Last Train to Clarkesville Pulls Out

Davy Jones, original Monkee, dead today.

As pop phenomena go, this isn't the end of the world. Except for him, obviously. I hope he made a ton of money as a Monkee, invested it wisely, and lived a rich and full life. And besides, I always had a soft spot in my heart for the Monkees. I liked the Dave Clark Five too.

Per Se

Every six years, on February 25th, I have lunch at Per Se. At least that's the pattern so far. And this was the year I was supposed to go, so I went.

I'm not obsessive about rankings, but it's worth noting that PS is either the best or second best restaurant in the United States and, by one poll, 9th in the world. So it was lovely. More than lovely, in fact. Although less than celestial--which is how I would have described the 2006 lunch. But that was either the best or next best single meal of my life, so the bar is pretty high (the other one in the running happened in Belgium in the 80s when my then-employer Jay Van Vechten and I pulled off the road and decided to grab a bite at an out of the way place we just stumbled over).

Several elements bumped this particular meal down into the merely extraordinary category. The first was the impenetrable accents on a couple of the members of the wait staff (half the fun is staring at what they've just given you and listening to them tell you what it is). The second was the Sicilian pistachio "panna cotta", which was a jarring note. It's always worth worrying when the menu puts quote marks around something that you think you are familiar with. I should have dropped the forty bucks and gotten the foie gras instead. Which didn't have quotes around it. That, I suppose, is what you get for being cheap when the very act of dining at a restaurant like this suggests that "cheap" has already been tossed out the window.

On a positive note, they famously do a thing called Oysters and Pearls that is really something.



Something, certainly, to make me think back fondly to Saturday as I stare at the foot-long BMT I just got from Subway.

The only thing wrong with the weekend was that the Daytona 500--which I rushed home to watch--was rained out. Ditto today at noon. So they are going to try to run the thing tonight. Predicted order of finish: Juan Pablo Montoya, Tony Stewart and Danica Patrick. Stewart will be coming on strong late, pass Patrick with perhaps half a lap to go and try to take my boy Juan Pablo out of the last turn, only to end up half a car short.

This, of course, is just a prediction.

More on Per Se later, but I will say the most extraordinary thing I tasted the whole day was a chocolate num-num (called this because that's the noise you make repeatedly while eating them) filled, perhaps, with balsamic vinegar that had been aged in cherry-flavored casks. I say perhaps because, as I noted earlier, it was sometimes hard to understand the help. But the chocolate, with the dark sweet cherry essence and the sharpness of the balsamic mixed with whatever medium they use to create the filling of the num-num... Well, Lord have mercy.

So you're saying you paid an amount equivalent to the price of a used car for lunch and the best thing was one of the chocolates?
Yes, although you exaggerate the cost. It was, however, more expensive than what I paid to see the Rolling Stones a couple of years ago.
Lord have mercy.
The chocolate was amazing. One of those moments when you realize, like Kirk, that you're boldly going where no man has gone before.
A revelation, you're suggesting?
I am. Like when Bruce Springsteen found the secret of the universe in the engine of an old parked car.
Please.
No. It was that good.

The Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Bruce Springsteen is putting out a new album. Never good news. The Rising is now 11 years old, maybe? Better he should have stepped away on a high note.

Anyway, the painting at the bottom looked like this:



Before it looked like this:



Which is, I suppose, illustrative.

If This is a Man

“A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.”

This from "If This is a Man" by Primo Levi. Although, like all the good stuff, it seems applicable today.

In any case, here stands "The Tyranny of the Beautiful Woman":



It just keeps getting darker and darker. Perhaps because I made the mistake of painting it while reading Levi's famous work, also sometimes called "Survival in Auschwitz." Which was not a laugh-fest, dear reader, let me tell you. But certainly a work that bears reading nonetheless.

Because, despite your puerile attempt to trivialize almost everything to suit your narrative devices, life is not always a laugh-fest.
Exactly.
Nor is it supposed to be.
Nicely said.

Levi's book is about, if nothing else, the devolution of a civilized man into a type of animal, all the better to survive the inhuman environment of a Nazi concentration camp.

“Logic and morality made it impossible to accept an illogical and immoral reality; they engendered a rejection of reality which as a rule led the cultivated man rapidly to despair. But the varieties of the man-animal are innumerable, and I saw and have described men of refined culture, especially if young, throw all this overboard, simplify and barbarize themselves, and survive. A simple man, accustomed not to ask questions of himself, was beyond the reach of the useless torment of asking himself why."

Now we're obviously talking about Republicans.

You can't help yourself, can you?
No. I suppose not.
I like the painting, though.
Thanks. Me too.

Hey, wasn't it me just a couple of posts down talking about scrunching the mud between your toes to ensure full thrust into the abyss? I'm deep.

The questions, now that the painting is almost done, are these: Should I slap a couple of coats of a gloss varnish on it? (I'm thinking yes) and should I scrawl across the bottom "The Tyranny of the Beautiful Woman", as is my wont?

Gary Carter, Dead Two Days Ago

World Series, 1986. Mets vs. Sox. 10th Inning. Metskies are down to their last out in what would be the deciding game of the Series. Gary Carter comes to the plate, flashbulbs glinting off his white teeth. Hits a single. So does the next guy. Etc., til Buckner lets the winning run score. Mets win the whole thing the next day.

Lord have mercy.

Just as the world is divided into people who either do, or would if they could, play Stratocasters vs. those who play Telecasters, Mets fans of that era were either Hernandez fans or Carter fans. Me? I've always liked my sports heroes dark and brooding. Like Hamlet. So Carter was never really my boy.

Except for this:

Carter, a deeply religious man, had never once been heard to utter an obscenity in the presence of this teammates. But after he arrived at first base that night, he turned to the first base coach and said, roughly, "No way I'm making the last out in this fucking World Series."

God blessim! In the words of Willie Lohman's wife, "Attention must be paid."

There's a nice article by Jay Schreiber of the NYT about the Hernandez/Carter dichotomy here. And while we're talking about Keith (my all-time favorite baseball player), this seems like as good a time as any to replay this--in my opinion the greatest sports documentary ever:

I'm Keith Hernandez from water&power on Vimeo.

Full frontal nudity about 3/4 of the way through, so not necessarily safe for work. But the play at the 5:30 mark tells you everything you need to know.

Gary Carter--one year younger than me. Rest in peace.

Saigon: Too Big To Fall

Have I told you about the novel I'm writing? Called "Saigon: Too Big To Fall", it's a chronicling of the 2008+ financial meltdown, with the events playing out in Vietnam some 40 years earlier, as experienced by a long range recon unit assigned to the Securities and Exchange Commission. So there's some mixing and matching going on, but I think the strength of the premise is self-explanatory. And book is the wrong word. It's a series--one book for every financial explosion (Bear, Lehman, AIG, etc.)

I should define the word writing as beginning to put my thoughts on paper as a concept document. We're not even close to the actual writing. But still, a few glimpses:

First, in Vietnam the guy carrying the radio was called an RTO. In S2B2F its BTO. The B stands for Bloomberg. Second, there's this image rolling around in my brain of two squads from different units identifying eachother (always a tense moment) in the middle of the night. One guys says "We're from the SEC." The other guy says "We're from the PAC-10." Which makes me laugh even now. Third, Marianne Faithfull plays a significant role.

Anyway, it's still a bit of a jumble. But war is hell, so what do you expect.

All of which brings me to the most vivid dream I had last night. I know I had it because I got an email from myself, sent circa 3:40 am, with just a subject line. It read: "U go to meetings, don't u?" I remember this even now. It was a telephone conversation with somebody sinister. I assumed it referred to AA meetings (which I've never attended, not being, I don't think, an alcoholic), so I answered evasively. "Yeah, but it's mostly cosmetic."

What all this means is now completely lost on me, but at almost four in the morning I had a strong sense that this was meant to be in the book. I should have sent a better email.

Truth in publishing: My draft number was 303 and I never had to go. My brother went, though, and Vietnam has always stuck in the back of my mind. In fact, I've posted about it a number of times here on TYOMP. Perhaps the best example would be this:

________________________________________________________________

Monday, December 3, 2007

The Majestic Hotel

Lets just say it's a certain point in time. If you poke your head out the front door of the Majestic Hotel, you can look one way up what the old-timers still call Rue Catinat and see the Notre Dame cathedral. Look the other way and you can see the west bank of the Saigon River.

If you go back inside, turn left at the main bar, right just before the kitchen, enter the men's room, take a seat in the second stall from the left wall, then swivel your head to the right, you can see, scrawled in the mahogany divider:

The abyss is full
of reality, the abyss experiences itself, the
abyss
is alive

Kurtz saw that. I know he did. That's what sent him upriver. The lure of the abyss. Not to get away from reality, but to find it. Anybody who thought Vietnam had anything to do with reality just didn't understand the situation. No. You had to go so far up the river that the trees connected overhead. That's where the reality was. Back in Saigon--that was something else entirely.

Later they sent my boy Johnny upriver to find Kurtz. That's where Coppola got it wrong, by the way. He didn't understand Johnny. He thought the whole thing was a metaphor. Kurtz ... The river ... Johnny. Man, that boy could sure eat some beets. And that's what Frankie never got--the whole vegetable thing. You'd eat some beets, then smear the rest on your face. If you happened also to have some blueberries, you were golden. Actually you weren't golden. You were red and blue.

Anyway, do you remember that song by John Prine--Lake Marie? I'll spare you the full details, but one verse goes like this:

You know what blood looks like in a black and white video?
Shadows!

Anyway, the abyss isn't a metaphor. It's the abyss.

Do you know what beet juice smeared on your face looks like in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of the night?
Heliotrope!

I mean, really. Is all I'm saying. Do I have to spell it out for you? Man, the abyss is alive. Everybody thinks that when you fall into the abyss it's empty. Cold. Dark. Dead.

Naaah. Couldn't be nicer. Me? I've taken the fall. Leap--make that taken the leap. Gathered both feet beneath me, made sure I could feel the mud scrunched up between my toes for maximum traction, and leaped. Lept. Leopt. I'm either a leper or a leopard--whichever one still has his nose attached. And the water's not cold; it's warm. And the river's not dark; you'd be surprised how much you can see. And dead? Naaah. Teeming with life. You want to soar beneath the surface, open your mouth, ingest it. Ingest all of it.

Of course, if you did that you'd drown. Which is not the object of the exercise.

Johnny's mistake was taking a boat. A fucking plastic boat. Me? I'm just swimming. Upriver. Huck fucking Finn in reverse. Some days the current is so strong you're swimming at what seems to be a great rate when, in fact, the river bank is slowly going by... the wrong way. These days, though, I'm pleased to announce, headway is being made. I see less of the sun. I'm seeing lots of green. I'm at one with the river. Which is good, 'cause if you're not, there's more damned things swimming around next to you that would like to bite or otherwise fuck with you than you can shake a stick at.

The snakes make the best eating. Once you get good at it; once you've mastered your gag reflex, you just grab 'em, bite their heads off, and then slide 'em down your throat. Don't even have to stop swimming. Shit 'em out about a day and a half later, bones and all, usually (for me at least) around what I assume to be ten thirty in the morning.

I think the Floating Men have it figured out just right.

I don't ever get lost anymore
I'm never falling behind
‘Cause I don't care where I wind up sleeping
And nobody notices what time I arrive
It feels like a Sunday morning out
I'm guessing it's June
Maybe that highway leads to paradise
Maybe it leads to the fountain of youth

I'm going to hire me a spotlight
And the finest crowd that money can buy
I'm going to build me a grandstand
And stand around staring down at the barren ground
Of this invisible life

I don't dream about wealth anymore
And I don't let myself dream about fame
And I refuse to dream about the poacher's daughter
Or the laughter at midnight in the mud and the rain
I've given up on ever joining the rodeo
But I'd still make one hell of a spy
I know I'll never be a Hollywood Romeo
I'm too easy to see through and so hard to find

It's a glorious world out here
And I'm a glorious man
And it's a glorious day to wait around for a tow truck
With both axles stuck in the sugar-white sand
It feels like a Sunday morning out
Hell, maybe it's noon
Maybe that highway leads to the ocean
And maybe it leads to the moon

I love how he says it feels like a Sunday morning and he's guessing it's June. The only difference between that boy and me is that I can't think of anything but the poacher's daughter.

To see her in sunlight... Manomanoman.

Same band, different song:

I'm nodding off
I'm getting full and lazy
Floating down the river in a second-hand canoe
I've got grapes and apples
I've got cheese and lemonade
Floating down the river staring off into the blue

I bet she wonders what I think of her now
I don't care what she thinks about me
Floating down the river half asleep

I've got my hat pulled down
I've got my toes in the water
Floating down the river getting drowsy from the heat
And I can close my eyes and see the poacher's daughter
Barefoot on a sandbar with a straw in her teeth

I bet she wonders what I think of her now
I don't care what she thinks about me
Floating down the river half asleep

I've got my hat pulled down
I've got my toes in the water
Floating down the river with a straw in my teeth
And I can close my eyes and see the poacher's daughter
Barefoot on a sandbar like she's waiting for me

I swear to God, these guys have got my number. Except the downriver part.

I'm going up. Huck fucking Finn in reverse.

___________________________________________________________

This remains one of my favorite posts (if not only for the brief homage to my long-dead friend John Bailey), and it should give you a clear sense of what the book is gonna be like.

My Trip to New Bedford

As noted below, I spent the weekend in New Bedford watching my friend Bobby the Gravedigger perform his rock opera "North End Serenade" live. Consider the following, all taken on my iPhone 4:



Leaving Troy



Bus



On the docks of New Bedford late afternoon. We'd revisit them at 2:30 am, after having closed the local bar. I wish I'd taken a picture of that.



The moment itself. My iPhone, even with my fish-eye lens, is incapable of communicating the magnificence of the event.



The Gravedigger leans into his mic. That's him in the Winklepickers. On the left side holding the blond guitar. It looks too big to be a Les Paul. Maybe a Gretsch, or one of those Gibsons that look just like a Gretsch. Or vice-versa. He's a nice looking man.



Self-portrait with hotel room



The Whaling Museum. Which was fabulous.

Best Star Spangled Banner Ever

For you completists, and as a way of fleshing out the post below this one, the best SSB ever happened at the 1983 NBA All-Star game. Performed by Marvin Gaye.



This video is so old, Jamaal Wilkes (1:03) was still probably calling himself Keith.

The Tyranny of the Beautiful Woman, Volume 2

The tyranny of the beautiful woman is often felt most by the woman herself.

What the hell does that mean?
It means that beauty--physical, artistic, whatever--is often a heavy burden on those who possess it.
Oh.
You think, for example, that it's easy being me?
No. But I'd like to know which category of beauty we're talking about.
I'm pan-categorical.
Really?

But enough about me. Cats, dear reader, are freakish creatures. Their ability to just stick their leg straight into the air while they're licking, say, their stomach, without so much as a howd'youdo, is certainly something extraordinary. Likewise ballerinas. It's not so much that they can move their legs from one impossible place to another, but rather, that they do so without even a glimmer of effort. That, dear friends, is the miracle of ballet.

All of which beings us inexorably to the death of poor Whitney Houston, age 48. Her rendition of the SSB at the '91 Super Bowl remains second on my list of all-time SSBs. Worth particular note is the effortless way she hits the now-obligatory high note during the "land of the free..." part--but the whole thing, and the woman herself, were spectacular from start to finish.



Loved the headband. And really, what a set of pipes. Dog. You get the feeling she could have sung the thing without any help from the PA system and it would have been fine.

Now it goes without saying that the Grammys, at least as a television experience, are a complete crock of shit. But every once in a while something special happens on them. I'm of course thinking about Jennifer Hudson's moving rendition of "I will always love you."



I like how, about a third of the way through, she puts up her hands and shushes the collection of ho's and crackheads they call an audience at the Grammys. How keenly someone like Jennifer Hudson must feel the passing of someone like Whitney Houston. It's all very sad.

All of which brings us, inexorably, to "The Tyranny of the Beautiful Woman." Or at least the painting of the same name. This is where we currently stand.



It keeps getting darker and darker. And it looks better than this in real person. But I think it's gonna get darker still. Much like the night before the dawn. Although truth be told, I don't think any given night, when measured at, say, 11:45pm is going to be any darker come 3:00 am. So disregard the previous statement.

We are not asking for miracles

We, and here I speak on behalf of the Knicks Nation, are not asking for miracles. We don't expect to win the NBA championship this year. What we are asking for is a version of basketball that makes you smile again. This lovely young fellow, Jeremy Lin, he being the namesake of the phenomenon called Linsanity, has provided just that for the last four games, including tonight's win over the Lakers.

Read that again: Knicks beat Lakers.

We are not asking for miracles, but it might also be nice if the MSG network (which owns and telecasts the Knicks) came to terms with Time Warner Cable (which, under normal circumstances, distributes the programming to millions of schmucks like me). Currently the Knicks are blacked-out on my television and there's nothing I can do about it.

Not for nothing, but the people at MSG have rammed a putrid brand of basketball down our throats for MORE THAN A DECADE, while charging the highest seat prices in the league (by an unbelievable margin compared to other notable teams like the Lakers or Celtics), yet they think it's okay to hold out for more transmission fees from Time Warner. Funny aside--MSG is owned by Cablevision, which is Time Warner's largest competitor. Go figure. Shouldn't there be a law about this?

And when I say putrid, I really mean it. Easier by far to swallow than recent-era Knicks basketball would be such things as fresh dog shit or one of those boneless chicken breasts that got lost in the back of the fridge a couple of weeks ago and now makes the whole kitchen smell when you open the door to get a beer. Easier by far.

ESPN televised tonight's game and so I got to watch it. It was almost wonderful. And now, if only the Celtics could continue their tumble into oblivion, life would be pretty close to okay.

I leave early in the morning for New Bedford, Mass, from which my great-great-Grandfather hunted the spermaceti, and where my friend Bobby the Gravedigger, backed up by the North End All Stars, will perform his recently released rock opera "North End Serenade." It's gonna be like The Who performing Tommy, except perhaps not as massive. But I'm gonna be there, regardless.

The things we do for our children

Daughter #2 has developed a rather keen interest in football over the last couple of years. She, God blesser, is a Giants fan. Just as I am when I'm not rooting for the Jets. And sometimes, if she knows we are watching the same game, she'll text or call with a question about some of the finer points of American Football.

Which is frequently a problem because my general technique for watching anything on television, including football, is to tape it, then delay my actual viewing of the thing for just enough time to allow me to fast forward through the commercials. In a vacuum, this is a perfect notion.

They can't hear you scream in space
I know. But we're talking my living room here.

Anyway, in a metaphorical vacuum, this is great. But more often than not, I find myself out of sync with D#2. To resolve this problem for the Super Bowl--a game I knew she was excited about (but not so excited as to keep her from watching the second half in a bar)--I chose to make the ultimate sacrifice and watch the thing in real time.

The things we do for our children.
Tell me about it. I mean, I love the kid ... but never again.

First of all, let me state categorically that the notion--now deeply ingrained in the American psyche by some company like Hill and Knowlton--that Super Bowl commercials are actually worth one iota more attention than any other commercials is a complete load of shit. A con job which we (I'm nice enough to include myself in the group but I don't actually belong) are stupid enough to buy into.

The two other social phenomena in the same group are the Sports Illustrated Swim Suit edition and the Victoria's Secret televised fashion show. It is hard to measure much difference in the utterly banal stupidity of both of these things, but were it a contest I would award the underwear people a nod over the swimsuit people. A friend of mine works for VS and she told me this year's show was good fun and I should watch. So I did.

The things we do for our friends.
Exactly.

I hope she doesn't read this blog.

Anyway, back to the SB. It was wonderful, as a game. D#2 and I had a lively back-and-forth. It was all good, although the physical toll of enduring the bullshit surrounding the game itself set me back several days and I am now just becoming myself again.

Since it was such a crackerjack of a game, and since the boys in Red and Blue, not to be confused with the 'Boys from Dallas, won it in the loveliest way, I'm going to watch the thing again tonight, with the controller in one hand for easy FFing and a glass of Talisker in the other.

Brief personal aside: The single best moment of the football season was watching, shortly after the Giants had rallied in the 4th quarter from, perhaps, twelve down to beat the Cowboys in Dallas, Jerry Jones leap out of his chair and storm out the door of his luxury box. Ha! Suck it, Jerry.

Today's final thought is this: One thing I can promise you I won't watch again is Madonna's painful excuse of a half-time show. Shit, I can dance better than she can. For a woman who's greatest claim to fame is her ability to constantly reinvent herself to maintain the relevancy required to craft a long, successful career, it seems sad to me that she appears stuck in some kind of mid-90s version of her former self--a persona she can no longer pull off. At 50 plus, I think she should consider putting on a slinky evening gown and standing in front of the microphone and just singing.

Like Cher.
Ouch. But sorta.

Somewhere, although I can't quite piece it together, is a joke with the words 'Like a geriatric' in it.

Ouch.

The Tyranny of The Beautiful Woman

Would be the name of this (unfinished, it should be added).

Picasso knew this ... he just handled it better.

Painting is much more exciting than Formula 1

If you believe this, then you will be excited to peek into this just-arrived shipment of stretchers. 10 four footers and ten three footers, each in a new 1.5 inch "medium-heavy" format that I'm trying out for my smaller canvases.



In truth, a 3'x4' canvas can survive on thinner stretchers than this. But I hate the way the damned things flop around. I'm a man of substance and my preference is that my paintings emulate me in this regard.

The briefest of notes on Formula 1

Let the spectacle begin.

The interesting thing about modern F1 cars is that their bodies, wings and all, are such unbelievably complicated collections of forms and surfaces that it is almost impossible, even after extended visual consideration, to fully understand what the hell is going on. Nonetheless, here are some pictures:

Finally, a real picture of the Red Bull. © Sutton Motorsport Images

Jenson Button in the new McLaren. © Sutton Motorsport Images.

Felipe Massa in the new Ferrari. © Sutton Motorsport Images

Raikkonen in the Lotus. © Sutton Motorsport Images

The new Force India. © Sutton Motorsport Images.

The new Toro Rosso. © Sutton Motorsport Images.

Maldonado tries the Williams. © Sutton Motorsport Images

Kovalainen tries the new Caterham. © Sutton Motorsport Images

This whole "stepped nose" design--meaning the sort of ungraceful bump up from where the top of the nose cone meets the top of the body near the front wheels--seems to be prevalent this year. The only people who don't seem to have it are McLaren (second picture down). We, here at TYOMP, are Ferrari people. But we're not so small of spirit that we cannot acknowledge that the McLaren is a prettier car than the shiny red one just below it.

Speed, however, is what matters. And regarding this question, we shall see.

The official Formula 1 website is nice enough to provide a countdown to the first practice in Australia. As I type, it is 37 days, 6 hours, 57 minutes and 45 seconds. Roughly.

And speaking of beautiful girls...

... and the video you just watched, it's stunning to see how beautiful Picasso's portrait of Francois Gilot looks as the closing image.



This, by the way, is how she looked in perhaps the late 90s.



I love this photo.

Drinking games for the artsy set

If you own one of my paintings I'm sure you've played the drinking game already. A group of people, shots in hand, stand in front of, say, Alan Greenspan and look for annotations that involve some version of the phrase "I am Spartacus." Everyone but the winner has to take their shot. Glasses are then refilled and the game begins again.

All of which brings me to this video:



Surely you've seen this already. First, let me suggest that you turn the volume way up, as if it were "Who's Next" and you were getting in tune with the straight and narrow, because the soundtrack is really gorgeous. Then, as a group, shots in hands, you wait til you see an image that looks like a recognizable actress and you hit pause and shout out her name. Everybody else drinks.

This all came to me when I kept seeing Anne Hathaway. Perhaps this is because I recently saw that movie of hers where she had an incurable disease and she's dating the womanizing drug rep. I forget the name, but now I can't help but see Ms. Hathaway everywhere.

And speaking of nudity, do you remember this:



One of my Easter paintings. What may not be evident here is how big the thing is. Seven feet high, perhaps three across. Which seems just about the perfect size, interestingly enough, for my nude Wall Street series.

Since I haven't mentioned it recently, the idea is to paint full-length, life-sized nudes of some of my previous subjects. The general thinking is Greenspan, Bernanke and Paulson on the regulatory side and Cayne, Fuld and Hank Greenberg representing the private sector. And after some fussing in my mind, I think that I'll paint them in black and white. I'm inspired by the image contained in Big Krugman.



It looks like a sketch, but there was quite a bit of a sort of painting involved.

So I'm thinking of ripping "I Thirst" off its stretchers (I don't have any other 7 foot lengths on the studio), stretching some new canvas on the frame and having at it. Everything in black and white with the exception of a the same graphic device you see on the doors of 7-Elevens so the clerks can identify the height of the person who just robbed them and then ran out the door. This bit of color will be added on the "side" of the painting (where it wraps around the thick stretcher) and will be rendered in color.

Perhaps Greenspan first.

Let the spectacle begin

Inverted Keynes. Disregard the blue.



“Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.”

Where are this man's feet

This is always an exciting time of year, when the Formula One teams unveil their magical new machines.

Magical seems an overstatement.
At 100 miles an hour the cars could just as easily drive on your ceiling as your floor, assuming your house was big enough.
Hmmm. Sounds magical, but it could just be aerodynamics.

Here's a picture of Paul Di Resta sitting in his new Force India F1 car. I love shots like this that show the innards (the nose cone is missing, for you people who are struggling to keep up).



Now I know that race car drivers are typically short people. But I can't help but look at this thing and wonder where they've put the man's feet.

Perhaps that's part of the magic.

I wonder what's in those two little plastic containers. Brake fluid? Do these things even have brake fluid? That sounds so Old School. And why is the one on the right slightly bigger than the one on the left?

Are you awake?

Do you know that ploinky noise an iPhone makes when you get a text message? Yesterday morning my phone ploinked with a message from Daughter #1. It asked "Are you awake?" The time was 7:51 am. Of course I'm not awake.

I texted her her back, assuming it was something. Instead it was nothing. I mean, it was something, and a telephone conversation did ensue, but not something important enough to wake me at the crack of dawn. Now the rest of my week has been thrown off a bit. Hope to be back on my game by the time the Super Bowl actually comes around.

I did, however, just buy a coffee table. And that, I suppose, is something.

Photos of Maynard G. Krebbs ... or rather, J. Maynard Keynes, are a bit of a challenge. I charge forward nonetheless.

"If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid."

The man is a fountain of material.