Eighty Five Dollars at the Met

So I went to see the show of 8th century south-east Asian Buddhist sculpture at the Met.  Cost me an arm and a leg.

For starters I didn't have a single, and I didn't feel comfortable handing the admissions lady a five and asking for change, so I was down five bucks before I even started.

Then I got upstairs and, realizing I knew a great deal less about 8th century Buddhist sculpture than I did, say, the European impressionists, decided to rent an audio tour machine.  Which I used for both the sculpture show as well as the Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux show (which was a stunner).  So that was seven, albeit well-spent, dollars.

Then, so deeply moved by all those fucking Buddhists, I ended up buying the catalog.  Which was a trim $71 and change.  Tax deductible, but still.  Apparently they've stopped selling paperback versions of their catalogs.

All that, plus a sleep-over at Daughter #2's new apartment, plus a couple of beers at McManus and then I got the hell out of Dodge.  What I missed, apparently, was Robert Longo's show in Chelsea in which he reinterprets famous painted images using just graphite (I think that's what he's doing).

These images were smuggled out to me by a friend ...

Wow.

deKooning and Pollock, in order.  Obviously.

Lance Fixes a Flat

It's hard for me to have a sense of humor about Lance Armstrong.  It wasn't so much that he shit all over one of my favorite sports, although he did, but that he took such extraordinary umbrage when somebody would call him on it.  He's the king of righteous indignation.  He's the Ryan Braun of cycling.

Still, here's an instructional video of Lance teaching you (I already knew) how to fix a flat tire.

Classic Post

This one, titled "It's time to put a bullet in Mr. Potato Head" was posted for the first time only a month or two ago.  And even though the hiring of Phil Jackson makes this seem like a complete impossibility, I remain fond of the idea.

Thus today's classic post ...

_________________________________________________

It's Time to Put a Bullet in Mr. Potato Head

By which I refer to the now-inevitable firing of Mike Woodson.  A man of whom I'm very fond and for whom I have great respect.  But he's lost his connection with the admittedly disfunctional Knicks and it's time to shoot him in the head.  Metaphorically, of course.

Do you know that if you Google the words "Mike Woodson Mr" the search bar automatically completes the sentence to read "Mike Woodson Mr. Potato Head."  Go to the image section and you get plenty of things like this ...

... which is him wondering why J.R. Smith cannot effectively harness the considerable gifts bestowed upon him by the Basketball Gods.

Anyway, the point is that when I call Mike Woodson Mr. Potato Head, a) it's not just me, and b) it's done in the spirit of good-natured fun.  Also, it can't be very satisfying coaching this fucked up team anyway, so send the man away with his pockets loaded with millions of dollars and the opportunity to find a better job with a better team and let's move on.

Whither? one might ask.

Excellent question, although the answer -- to me at least -- is clear.  Take a moment and think it through.  I'll even give you a hint.  That being: Old #33.

This is the six and a half inch version ...

This is the seven foot version ...

I love this man.

The good thing about living in America -- unlike, say, Russia -- is that I can declare the deep love I have for this man without repercussions.  And so I say again, I love this man.

Interestingly, I actively disliked him when he was at Georgetown, although that may have been a transference of my considerable antipathy towards John Thompson.  But his Knick career was a thing of deep beauty.  Deep, flawed beauty.  Like a Ming vase.  And I will forever be grateful.

Judging from the cap he's holding, the Knicks must have won some kind of playoff series.  Sadly, there weren't enough of them for Patrick Ewing.  He had the singular misfortune of aligning the zenith of his career with the zenith of Michael Jordan's career.  Big mistake.  And the one year Jordan was off playing baseball, John Starks, who I also love, was shooting two for eighteen in Game Seven of the NBA finals.

Anyway, the Knicks owner is possibly the worst owner in the history of professional sports.  And even if that's not true, the general consensus amongst those of us who know is that he's a miserable little shit of a man, not deserving of a treasure the likes of the New York Knickerbockers.  I sometimes wonder how Walt Frazier goes to sleep at night, just thinking about it.

But there's an opportunity here for James Dolan to do the right thing for once in his life; to give the people of New York one beautiful, shining gift.

Hire Patrick Ewing to coach the Knicks.

I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes

Anybody who's ever lifted a paint brush in anger can sympathize with Mick Jagger today, given the closing of Pearl Paint.

What a bummer.

One theory was that they just couldn't compete with online retailers selling the same stuff.  But Lordy, art supplies are meant to be touched and fondled prior to purchase.  I want to feel the brush in my hand; I want to run my eye along the edge of a canvas stretcher to make sure it's straight; I see a red door and I want to paint it black; and in a perfect world I'd be choosing just the right black from the paint aisle at Pearl.

No more, friends.

I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors any more, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

I see a line of cars and they're all painted black
With flowers and my love both never to come back
I see people turn their heads and quickly look away
Like a newborn baby, it just happens every day

I look inside myself and see my heart is black
I see my red door I must have it painted black
Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts
It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black

No more will my green sea gord turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you
If I look hard enough into the setting sun
My love will laugh with me before the morning comes

I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors any more, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

Hmm, hmm, hmm,..

I wanna see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black

Yeah!

Hmm, hmm, hmm...

Just the briefest collection of thoughts about the pick and roll ...

Which would be a great name for a rap duo.

Spoiler Alert:  If you're a Knicks fan you're not going to like this.

The pick and roll:  One guy is dribbling the ball and his teammate sets a screen.  At which point, all sorts of scenarios ensue, depending on how the defense reacts:  For starters, the guy with the ball can just drive to the basket.  Or the guy setting the pick can, once he's done that, roll to the basket and receive a pass from the first guy.  That's why it's called the pick and roll.  Or, instead of rolling, he can also step back, receive the ball and shoot it.  Likewise the original ball handler can take the jumper as well.  Plus some other stuff, possibly involving a third teammate, that we don't have time to go into here.

It's like the blues -- simple and complicated at the same time.

As is so often the case in life, the trick in multi-variable situations is to try to eliminate one of the variables and let the chips fall where they may when the other thing happens.  As in:  "If that guy wants to take 18 foot jump shots, we'll give them to him all day long.  But we'll be damned if we're going to let him roll unimpeded to the basket."

All of which leads me to the unpleasant statistic of the day:  The Knicks, in their majesty, managed to rank dead last in points allowed per possession on plays finished by both the guy with the ball and the guy setting the screen.  (Truth in blogging:  I grabbed both the stat and a good portion of the sentence from Grantland.com)  The moral being that it's okay (although not great, obviously) to be last in the NBA in one of those variables, but if you are then you should definitely be doing the tighten-up on the other one.  Being last at both simply means your defense is a shambles.  Incapable of defending one of the most common plays in basketball.  Which is ironic, given that Mike Woodson was supposed to be a defensive coach.

Anyway, the question, now that Woodson is gone and a new coach is on the way, is do we want to be like these guys ...

 Or do we want to be like these guys ...

For those of you not completely in the loop, they are the 73 Knicks (with Phil Jackson in the upper left) and (I think) the 91 Bulls (with Phil Jackson at top, center).

If we want to be like the Knicks then it's time to let Carmelo Anthony go and just start building from the ground up.  If we want to be like the Bulls we have to find an adequate Scottie Pippin analog.  Which, given the givens, is virtually impossible.  It also presupposes that Carmelo is the Jordan analog, which is its own leap of faith.

Offensive wizardry aside (and the guy is really something with the ball -- way better than I thought he would be), I still find Anthony to be the least impressive super-star in basketball.

I vote 73 Knicks.

Brief personal aside:  I'm sad to see Woodson go, even though it's time.  He comported himself well and I feel bad that he's getting the short end of the stick.  It should also be said, given the personnel, that Winston Churchill himself (a defensive wizard in his own right) probably couldn't turn the current Knick roster into a decent defensive team.

Just When You Thought Game of Thrones Couldn't Get Any Better ...

... I stumble across this:

Meanwhile, as we have previously reported, two British porn stars, Jessica Jenson and Samantha Bentley have both been signed up for the new series of Game Of Thrones, playing hookers, on which Jenson commented to The Sun newspaper in a recent interview: 

“Game of Thrones was nothing like I’m used to but I got on with the job. It was a great honor. I’d love a career in mainstream acting. 

“I have a small role in an episode – I can’t give much away. It was exciting rubbing shoulders with the cast. Everyone was really nice.”

Dude -- The only thing better than this would have been of Lady Sybil hadn't died in childbirth.

Ever your obedient servant, I googled their images, thinking to post a couple of safe-for-work pix.  But I was underwhelmed, visually, so I stepped away.

I don't mean to judge people based on their looks but a) I'm a portrait painter, and b) they're porn stars.  What are we supposed to judge them on?

Go Big or Go Home

This from my boy Henri Matisse ...

Wow.  Painted by an 80-year old man who couldn't get out of bed.  "Painted" might be the wrong word, and "couldn't get out of bed" is a bit of an exaggeration, but still.

If I had to pick a set of museum galleries I visit more than any other, it would be the Asian rooms at the Met.  You look at some of that stuff, screens and scrolls and hand rolls, many of them hundreds and hundreds of years old, and marvel at how sharply modern they appear.  Likewise my boy Matisse.  Look at that thing.

On a related note, there used to be a Tex-Mex/Asian fusion restaurant on 8th Avenue in Chelsea that made a moo shu handroll with hoisin that, even if I can't think of the name of the place, I still remember quite vividly.  They made a caesar salad with cornbread croutons that was also quite something.

The good news?  After it finishes a run at the Tate Modern, the biggest Matisse cutout show in history is headed to New York.  Nice story here.  Mark your calendars for mid-October.

This from Joan Mitchell, just so you're paying attention ...

That girl could really paint.

Me?  I'm feeling anger at MoMA.  In fact, I've let my membership lapse, mostly in response to the excresance (my word) they've proposed as their massive new expansion/redesign.  Horrible on any number of levels, its greatest sin, it seems to me, is that we so rarely get a chance to reinvent ourselves (in this case, I'm referring to the opportunity to turn the single worst bit of recent museum design, that being the current MoMA, into something good at last; but we could be talking about Henri Matisse, hamstrung by his declining physical condition, saying to himself that he had to either go big or go home, home in this case meaning creative death, and proceeding to think up a whole new medium), that the shameful banality of what they came up with seems all the more disappointing.

Dude, really?  Is there anything you'd like to say to the assembled group?
That I'm sorry about that last sentence?
Thank you.  
Eleven commas seems like a lot for anybody.
Here you're treating the phrase 'eleven commas' as a collective singular?
I guess.
Don't forget the semicolon.
Guilty as charged.
Apology accepted.

Anyway, I may renew just so I can go see the Matisse show more than once without having to cough up the 25 bucks twice.  Or a third time.

Back to the Met for a moment:  This never fails to slay me ...

Painted in 1825 by a guy named Suzuki Kiitsu.  Which is not old at all, compared to some of the stuff.  But if I could steal just one thing from a museum, and had a room big enough to put it up, this might be it.

Flash Boys, by Michael Lewis

Enjoyed it quite a bit.  Thought it flagged a bit in the middle but then picked up steam and chugged nicely to the finish.  Not to be confused with The Great Gatsby, but really, what is?

All that aside, the following section, excerpted from Kindle page 210, annoys me ...

There was a reason for even the oddest events.  For instance, one day, investors woke up to discover that they'd bought shares in some company for $30.0001.  Why?  How was it possible to pay ten-thousandths of a penny for anything?

Forgive me, but I believe that should be ten-thousandths of a dollar, not a penny?  Crikeys, if Michael Lewis can't do the math, imagine the shit Jim Cramer is coming up with.

And why do I have to be in charge of everybody's typos?

Hold Tight Gently

I would urge you to buy this book ...

You can do it here, among other places.

I knew the top guy -- Michael Callen -- a little bit in the Eighties.  Anybody who worked in the ad/pr agency world during that sad period of time saw the AIDS epidemic cut through the gay community of New York like ... well, it wasn't like anything I've ever seen.  I'd use the word plague, but there's a pejorative context to plague that bugs me in this particular situation.  No matter what word you use, effective treatment for AIDS didn't really emerge til the early 90s and before that it was just carnage.

You should read Michael's wikipedia page.  Quite a special man.

I worked at a public relations agency that hit its peak around 1985.  We had about 18 employees, half men, half women.  One day I looked up from my desk ... early 1990-something ... and realized every male employee from that era other than the agency owner and me had died.

Obviously it was more complicated than that, but still ...

Plus, what a great title.

Yo Yo Ma on Cello

Everybody's seen this about a hundred times, but it never fails to give me just a little shot in the side of the head.  Also, kudos to Ann Hathaway's publicist for getting a photo of her inserted at the 1:45 mark.

It's also fun to shout out who the painter is as the images shoot by.  I got 63.  You?

But none of that is the point.  The point is that I was listening to Yo Yo Ma playing solo cello suites at a really high volume the other day, and let me tell you, it's like dropping acid without the negative side effects.  The one playing under the video is Bach's Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007.  Lest you be too impressed, I don't know what any of that means -- I cut and pasted it from the intro section.  Nonetheless, just try typing that into the Spotify search box.

There's something about my speakers that render the cello, particularly the single low notes that sometimes jump out at you, in the most exquisite manner possible.

I was showing somebody my John McCain painting the other night ...

Which was great.  She was highly appreciative. Although you should have seen her face when I told her the only beer I had was Pabst.

"Blue Ribbon!" I cried no avail.  But that's another story.  This is the Senator ...

Fast forward to a moment ago when, somehow, I wandered across a U-Tube clip of Keith Olbermann talking about David Letterman's recent retirement announcement.  Which, you're thinking, has nothing to do with John McCain.

Which is the kind of wrong thinking that drives people like you, dear reader, like lemmings to The Year of Magical Painting.  Even after I stopped writing it you people kept coming.  So I had to start it back up again.  Which, let me promise you, pisses me off.

I think we're getting a little off message, don't you?
Possibly.  But what's the point of any of this shit anyway?
Fair question.  But tell me again about Keith Olbermann.
You're fucking with me, aren't you?
How so?
With the clear reference to George asking Lenny to tell him about the rabbits one last time.
I don't know how to answer that.
No surprise, Persephone.  What's Xerxes up to?
He's gone, man.  Forget about him.  Tell me about Olbermann.
Okay, but only because I wanted to talk about it in the first place.
Perfectly reasonable.
Thank you.
No, thank you.

So.  It should be noted up front that Olbermann is, most of the time, a pantload.  Some might call him a pantload's pantload -- the gist of the concept being that only a genuine pantload can recognize the true genius in Olbermann's pantloading, if that's even a verb.

But the opposite side of the coin is that when he's on his game he can be a wonderful television presence.  Top end talking head.  That's why, presumably, he keeps his job, or gets new jobs after he loses his old ones, despite his generally annoying nature.

Thus this -- Olbermann at what one might call the top of his game on Letterman's retirement ...



Which leads, inexorably, to this -- which is a hoot ...



Somewhere, post-Lehman, somebody wrote on one of my paintings "Sarah Palin was, like Lehman, the first big mistake."

Rivendell, and Such ...

I'm feeling like it's somewhere near the end of The Lord of the Rings.  The Shire is safe, as are all the little folk of the world.  Rivendell endures.  A great evil has been smote.  Rent asunder.  Vanquished, as much as evil truly can be vanquished.  And an age of peace and decency and goodness has descended onto the Middle Earth.

I feel this way, of course, because the Huskies of the University of Connecticut managed to kick the asses of John Calipari and his Kentucky Wildcats up one side of the court and down the other on their way to a fourth National Championship.  Proof, I suppose, of a benevolent larger power.

There was an old notion about the Americans in Vietnam.  They came, they blew up a bunch of shit, and then they left.  And the jungle closed behind them as if they'd never been there.  Ditto the French.  Ditto the Chinese.  Etcetera.  With most of Kentucky's freshmen just passing through the obligatory year in college on their way to the NBA, years from now it will have been as if that whole Kentucky team never happened.

Two words in closing:  Shabazz Napier.

Great name.  Sometimes you watch a basketball game and you just have the sense that one guy is operating on a level one notch above the others.  This was the case with Mr. Napier last night.  Particularly in traffic.  God bless the man -- it was a joy to watch.  Even though he's only six feet tall it will be interesting to see how he does in the pros.

There's a great line in A Midsummer's Sex Comedy where the designated hottie -- played by Julie Hagerty, maybe, back when she was hot in a thinking man's sort of way -- beats the college professor at chess.  "You," he says in defeat, "have a keen grasp of spacial dynamics."

Ditto my man Shabazz.

Note to Michael Lewis ...

... just so we're clear who got out of the gate first.

Painted about a year ago.

And while Flash Boys is less about dark pool trading and more about high frequency trading, it's all part and parcel of the same thing.

Click here for my favorite picture of me, maybe all time

If it annoys you to have to just click on some type, contact the New York Times. Otherwise, click here.

The third photo is the money shot.  Shot by a woman named Ruth Fremson, I'd love to have a big fat framed print.

I miss Ann Curry

I have a thing with a person later today, and in anticipation I watched this ...

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I miss Ann Curry.

I'd like to thank you on behalf of the group. I hope we passed the audition. Volume 2

Funny how things pop into your life for a moment and are then gone.

If you scroll down a little bit you'll find the first "I'd like to thank you..." post.  Which is nothing but a video.  Which was working when I posted it but which is now not.  It's been taken down by some third party with a beef.  Perhaps Apple.

Not the computer people, you knucklehead.  The record label.  Because the video was a 29 minute version of the Beatles' farewell rooftop concert of 1969.

At the end of it, as the rest of the band is taking off the guitars, putting down the drumsticks, etc., John Lennon steps up to the mike and says "I'd like to thank you on behalf of the group.  I hope we passed the audition."  Which, given that this was the last time the Beatles ever performed live, was a very John Lennon sort of a thing to say.

The rest, as they say, is history.  Some of it very sad.

I hope you got a chance to watch it, because if you didn't it's too late now.  If you were a Beatles fan it's a bittersweet bit of film.

Happiness, friends, is a warm gun.

Some conditional good news and a note to Alex Rodriguez

Mr. Rodriguez --

Let the record show, you miserable shit of a man, that, despite your two $200 million-plus contracts, you remain a second tier sportsman.  Financially speaking, of course.

I say this because the New York Times estimated this morning that Michael Schumacher's career earnings exceeded 750 million.  Dollars, I'm assuming.  If it's Euros, dude -- we're talking the B-word.

All the best,

Geoffrey Raymond

That unpleasantness aside, today's question is:  Have you ever owned a puppy?

Very few things are as cute, and as engagingly disfunctional, as a puppy.  As the owner, you stare down at the little thing after it's done something that makes you laugh with a combination of love and the knowledge that you, a mature human being, are a vastly superior creature.

This same look is the way Michael Schumacher used to stare down at the press, just to pick a group, from the podium.  As if to say: Yes, I'm smiling.  And engaged.  But let there be no question between us as to who is living life on an elevated plane.

Which, frankly, could get a little tiresome -- that kind of benign, Teutonic arrogance.  The Prime Minister of Greece is probably familiar with the experience, but that's a tangent we need not explore just now.

In fact, there are people who downright loathed Schumi.  And although I'm not counted amongst them, I could see where they were coming from.  But even if you weren't one of his fans, surely the decent human buried down amid your darker urges can rejoice at the news that Schumacher is, after a couple of months in an induced coma, showing signs of coming up for air.

Lovely.  I'm sure a number of hard truths are still to be realized, but coming up for air is way better than staying under water.  Metaphorically speaking.

I leave now to watch the qualification session for the Grand Prix of Bahrain.  In which the Silver Arrows of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are favored to nab the front row.  Mercedes being, of course, the last team that Schumacher drove for.  And somewhere on those cars, discretely tucked away amongst the blaring sponsorship decals, are the words "Keep Fighting, Michael."

A Mercedes W154 Silver Arrow.  Supercharged, 3 liter V12, thought to put out about 450 brake horsepower.  In 1939!  Dude!  Pretty much everything you need in a race car except a seat belt.

What does that even mean?

What?

Brake horsepower.

I have no idea, but 450 of it is a lot.

Imagine how much horsepower they'd have if they took off the brake.

The mind reels.

I love the plaid upholstery.

Bush the painter

I always liked Poppy.  But the son?  George Bush the Lesser?  Not so much.

But that doesn't mean I can't give a man his due.  I refer, of course, to Bush the Lesser's art exhibit at his presidential library.  This is Putin ...

Hard to tell without being there, but I say: You go, Dubya.

He's certainly captured the weirdness of Putin; the strange length of the nose; the killer eyes.  I'm in.

Open Letter to National Grid

Dear Assholes:

Okay, so I'm upstairs, typing away, doing the things I do to the pay the rent (which typically has nothing to do with typing but James Thurber once said the hardest thing about his job was convincing his wife that staring out the window was an important part of it).  What I guess I'm saying is that there is a lot of stuff that seems meaningless in one's life, but which, particularly if you are engaged in what one might, in quotations, term "creative" work, is actually important.  This fucking blog jumps to mind, doesn't it?

On a more prosaic note, I'm also reminded of eating my eggs at Carmen's last Saturday.  Halfway through egg B, the solution to the structural problem I'd been wrestling with in a short story hit me on the side of the head like a sledge hammer in the form of the first paragraph, word for word, arriving in my brain.  With nothing available to write it down -- it's hard enough getting coffee at Carmen's; just try getting a sheet of paper and a pencil -- I picked myself off the floor, so to speak, ate the egg, paid the check and hauled ass home.  Ten hours of typing later, the short story was finished, intact, needing only a shitload of editing to make it whole.

So anyway, back to earlier today:

I'm typing away.  Ever since I bought a new, L-shaped desk, I can look past my computer screen out the window down onto Madison Street.  Which sometimes creates backlighting-related problems in viewing my screen, but that's not the point.

The point is that there are two big National Grid trucks out front, working in those bucket things, etc.  I pay them no real mind until all the electricity in the house goes off.  Including my computer, obviously.  Sending whatever it was that I was working on off into the ether instead of down onto my hard drive.  Which was annoying.

I walk outside, spy the National Grid guy standing in the street, and say "All the electricity just went off in my house."

He nods like this is not news to him.

"How long is it gonna be off?"
"Probably about fifteen minutes."

Not really in the mood to get into it with him, I come back inside, wait for the juice to come back on, reboot my computer and write this letter.

What would it have taken for the guy to knock on the door and tell me the electricity was going to be off from X to Y hours?  It would have saved me a lot of aggravation.  Likely my neighbors too.

You know, most people don't like utility companies.  This is one of the reasons why.

Yours, annoyed,

Geoffrey Raymond

Suicidal Ideations #12 and 35

Me?  I like a beater.

I refer, of course, to this ...

Look at the black tape on the exhaust, torn up in one spot from where, one can assume, it was put on the floor.

And which, despite being dressed completely in black, with not a hint of the words Harley-Davidson, is one.  A Harley.  Reminds me of the hero of Saigon: Too Big Too Fail -- Captain J.E.B. Stuart III -- who, although he works for the Security and Exchange Commission, wears black utilities, no dog-tags, and carries a big fucking gun.

The Harley, just so we're clear, is in this situation its own gun.

[Happiness, it has been noted by better men than me, is a warm gun]

I love that the only thing written on this motorcycle are the words Mama Tried.  Both sides.

That made me smile.

Here's the full thing:

She's not a girl who misses much
Do do do do do do, oh, yeah

She's well acquainted
With the touch of the velvet hand
Like a lizard on a window pane
The man in the crowd with the
Multicolored mirrors on his hobnail boots

Lying with his eyes
While his hands are busy working overtime
A soap impression of his wife
Which he ate and donated to the National Trust

I need a fix cause I'm going down
Down to the bits that I left uptown
I need a fix cause I'm going down

Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun

Happiness is a warm gun
(Bang bang, shoot shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun mama
(Bang bang, shoot shoot)
When I hold you in my arms
(Oh yeah)
And I feel my finger on your trigger
(Ooo, oh yeah)
I know nobody can do me no harm
(Ooo, oh yeah)

Because happiness is a warm gun mama
(Bang bang, shoot shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is
(Bang bang, shoot shoot)
Happiness is a warm, yes it is, gun
(Happiness, bang bang, shoot shoot)
Well, don't you know that happiness is a warm gun mama
(Happiness is a warm gun yeah)

Which reminds me, for reasons not entirely clear, of that line from Hallelujah by one of those Buckley boys that goes ...

Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.

Which is pretty fucking strong.  Also, upon reflection, probably written by Leonard Cohen, since he writes all the stuff that goes like that.  Then sung by one of those Buckley boys.  Likewise Brandi Carlisle, who, when she does it in concert, will rip your heart out.

The Fantasy goes slightly awry

The Knicks are now in 8th place.  Don't exhale, though, because every one of the last six games they play is against somebody else in the playoffs, including the Nets in Brooklyn, who we can assume are pissed.

So that's all good.

The bad part is that the Indiana Pacers, whose free fall was supposed to make them easy pickings for Clyde Frazier's old team, have come apart so profoundly that they are in danger of dropping down to the second seed.  Meaning that the newly resurgent Knicks will play the Heat in the first round, rather than in the third.

Which would be fantastical -- the way horrible nightmares can be fantastical -- not fantastic.

I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group. I hope we passed the audition

Lovely, if a little bittersweet.