



"Want to write something on my painting?" ...



Here's the piece the Today Show did on Mr. Ades. I'd imbed it, but the MSNBC website won't let me do it (even though they have a button inviting me to do so).

Question: How'd he get four minutes plus and I only got three and a half?

I, like about a zillion New Yorkers, actually saw the man do his thing. Feeling a bit sorry now that I can't buy a peeler direct from the great one himself.

There's a nice obit on Gothamist, but for some reason I can't grab that link either. Go to Gothamist.com and scroll down.

The Enumerated Thain

This is the almost finished version of "The Enumerated Thain." The title needs to be scrawled across the top, and it of course needs annotations.



For my annotated Wall Street series, this is a bit of a stylistic departure for two reasons. First, instead of being painting in my usual squirt and drip technique, I used the obscured box technique. Meaning that sometimes I paint box by box, using tape or newspaper to obscure the completed boxes while I then paint the next ones. Eventually you work your way around the canvas and end up with something like what you see above. "Cheerleader with Banana (Fallen Angel)", which is around here someplace, is a classic obscured box painting. The final result gives you a disjunctive viewing experience because things like eyebrows or the mouth or the rims of glasses never real line up box to box.

The plan is to title it "The Enumerated Thain" and annotate it by recapping his redecorating expenditures as line items. "Six wall sconces...$2,700", "Commode w/ legs... $35,000", etc.

The second departure is that the painting is small--two feet by two and a half. A much easier fit in a lot of rooms than my usual four by fives. Because it's smaller, it's also, I'm assuming, less expensive than my usual $25-30 grand. Feel free to make a bid.