The Year of Magical Painting

A little Sports and Politics

2012-01-27T11:04:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite tennis players is Venus Williams. Not so much her little sister though, so it was with considerable glee that I read that Serena got her ass handed to her relatively early in the proceedings of the Australian Open. Tennis will be a more sportsmanlike place after her complete departure.

On the other hand, I'm very pro-Sharapova here, thinking it would be nice to see her (win one after having surgery on her primary shoulder).

What does that last sentence mean--with the parentheses?
It means two things. First, that I'd like to see her win one after surgery. And two, that I'd like to see her.
See her in the sense of "Are you currently seeing anybody?"
Yes. In a relationship sense.
Well.
Well what?
Well, that makes perfect sense.

But what we're really here for is to talk about the State of the Union Address. Jorge Posada, famous Yankee catcher, retired the other day. Not one of my favorite guys, being a Mets fan, but attention must be paid nonetheless. Hundreds of times in Posada's career he experienced what John Boehner must have been going through the other night. Sitting behind his opponent, watching as he launches a home run, thinking "Manomanoman, we are totally fucked."

Me? I'm as appreciative of old-time conservative values as the next guy on, say, the Upper West Side. But Boehner is a sourpuss and he gives me a cramp.

You don't think you're a bit old to be thinking about seeing somebody like Maria Sharapova socially?
No.
No?
No. I might be too old to actually do it, but I'm certainly not too old to think about it.
Fair enough.
I'm a painter. Half my life is spent thinking about stuff. If not Sharapova, what?
Your next painting?
I already thought about that. It's an inverted painting of John Maynard Keynes.
Who I frequently confuse with Maynard G. Krebbs.
Me too.

I'm sad that Etta James is dead

2012-01-24T11:59:00.000-08:00

Check this out:

I wish there was video, but still...

Thank God Thelonius is still alive.

I think he's dead too.
He is?
I think so.

Wow, that's a blow. I don't know what you do for a living, dear reader, but what I do is tailor-made for listening to music while I do it. At least the painting part of what I do. And the reading of the newspaper part as well.

Check this out:

Keep your shirt on--it's barely anything. I mean, it's something. It's called Black Dress, Black Sofa. So if it's called something it must be something. But it's barely anything, other than a not-even-half-finished picture of my friend Rose. One thing for sure: that red is gonna get toned way down. Although a minute ago it was just white, so things are happening.

(This is one of those paintings that I couldn't make work a year or so ago and so I rolled it up. Lately, having unrolled it, I'm working on it again.)

Anyway, if I wasn't listening to Etta James while painting Black Dress, Black Couch (the name varies) I would have done the same thing I always do lately when I'm painting. I would have dialed up grooveshark.com on my computer, typed in Thelonius Monk Quartet, and hit "play all".

The perfect music to paint by.

February 17th, 1982
What's that?
The day Monk died.
Oh.

Good with newspapers too. Only today I'm listening to Ms. James.

Although this is Jade Tailor. Who, of the two, looks better but sings worse.

Inverted Keynes

2012-01-17T11:54:00.001-08:00

Me? I'm a Keynesian. For which I get a lot of shit from my Wall Street friends. Me and Krugman. And manomanoman, we're swimming upstream these days.

Next up: Inverted Keynes.

"I do not know which makes a man more conservative — to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past."

Wow.

Go Blue

2012-01-16T13:48:00.000-08:00

I approached the refrigerator last night after the Giants game, deeply moved, emotionally fragile, hoping that perhaps there would be something fun inside to nibble on but not really believing there would be. When I found an unopened box of double chocolate Milano cookies I slowly crumbled to the ground and began to cry like a teen-aged girl who'd just been informed that Justin Bieber was dead.

The whole day had been that wonderful.

Actually I didn't do any of that crying business, but I did repair to the sofa to watch the post-game show and ate slightly more than half the cookies. How 'bout those Giants tearing Green Bay apart like that? I'm now officially looking past the 49ers game (they are toast, and what's the point in wasting emotional energy on them now?) and thinking about how splendid it's gonna be to make Bill Belichek cry like a teen-aged girl who'd just been informed that Justin Bieber was dead.

Oh, and check this out:

Who's that singing?

I only date women named Mitchell

2012-01-06T03:40:00.000-08:00

I leave for New York now. The Cheim & Reed gallery, specifically. The Postcards From The Edge opening party, more specifically.

What a lovely gallery. I'm so appreciative that they've chosen to display my work, although my enthusiasm is dimmed somewhat by the fact that it's surrounded by 1500 other "postcards."

Did you see the Joan Mitchell show there? You walk into the front room and there, all by itself, is this (If I have the right picture):

About a mile high and a mile wide. And all you can do is say Dog.

Beautiful, beautiful paintings. Whatta a show!

When you say you only date women named Mitchell, is that first name, last, or both?
Most people with the first name of Mitchell are men, so let's go with last.
And are you referring to yourself? It seems like an odd statement.
No. Of course not.

Did you know that Alan Greenspan used to be married to Joan Mitchell? Now he's married to Andrea Mitchell. You do the math.

This is your brain...

2012-01-05T08:23:00.000-08:00

This is your brain...

This is your brain on drugs...

This is a self-portrait from several years ago...

This is my new haircut.

I'm shooting for a kind of a Mahatma Gandhi/Seal Team 6 fusion.

"Let's put it next to the Stella"

2012-01-03T12:11:00.000-08:00

One reflects on one's life in increments: A little achievement here ... a bit of success there ... you pick up a pretty girl on the L train, take her to Fatty 'Que and order the smoked-crab laksa and a can of Pabst, then get lucky later ... the odd setback every once in a while to add a bit of depth. Hey, before you know it, you're getting someplace.

Change of topic: One sometimes thinks of one's paintings the way one thinks of one's children. The metaphor doesn't hold completely--that is to say, your paintings never ask you for money. To put it another way, if your house is burning down and you have a choice of saving your favorite painting or your kid, 95% of the time you grab the kid. But it holds to a degree. I care deeply about each and every one and never fail, when delivering a painting or shoving it in a tube to be sent someplace, to whisper "Never let anybody tell you you aren't a great painting."

Then I send them off, sometimes with a tear. I'm always happiest if I think they're going to a good home.

Fastforward, or rewind, to the week before Christmas and my delivery of Corzine Agonistes to what seems like a very nice home. The buyer and I are wrestling with where to hang the thing and he says "Let's put it next to the Stella."

Which are words you don't hear everyday. At least not in my line of work. One reflects on one's life in increments and this, I remember reflecting that day, is one of those increments upon which one reflects.

When you say "in increments," is it the reflecting that is done in increments? Or are the increments of life the things being discretely reflected upon?
Excellent question. The latter, I think.
And when did you ever pick up a girl on the L train?
A man can dream, can't he?

Here is a photo of Big Bad Jon in place, next to the Stella. It may be a bit difficult on the eyes, but in respect for the buyer's privacy, I've cropped it a bit.

Elf-hat

2012-01-03T10:09:00.001-08:00

This is, of course, me in the middle of the Raymond girls. Who, in a bid for sanity, don't show up too often on these pages.

I'm thinking that thing coming out of my head is not a pepper but, rather, an elf-hat. I'm thinking.

We will commence painting tomorrow

2012-01-02T10:45:00.000-08:00

Reconvening for the new year, as it were. In the meantime, I'm going back upstairs to make myself a grilled cheese sandwich.

Upcoming for the new year will be:

#1--Something new: A set of six paintings, each measuring 7'x3', depicting Greenspan, Geithner, Paulson, Cayne, Fuld and Greenberg standing, nude. We are wrestling mightily with this in our head.

#2--A trip to Europe: Although I can pay for it myself, am looking for funding for the trip in terms of great pre-purchase deals on paintings of people like Angela Merkel, annotated at the scene of the crime, as it were.

#3--The usual bullshit.

Between these three categories, I'll be extremely busy.

Live-Blogging my Life

2011-12-24T09:41:00.000-08:00

I'm getting ready to watch the Jets/Giants game on a TV screen that's smaller than my computer monitor. Other than that, my trip to New York has been lovely. It's been almost 24 hours since I saw Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and I still can't tell you what happened.

But I've had nights like that before.

Happy Holidays

I leave now for New York...

2011-12-16T08:10:00.001-08:00

... for two weeks of general merriment. If that's how you spell it.

That said, I am still able to fill print orders. Look how nice Paul Krugman looks just sitting on my sofa.

The more I look at this painting in the flesh, the more I like it.

For the Guy Who Has Everything

2011-12-16T07:58:00.000-08:00

Order before Monday at 10 and we'll guarantee Xmas delivery.

The holidays will be upon us before you know it. Assuming you have a loved one in the financial sector who does NOT own an original painting of mine, why not give him or her a signed, numbered print of some my most popular works? Go to annotatedpaintings.blogspot.com or paintingthestreetweekly.blogspot.com to see what are available. They measure roughly 22"x33" and are giclee-printed on acid-free photo stock.

They are priced at $250 per print, plus a $25 domestic shipping charge. International shipping is billed at cost. A set of four costs $900 and they look spectacular as a framed group. Timely delivery guaranteed--just let me know your deadline.

Contact me at gvraymond@gmail.com

And ... the picture of the day

2011-12-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

I've actually eaten Indian food with this man.

His name is John Knefel and he's been particicovering Occupy Wall Street. This is him getting arrested by what certain journalists are calling the White Shirts (I'd laugh if it wasn't so grim a thought).

You can read his story in Salon about 37 hours of incarceration by the NYPD here.

Truth in blogging

2011-12-15T07:30:00.000-08:00

Two clarifications to the post beneath this one:

First, I wrote "...the Knicks were so bad for almost a decade that I completely stopped watching basketball."

This is not entirely true. When I moved to Leesburg what now seems like quite a long time ago to help Dad die, I had a lot of time on my hands. Some of it I spent watching the Washington Wizards. It was a fun team--they had Gilbert Arenas at one guard spot, Caron Butler (maybe) as a swing man, and two big guys, one with dreadlocks, who were each exactly as good as the other one, albeit it perhaps in different ways. They hated eachother, and the one with the locks wrote poetry and was sensitive, for a big man. If I remember all this correctly. It was a fun team.

Amazing how the bottom has dropped out on Gilbert Arenas. Don't bring guns to work is certainly one life lesson to be gleaned here, but there are other things in play as well.

Later I wrote: "...one of the great white leapers of our time. Me and Billy Cunningham"

I would just like to clarify that while both of us were acknowledged great white leapers, we were not contemporaries. The Kangaroo Kid is way older than me.

It was a bit ambiguous.
Yes it was.
I still remember David Thompson.
Me too. That kid could really jump.
Yeah. He jumped down the stairs of a nightclub one night, tore up his knee, and that was the end of that.
I think he was my favorite college basketball player ever, although I did like Walter Davis too.
I liked Wally Walker. Even in Greece we could tell he was something special.

Live-blogging my life. Which, par for the course, is a disaster

2011-12-15T07:16:00.000-08:00

No Knicks tickets.

This galls me. I mean, the Knicks were so bad for almost a decade that I completely stopped watching basketball. I could barely watch college ball, I was that upset (and this is coming, dear reader, from one of the great white leapers of our time. Me and Billy Cunningham). Now that they're okay (the jury is still out on "good"--let's see how the guards play), they won't let me in!

In a Ticketmaster frenzy, each time it came back as unavailable I bumped up the price. When I hit $200 I stopped. I'm not a crazy person. I didn't spend that much to see the Rolling Stones in the same arena.

Now I'm gonna take this money and buy some Christmas presents for my children; watch the game from the Peter McManus Cafe.

Live-blogging my life

2011-12-15T06:54:00.001-08:00

I'll make this quick. At ten this morning, Knicks tickets for the Celtics Christmas day season opener go on sale online. It is 9:54 as I type. Can it possibly be that the cheapest seat in Madison Square Garden is $155? If this is dynamic pricing (which I'm sure it is), I could do without.

I wonder how much a mid-week ticket in February for Sacramento is gonna cost. The smart money says less.

For once in your life, listen to what I'm telling you!

2011-12-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

Remember when I posted that notorious documentary about uber-trader Paul Tudor Jones in five Youtube segments and told you that you better watch it fast because there was a good deal of debate about how long it would be available on line?

And then, after a day or so, the video was no longer available? And now you'll never see it? Ever? And it was really good?

And remember how I'm always telling you you should buy a painting but you never do, and now the price of the Blankfein painting has doubled? Joke's on you, my friend.

So when are you gonna learn?

Well, dear reader, in the spirit of public service (even though I know you never do what I tell you to do) I am urging you to go here and download a Rolling Stones bootleg titled "Brussels Affair '73." Because I can't see how it can possibly exist, intact, in the public domain for much longer without the lawyers from the Big Red Tongue (read: Rolling Stones) descending with cease and desist letters.

I'm of two schools about not paying for bootlegs. The first school is that it's wrong. The second school says that, in certain circumstances, given that the intersection of art and commerce can be a tricky one, it's fine. I factor into the second school a number of considerations: For starters, I'm always amazed at the number of people who tell me they've downloaded hi-res images of my paintings; printed them out and framed them. I'd prefer that they buy prints, but strangely, I'm more or less okay with it. So if I can handle it, so can Mick. Second, the Rolling Stones (unlike, say, me) have more than enough money anyway, so what's the problem? Third, the twelve minute version of You Can't Always Get What You Want makes you want to gouge your eyeballs out of your head with your thumbs and roll around on the floor, foaming at the mouth. But in a good way.

It's that fabulous.

Moby Duck

2011-12-10T12:35:00.000-08:00

When was the last time you read Moby Dick? I'm a third of the way in and it is a bit like tacking into the teeth of a nor'easter. I remain on course however and will report back once I see the great whale himself.

In the meantime, check this out:

A genuine Barnegat Bay Duck Boat. Wow, you don't see those everyday. And let me tell you, when you're eleven years old, they seem a lot bigger. When you're eleven, it feels like how Bruce Springsteen must have felt when he found the secret of the universe in the engine of an old parked car.

The picture, by the way, is dragged from a blog called 829 Southdrive. Check it out if you are looking for some Barnegat Bay slice-of-life photos. I am so jealous.

The reason I bring all this up is that I, as a kid, sailed a duck boat out of the Bay Head Yacht Club. I've done a lot of things since, but I'm not sure any of them were any better than that. Except maybe the day I upgraded to a Sneakbox.

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

This is, of course, Rat talking to Mole, presumably about Duck Boats and Sneakboxes.

And the name of my Duck Boat?

Moby Duck.

Painting Wall Street Weekly

2011-12-09T11:22:00.000-08:00

Consider this, dear Reader:

The fifth, I think, of my PaintingWallStreetWeekly series--that continuing body of work in which I bear witness, through canvas, gesso, black and white Benjamin Moore interior semi-gloss acrylic house paint and a six-inch putty knife, to the world financial crisis.

It might be the sixth.

It's not the sixth, you idiot. It's the ninth.
I'm not talking about the date, I'm talking about how many paintings I've done.
Oh.

Mapping Troy

2011-12-09T11:16:00.000-08:00

Consider this, dear Reader:

The mind reels, does it not?

The idea is to hang a number of original Maps of Troy in public places, each personalized by the name inscribed next to the dot in the key. In this case, you can see the dot just below the M in Map, once inscribed, will correspond to the dot on the painting. Are you with me?

This is targeted for a downtown location, so it's worth noting that just as the Map itself looks nothing like a map, the Dot in no way actually indicates the location in question.

It is, if I do say so myself, a powerful piece of cartology. I would describe the intention behind the initiative as sinister. Possibly subversive.

Tales of Horror from the 80s

2011-12-09T09:39:00.000-08:00

Let's rewind to 1985 or so. I was heading up the Pharmaceutical Division of a small public relations agency of 20 or so people. It was fun. They even let me fly the Concord once.

Really? How was it?
Celestial.

Agencies being agencies, from about 1985 to about 1990, of the ten or twelve men who worked there, eight or nine of them died of AIDS. I can promise you, it was a harrowing experience. Eventually the place folded up like a house of cards, I left to found Mammoth Communications, which, with the help of my buddy Rich, later turned into the Mammoth Group. The rest, as they say, is either history or filler, depending on your cliche of choice.

Now fast-forward to yesterday, when I decided to enter a 4"x6" postcard (I'm not used to working this small--my forehead is still in knots) in one of those fundraisers where you don't know who the artist is until you buy the postcard ($85--what an odd choice for a price-point) and turn it over. The hope is that yours is a Jasper Johns. Or, in my particular case, a Lisa Yuskavage--my current object of affection (the work, not the woman).

The above by Yuskavage. Her recent show at David Zwirner was, like flying the Concord, celestial.

I entered this:

The charity, just to bring things full circle, is an organization called Visual AIDS. Come see the entire collection and buy one. The event is called Postcards from the Edge and I'm not sure exactly where it is (Cheim and Read, 547 W 25th, maybe), but I'm sure somebody will tell me prior to the party.

The Quantified Raymond

2011-12-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

This from a week of Google stats:

United States

415

United Kingdom

Russia

Germany

India

Turkey

Indonesia

Netherlands

Canada

Philippines

I'd love to tap into the Russian Oligarchy as a client pool.

And apologies for the poor typology. I'd have added some spaces between the countries and their respective visitors, but that's apparently above my skill grade.

I'd love a continental US vs. Alaska breakdown. But that's a quibble.

I'm not buying a Ford F-150 anytime soon

2011-12-06T08:21:00.001-08:00

I've decided that one of my favorite people that I don't know personally is Chelsea Clinton.

Another is the young woman who is the spokesmodel for T-Mobile. You've seen her--she's everywhere. Long dark hair, reed thin (although the insides of her calves are perhaps a bit too overdeveloped), toothy grin and an engaging fragility that reminds one of former crack addicts. But in a lovely way.

Were it me, and I were God, I would move her entire mouth down about a quarter of an inch, thus reducing the space between her lower lip and her chin and increasing, correspondingly, the length of her flume.

Brief personal aside: Thinking like that last part, dear reader, is the curse of the portrait painter. Do not attempt thinking like this at home. It will just make you miserable.

And besides, that's a quibble. She's quite lovely in her own slightly unconventional manner.

Not unlike yourself.
Exactly, although I might trade lovely for handsome.
Who wouldn't?

I just googled her, by the way, and her name is Carly Foulkes. And now, Ms. Foulkes--who hasn't done anything wrong to anybody (other than perhaps being a bit too earnest)--is under attack by the advertising executives at Virgin Mobile. Several of their current commercials do nothing more than lampoon poor Ms. Foulkes and her admittedly odd wardrobe.

To which I say, leave her alone. You're gonna get a perfectly pleasant young woman fired if you keep this up. You don't have some other way of selling your shmageggy phone service?

That's a tough one.
What?
Spelling schmegeggy.
I see you use an e.
And a c. But don't take that to the bank--it's purely conjecture.

No way I'm buying a Virgin phone.

It's a British company, isn't it?
Yes, I suppose. Why?
Well, it reminds me of the British tabloid newspaper culture and their willingness to shatter peoples' lives as collateral for reporting news that isn't really news but which does sell newspapers.
Wow, that's harsh. I love the British.
Me too. I'm just saying.
If you're the Greek chorus then that must mean you're Greek, right?
Yes... Why?
Well, how would you feel if everybody was jumping down your throat just because you are Greek?
You think they're not? You should live in Europe for a while.
You live in Europe?
Of course. We're Greek. We live in Greece.
Really? What's your name?--I've never asked.
Spartacus.
No way.
Way.
Are you the guy that writes I Am Spartacus on all my paintings?
In a way I suppose I am.
Say something in Greek.
Είμαι ο Σπάρτακος
No WAY!
Way.

Type text or a website address or translate a document.
Cancel

English to Greek translation

Anyway, all this brings us inexorably to the Ford Motor Company. And although I'll always be grateful for the way Ford and Carroll Shelby smote the mighty Red Cars into submission with their 427 Cobras and their GT-40s at Le Mans and such places, they've gone way too far with one of their recent ads. Which means that the next time I'm in the market for an American pick-up truck, I'm buying a Dodge. I would urge you to do the same.

Have you seen those ridiculous Ford commercials where supposedly real Ford owners pop through a door and are suddenly in a press conference? While generally stupid, the one that really scrapes me raw is some middle-American pious asshole sitting in front of the "press" suggesting that he could never buy a car from a company that received a government bail-out (read: Dodge and Chevy). This, to my mind, is the height of hypocrisy and the people at Ford should be ashamed of themselves.

Here's a question: Do you think any of the parts in your average Ford are manufactured by a subsidiary of General Electric--a company that received significant government assistance? I bet the answer is yes.

Or: Do you think that the Ford executives, if they decided to spin off a new company or some other complicated financial venture, would hesitate for a moment to consult with Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan--likewise recipients of a ton of government support during the Troubles? You do the math.

So I would say to Ford: Blow your misplaced jingoism out your ass, you hypocritical motherfuckers. You lost my vote. And I'm in the market for a car.

The Great Epiphany ...

2011-12-05T13:48:00.001-08:00

... would, of course, be this quote by legendary art dealer Ernst Beyeler:

“If I can’t sell something, I just double the price.”

This is a man after my own heart. Thus, I've just increased the price of Big Lloyd 3 (The Root) ...

... a classic, in my humble opinion, from $145,000 to $290,000.

Don't you wish you had bought it last week? Life is short, dear friends. Which is certainly reason enough to reflect on the recent passing of Peter Gethin.

Have you ever raced at Monza? Not so many of us have, but Peter Gethin did. And in 1971 he pulled off one of the greatest passes in the history of Formula 1, if for no other reason than it happened in the last turn of the last lap. It's also worth noting that the top five guys in this particular race finished in a clump, separated by a little over half a second. As you watch the video, disregard the first guy coming down the straight--although he appears to be ahead, he's really way behind.

And isn't life like that in so many ways?
Yes it is.

Keep your eye on the guy in the white car--he takes the inside track into the turn.

The curve is called Parabolica. As noted, it's the last turn at Monza. And Monza, the traditional site of the Italian Grand Prix, is one of history's seriously fast tracks, in no small part because of the turn. You see, dear reader, Parabolica lies at the end of a medium-length straight. As you enter it, you brake hard for what starts out as a tight right-hander. Once you are into it, though, it keeps unwinding (the radius of the turn gets longer in the manner of a parabola), allowing you to go faster and faster while still turning. By the time you get to the main straight you are going at quite a clip, just on the edge of adhesion.

And isn't life like that in so many ways?
Yes it is.

Anyway, this was the zenith of Gethin's career. Although he did live to a ripe old age.

The Perfect Gift for the Person Who Has Everything...

2011-12-05T09:46:00.001-08:00

The holidays will be upon us before you know it. Assuming you have a loved one in the financial sector who does NOT own an original painting of mine, why not give him or her a signed, numbered print of some my most popular works? Go to annotatedpaintings.blogspot.com or paintingthestreetweekly.blogspot.com to see what are available. They measure roughly 22"x33" and are giclee-printed on acid-free photo stock.

They are priced at $250 per print, plus a $25 domestic shipping charge. International shipping is billed at cost. A set of four costs $900 and they look spectacular as a framed group. Timely delivery guaranteed--just let me know your deadline.

Contact me at gvraymond@gmail.com

Just You Wait...

2011-11-30T07:28:00.000-08:00

Let's assume the New York Times has written between twenty-five and fifty articles about the recent MF Global uproar. Do you know what each (or, perhaps more accurately, every one I've read yet) has in common, besides the general subject matter and the mention of Jon Corzine?

Neither MF Global nor Mr. Corzine has been accused of any wrongdoing.

It is this sentence, repeated article after article, almost verbatim. It would make a fun title for a painting, wouldn't it? Now if it cropped up once in a while, as a point of anecdotal clarification, I'd understand. But it appears to be in every one. Do the lawyers at the most powerful newspaper in the world believe it is necessary to include this disclaimer? Have we come to this?

I'm angry with The Times.

And as regards the company, the man and the accusations, well just you wait.

Corzine: Naked, Short

2011-11-29T13:02:00.001-08:00

Powerful, if I do say so myself. You can see all of my black and white paintings at paintingthestreetweekly.blogspot.com

The Iceman Cometh ... Again!

2011-11-29T10:24:00.000-08:00

Oh my God! Kimi Raikkonen is back in Formula 1. Witness this:

First of all, this is as excited as the Flying Finn ever gets. It's part of his obscure charm. Second, this boy can drive a car like ringing a bell. He is, after all, a World Champion. Third, I could never figure out what he thought he was doing driving pick-up trucks for NASCAR.

Here's a fifteen minute highlight reel, in Italian:

(Remain calm--you don't have to watch the whole thing)

The downside? Lotus is in the middle--it could be competitive next year, or it could slide backwards. Such sweet agony ... I think I'm going to go have a Caesar salad with sliced steak on top at Daisy Bakers; perhaps sit on the couch and read Moby Dick, just so I can calm down.

Molly Crabapple

2011-11-28T09:50:00.000-08:00

Check out the web site of an artist named Molly Crabapple.

Wow. I like some of it quite a bit.

I came across Ms. Crabapple when a member of the Commentariat attached this observation to the post just below this one, plus one more. Meaning it's not the one just below, it's the next one:

"This Molly Crabapple, what's the deal with her?"

"She's this hot young NYC chick who draws, damn well in fact. The prices for her originals are pretty reasonable too."

"So we have a choice between Raymond, the Madoff-lookalike who charges $7,500 an hour, and this hot chick?"

I wonder how much her stuff goes for? I'd buy this:

Which is really wonderful. And this:

The answer to the guy's rhetorical question is this: If you, dear reader, have enough discretionary scratch to buy a painting from me for $103,000...

... you surely have enough money to also buy one of hers.

You should tell them you don't get any kind of a cut.
Good idea. I don't get any kind of a cut.
That it's the purest sort of a thing...
What is?
Telling people to buy other artists' work.
Yes it is.

Me? If I had 100K sitting around, I think I'd buy a Porsche Panamera. Bright red, but with four doors because I'm a sensible person. Screw art.

Oh Shit! Teddy Forstmann is dead

2011-11-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

A little late--it happened on Sunday, I think--but to quote Willie Lohman's wife, attention must be paid.

Gasperino offers this in The New York Post.

One more item regarding PaintingTheStreetWeekly

2011-11-23T06:52:00.000-08:00

Look what one lovely soul recently wrote in the comment section:

You sir, are brilliant.

As is your Art.

Especially Dismembering Volcker, Morgan: Well Hedged 10-5-11, It's Even Worse in Europe and The Myth of the Rational Market.

Fantastic!

I'd like to get that guy's phone number and sell him a painting. In any case, the idea of doing a black and white series significantly predates the comment, but it's nice to feel there is support for one's endeavors.

That said, and in the interest of running a fair and balanced blog (although by rule I don't have to), this bagatelle was submitted via ZeroHedge re. my Corzine painting:

Looking at this guys "art" puts Wall Street wealth in perspective, doesn't it? This looks nothing like Corzine - it looks more like the old guy who hosts, Behind The Actor's Studio.

Only Wall Street could invent value from nothing; creating value from this painting is like inventing derivatives. This will sell for $20.00 at some Wall Streeter's bankrupty liquidation.

I can't tell if this is a compliment or not. I'm troubled by the quotation marks around "art", but the second paragraph fills me with hope. To paraphrase Little Big Man, my heart soars like an eagle.

It should be noted that the cost of the raw materials for this painting is about $85, so in that sense I am creating value from nothing. This, of course, doesn't take into account the cost of my time, which I bill at $7,500 an hour.

Can I broach an opinion?
Of course you can. I welcome input from everybody.
I don't think the question of whether it looks like Jon Corzine or not has anything to do with your "art".
Nicely said. It's a Duchampian construct: the notion that if I say it's a painting of Jon Corzine, then it is a painting of Jon Corzine. And besides, the image is the vehicle for the conversation.
Much like the medium is the message?
Yes ... maybe.
Perhaps more like artichokes are vehicles for mayonnaise?
Yes, exactly. You obviously understand my work perfectly.
Does it bug you that I put quotes around art?
A little.
We at the Greek Chorus love your work. From now on we're gonna call it Art with a capital A.
And for this, I shall give thanks on Thursday.
And well you should.

Painting the Street Weekly

2011-11-23T06:30:00.000-08:00

I am embarking on a long-term project called Painting the Street Weekly. You can visit the preliminary (and soon to be ongoing) fruits of my thinking at paintingthestreetweekly.blogspot.com. The idea is to paint a black and white abstract painting (envision Dismantling Volcker as an example) a week, titled with a timely message. While each one, in and of itself, may be but a trifle, together they will amount to a compelling historical record of the coming year on Wall Street. Which is, after all, what I suppose I do.

An example of a work in progress is this:

No ... wait. That's my daughter's dog, Chloe. This is the work in progress:

My immediate response to the painting was to call it "Penile Implant", given what appears to be a massive johnson in the lower left quadrant. But I'm not doing a genitalia series, so I revised my thinking. Going forward, I'm calling it some version of "JefCo's Big Letter." Which you may or may not get.

An alternative might be "Corzine: Well-Hung".

Worth noting, these paintings, which measure 3' by 4', have been individually priced at $9,999 in an effort to make people not think they are spending 10K. I'm selling discounted futures, but I haven't figured out the formula yet.

Sobbing while writing

2011-11-16T10:48:00.000-08:00

Well, not exactly. But I just came back down to the studio (I was upstairs, watching TV, waiting for some gesso to dry) and I'm a bit verklempt.

Ordinarily I loathe the Diane Sawyer/Katie Couric/Oprah Winfrey style of tear-jerker special report. Loathe might be too mild a term. To me they're like emotional pornography with extremely high production values. If real pornography was this well lit, everybody would stop watching regular television entirely. Certainly, at least, what they are currently calling The News.

Oprah in particular gives me a cramp because she does the same thing as the other two, but with such a [reader participation exercise--fill in the words for what I'm trying to describe here because they're escaping me]. Holier than thou is a phrase that's jumping to mind, but it's like holier-than-thou enhanced with significant amounts of attitude. Like it was squared, mathematically speaking. Hanging out with Oprah must be a little what hanging out with Joan of Arc must have been like.

I found Couric most offensive during her Today Show years when she would sit on the sofa with some poor couple (maybe the parents of a kid who was killed at Virginia Tech--something like that) and press the issue with questions designed primarily to elicit an emotional breakdown by the guests. I can imagine the champagne corks popping in the control room--"Bingo," they all start shouting--when the some unfortunate soul starts bawling. Now, I suppose, this is Anne Curry's job, with the occasional fill-in by Matt.

Sawyer is the least annoying of the bunch, but that's not saying much. It's a low bar, my friends.

Anyway, suffice it to say I detest this particular television genre. In a moment of weakness, however, I did tape Sawyer's hour-long special on Congresswoman Gabby Giffords last night and just finished watching it. And now, a good half hour after its conclusion, my knees are still weak and stuff that's supposed to stay in my nostrils is dripping off the tip of my nose.

I wish her all the best. Giffords, not Sawyer.

Dealbreaker Weighs In...

2011-11-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

43 brave souls offered commentary via Dealbreaker's piece on Corzine Agonistes. My favorite read:

"relevant:"

And then offered a link to this:

I was also fond of this exchange:

First:

I believe there is a reason Artists are consistently broke and starving, exhibit 1 is above.

Followed immediately by:

I believe Raymond does quite well for himself and probably enjoys painting more than most of us enjoy sitting at a desk 12 hours a day slowly going blind from staring at Bloomberg and Excel.

I'm choosing a blue font (whether you can read it or not) because I am, as we speak, transcribing the comments from DB's website to the surface of the painting with a blue Sharpie. And I'm nothing if not a structuralist.

It should be further noted, as I pat myself on the back, that Dealbreaker readers also rate individual comments. The "consistently broke and starving" guy garnered a negative nine while the "does quite well" guy netted a positive 37.

They love me. They really love me.

On a closing note, I miss Andy Rooney. Not because he was a particularly nice person, but some of this stuff was quite good. I agree with most of what he said earlier, while choosing to think of myself as a solution to the problem, not the problem.

I suspect he would have hated my Corzine painting.

The Talking Heads

2011-11-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

To paraphrase David Byrne: "This isn't the Mudd Club, nor is it CBGB's. And even if it were, we don't have time for that now."

No, my friends, this is not CBGB's. It's CNBC... The Crystal Cathedral of Capitalism. The steed upon which the Rational Market (a fictional character) rides into battle, much the way the King of the Nazgul (also a fictional character) once rode forth from the gates of Mordor.

I had a lovely time. They picked me up from my hotel in Manhattan in a Cadillac, which I thought was an upgrade from the usual Lincoln Towncar, and carried me out to the studio in Englewood Cliffs, maybe. Everybody was awfully pleasant. Did my thing. Left.

Later that night, I got an email from somebody representing Russell Simmons, the rap empresario.

Interesting.

Here's the piece:

God almighty, I have got to lay off the Nacho Cheese Doritos and onion dip. Look at my stomach!

I don't know if I mentioned it earlier, but Corzine was painted over a whited-out Ken Lewis. Check this video out--it's a classic:

Everybody at CNBC was lovely. I saw Jim Cramer, but he didn't see me. When he first hove into view I had a moment of panic. "What if he comes over and tries to kick my ass?" I wondered. Then, stomach or no, I decided I could take him, so the discomfort passed.

On the way from CNBC back to Penn Station I realized that I was hurtling down the Palisades Parkway in a black Chevrolet Suburban with a picture of Jon Corzine in the back. It started to feel very meta, whatever that means. But when I buckled my seatbelt the discomfort passed.

Oh Shit! Joe Frazier is dead

2011-11-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Lefty doesn't sing the blues like he used to.

Angry at Ali til the very last day, I'll bet. Nonetheless, take care, old friend. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

For my 22nd birthday I spent the bucks and sat in the stands at University Hall in Charlottesville and watched a black and white live broadcast of the Thrilla in Manilla. Thank God I'd dropped out at the beginning of my third year of school to drive a cab. Otherwise I would have graduated by then and would likely have missed it. Ali said later he thought he was going to die. Actually die. I guess Joe beat him to the punch. Unforgetable.

Townes Van Zandt said it best:

Living on the road my friend
Was gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron
Your breath's as hard as kerosene
You weren't your mama's only boy
But her favorite one it seems
She began to cry when you said goodbye
And sank into your dreams

Pancho was a bandit boys
His horse was fast as polished steel
Wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel
Pancho met his match you know
On the deserts down in Mexico
Nobody heard his dying words
That's the way it goes

All the federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him hang around
Out of kindness I suppose

Lefty he can't sing the blues
All night long like he used to
The dust that Pancho bit down south
Ended up in Lefty's mouth
The day they laid poor Pancho low
Lefty split for Ohio
Where he got the bread to go
There ain't nobody knows

All the federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him slip away
Out of kindness I suppose

The poets tell how Pancho fell
Lefty's livin' in a cheap hotel
The desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold
So the story ends we're told
Pancho needs your prayers it's true,
But save a few for Lefty too
He just did what he had to do
Now he's growing old

A few gray federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him go so wrong
Out of kindness I suppose

To which I would add, adios Campagnolo.

Campagnolo is a company that manufactures high-end bicycle parts.
Whatever. Leave me alone to my grief.

Number Eight

2011-11-08T07:42:00.000-08:00

The eighth reason this painting costs $85,000 (annotation phase only--I would urge you to buy it now) is that I love the Francis Bacony twist of the nose.

And the dislocation of the flume so that it appears to be coming out of his nostril. Also smashing.

And this, my friends, is that

2011-11-08T06:59:00.000-08:00

Corzine Agonistes ...

There has been some question as to how I justify charging $85,000 (annotation phase only--I would urge you to buy it now) for a painting that took less time to paint than it took to letter the title across the top. Which is part of the painting, but still...

Well, for one thing, no less a publication than the Chicago Tribune has trumpeted its arrival. See here.

Trumpeted?
Well, perhaps French-horned. But is that even a verb?
Not a very elegant one.

For another, I've been thinking about it for quite a while, and thinking counts towards the total energy expenditure. Third, I actually really like the way it turned out. Fourth, there is absolutely no correlation, historically speaking, between how long a painting takes to paint (in this case, less than twenty paint-minutes) and its worth. Fifth, if you look back on my last several paintings, you can see that I'm trying to take a more minimalist approach to the paintings themselves (suggesting that scraping a thin layer of paint over a highly textured background is just as valid a set of painterly decisions as spending hours and hours of dripping paint from a stick). Sixth, you (the buyer) also gets an annotated painting of Ken Lewis, now obscured by a thick coat of gesso, courtesy of Angela, my studio assistant.

Is that it?
No. Item number seven is this: There's no denying the alchemic experience of painting. You address the canvas with any number of complicated intentions; you then begin to paint and everything changes.
Kind of like fighting Mike Tyson.
How so?
Tyson used to say "Everybody's got a plan for how they're gonna beat me until I punch them in the face."
Yikes.
Totally.

Anyway, once you start painting, the most important thing to know is when to stop. Witness "St. Joan Receiving the Spirit of The Lord"...

Which was supposed to end up looking like "The Agony of St. Agnes" but I decided to stop early.

And which might be rightly titled "Agnes Agonistes."

Which brings us full circle, doesn't it?
Yes it does.

[Pinteresque pause]

Can I say one more thing?
Of course you can. It's your blog.
Well, just that the day I finished painting Agnes' face was the day I said to myself, "Dog, you really can paint."
And the rest was just gravy?
Yes it was.

Corzine Agonistes, Volume 2

2011-11-07T16:54:00.000-08:00

The world buzzes in anticipation...

Mogulite weighs in with:

Jon Corzine’s career is about to be memorialized — in the worst way possible.
Geoffrey Raymond, an artist famous for painting portraits of disgraced Wall Street execs (which have fetched thousands of dollars), has set his sights on Corzine, according to Reuters. And it’s not good company for him to be in: Raymond’s past subjects include Lehman’s Dick Fuld and Bear Stearns’ Jimmy Cayne.

In a weird way, Raymond’s decision to paint Corzine feels like a sort of induction into the Wall Street bad boys club. Sure, the court of public opinion — or, you know, an actual court — might be a more official indoctrination into this unrarified air. But Raymond’s paintings have a rather visceral public-gets-back-at-exec ritual that any Wall Street guru would want to avoid.

Reuters explains that, following completion, Raymond hikes down to “the scene of the crime” with his paintings (“the Bear Stearns building with his Jimmy Cayne portrait or the Lehman Brothers headquarters with his Richard Fuld painting”) and allows anyone and everyone to write messages on them. There are, unfortunately for the subject of the portraiture, some predictable results.

So where will Raymond take his Corzine art? “Likely… to a local bar in Lower Manhattan.” Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

I'm weighing in with this, more or less:

And, since I doubt any of you read the comments, a reader weighs in with this:

"So, what does this Raymond guy actually do?"

"Well, he often takes other people's photographs then does works based on them."

"Ah, right, just like that guy who got sued for his Obama "hope" image that was based on someone else's photo? I heard Koons does similar things to Raymond, using other people's photos as the basis for works."

"Yeah. Funny you should say that, since Koons was successfully sued in the early '90s for using someone's photo as the basis for his String of Puppies work."

"Fascinating stuff. Guess that Raymond guy better watch out.

Which is pretty interesting, not only for the legal argument (about which I've expended a fair amount of thought) but for the Commenter's doff of the hat to TYOMP's internal dialogue/Greek Chorus sections.

Corzine Agonistes

2011-11-07T13:35:00.001-08:00

Back from vacation. Imagine if the colors were correct.

Hirst vs. Koons--a correction

2011-11-01T11:44:00.001-07:00

Hey, I'm on vacation. And I'm losing sleep as a function of my big idea. All that said, it should be noted that Jeff Koons makes the puppy sculptures, not Damien Hirst. And sometimes I just wander about and lose my bearings--I once did a long post about a Dodge Dakota and realized at the end that I was referring to the Dodge Durango. Which rendered the post senseless.

In any case, please note the error in the previous post and accept my apologies. In a different set of circumstances, I'd just have gone back and changed it. But since I've received a comment (just published), I feel like the Big Idea post is now set in stone. Thus this correction.

The comment, FYI, read: "If Hirst is a charlatan, does that make you a crank?"

The answer, dear Commenter, is: "No, it does not make me a crank." Were I not on vacation, I would also follow up with some rambling on about the relationship between Hirst's dot paintings and Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie.

In a perfect world, I'd love to correspond with the people who post comments. I wonder if some of them--those, for instance, who craft their comments like questions--are, in fact, seeking a dialogue. The annoying thing about Blogger (Google's blogging program I use) is that, for the life of me, I can't see a mechanism for responding.

If anybody ever wants a back-and-forth, use the "contact me" button in the right column.

And I suppose charlatan is a strong word. Everybody thought Andy Warhol was a charlatan and they turned out to be wrong.

Jeff Koons, however (if we're keeping record), is a charlatan. It might, in fact, have been him I was thinking about when I said it. But in my humble opinion, Hirst (although wildly commercially successful, and I take my hat off to him for that), once he stopped stuffing fish into tanks full of formaldehyde, has generated nothing but dreck.

I'm on vacation

2011-11-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

I'm on vacation in Brooklyn. Not a painting in sight--my only responsibility is to feed the cat and walk the dog. And while the dog is a handful, it's not as stressful as, say, crawling belly-down through a wet Cambodian jungle humming the bass-line of White Rabbit over and over again, like some kind of mantra, eighteen hours into your first Black Beauty; the other one wrapped in a plastic baggie, which is in turn wrapped in a small plastic container, which is in turn tied around your neck with a leather thong that is otherwise decorated with six or seven dessicated human ears (which look a lot like dried apricots, for you completists), shirtless, slathered with a combination of pig lard and camo paint, a knife in your teeth and a beat-up AK-47 slung across your back. Don't even ask about the AK.

So, given the alternative, I'm pretty relaxed. And although there's not a painting in sight, that doesn't mean I didn't come up with the next big idea.

More specifically, I sat bolt upright in bed a couple of nights ago, awakened from what I thought was sleep, realizing that if I didn't grab my phone and email this idea to myself I would forget it the next morning.

My email read verbatim:

To: Geoff
From: Geoff
Time: 3:28 am
Subject: Stuffed head attached to chairs
Text: !

Lord have mercy! Can you imagine?

If you're not fully grasping it, consider this: a stuffed deer head is purchased from some flea-market. These things are typically attached to some kind of wooden frame (for lack of a better word), or plaque. On the other side of the frame a long thin sort of a sculpture will be constructed from the carcasses of old wooden kitchen chairs (also found at flea-markets), held together with long screws and perhaps epoxy-infused rattan cord. Total length, perhaps ten or twelve feet. The chairs will be painted gloss black. It will be suspended from the ceiling so that it rides perpendicular to the floor at an altitude of perhaps three feet.

Is it clearer now? Suffice to say, I barely slept the rest of the night. At 3:49 I followed the first email with a second, the text of which read:

The impossibility of Lehman brothers in the mind of a rational market

Which has since been modified to this:

The physical impossibility of 2008 in the mind of the rational market

Wow. Now consider this:

Other than perhaps a couple of his dog sculptures, this is Damien Hirst's most famous work. Hirst, it should be said, is a charlatan of the first rank (although his balloon dog does make me happy). The title of the above work?

The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living.

Are you with me? Since I'm on vacation til Friday, I'll leave you with this:

John Chamberlain, the guy who makes the huge sculptures out of brightly painted automobile parts--bumpers in particular--once said that all his standing sculptures point directly back to Rodin's statue of Balzac, one version of which stands in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art:

This is a Chamberlain piece:

Can you see what he's talking about? They're sculptures, so the pictures don't really do them justice. But assuming your answer is yes, now picture yourself on a train in a station.

Good. Now picture a stuffed deer head (perhaps a moose) attached to a vertical pile of wooden kitchen chairs, titled:

Richard Fuld, in the manner of Rodin's Balzac.

You do the math. I'm going to the Georges Braque show.

By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong

2011-10-25T06:47:00.001-07:00

This is your brain:

This is your brain on drugs:

This is a wonderful example of my famous Obscured Box Technique titled Dancer #3:

The woman who modeled for D#3 used to be a dancer. Which is a euphemism. Now she's completing her undergraduate in Economics from Columbia and interning at an investment bank. Really--how fabulous is that? For ease of typing, and a certain personalizing factor, we're gonna call D#3 Natasha from here on out.

So I get copied on a note a couple of months ago that goes something like this:

Two friends of mine and I are renting an RV and driving cross-country to see Burning Man. We need a fourth person. Don't you think it would be fun to take a road trip with three beautiful Russian girls? Let me know.
--Natasha

In retrospect, why I didn't go escapes me. Too much stuff to do, I suppose.

Manoman, you are getting old
That had something to do with it, I guess.
Would it help if I whistled the theme song from the Viagra commercials?
I like the ones where the two people always end up sitting in tubs.
Yeah, except why aren't they in the same tub? Given the general gist of the pitch, if you know what I mean?
I don't know. But can we move on?
Sure. Be my guest.

Well, to make a long story short, I found myself at the Capitol Region (if that's what they even call this place) version of Burning Man a couple of nights ago. Hosted by a guy named [redacted for his own protection], it took place in a 40-acre field outside Saratoga that was chock full of trees, barns, tables full of things to drink, exotic sculptures of gargoyles, and a bunch of sagging sofas. Plus a 30-foot high sculpture of a man made out of packing crates, lumber, pine trees and other flammable materials. See pictures one and two above (#1 being the man to be burned and #2 being that man burning). I wish I had a picture of one of the sofas.

And while perhaps not the world-class barn-burner of an event that the real Burning Man is, I didn't have to listen to three girls doing shots and talking in Russian while I drove an RV across Kansas.

This is a portion of the crowd. I didn't check with the police, but my rough count was perhaps 450,000 attendees. I apologize for the picture, but I was listing about 30 degrees to the right by that time.

The Lord moves in mysterious ways, doesn't she?
How so?
Well, you didn't go to Burning Man with the strippers but you ended up getting your ya-yas out just the same.
Exactly.
To quote Richards/Jagger: "You can't always get what you want/But if you try sometimes/You'll find you get what you need."
Nicely said.
And you had a lovely time, didn't you?
Yes I did. The company was great.
Did you tear most of your clothes off, rub blue body paint all over yourself, and dance some kind of pagan ritualistic rhumba with the fire dancers?
No I didn't.
Half a million people thank you for that.
I thought about it though.
The fact that you didn't actually do it, however, is just further proof of a benevolent deity.
Amen.

Ahhh, treachery

2011-10-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

Just when you think you've forged a unique identity. Made your place in the world. Crushed, with the advent of your Wikipedia entry, the UCSF professor who also calls himself Geoffrey Raymond...

Just when you've done all that, the BBC weighs in with this. Some Brit by the name of Geoffrey Raymond who paints RAF aerial scenes. I guess.

Honestly. And on my birthday even.

This one is okay, I suppose, but I remain largely unmoved.

If you think this is a waterfowl, that's your baggage

2011-10-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

This, I believe, is done. You'll note, if you're so inclined, the repositioning of the title.

Dan Wheldon, dead at 33

2011-10-18T08:33:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to say about Dan Wheldon, but I'm keeping it to myself for now. Nonetheless, attention must be paid.

I think my hair looks pretty good...

2011-10-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

This was written by some wag on the Inverted Perry painting:

It reads "I love the art. Do something with your hair."

This is my hair:

I think it looks pretty good.

Back to Rick Perry. As he plummets, much to my delight, to historical footnote-hood, I'm staring at his partly annotated painting and wondering what to do. It's more or less fully annotated, but not to the degree of density I would like.

Which reminds me of Perry himself.
How so?
Well, he has some basic level of intelligence, but not the degree of density I would like.
Guys like him make James Taggart look like his sister.
That's a pretty complicated joke.
Yes it is.
How 'bout this one? He good looking rascal but he lacks the intellectual firepower of, say, Paris Hilton.

Anyway, I don't really feel like dragging it anyplace else. And I'm in love with this whole business of whiting stuff out but you can still see it peeking through. So I'm thinking of whiting out all but my favorite comments and letting the rest be barely legible. So it kind of reverts to this, but with a bit more depth.

Because I do like the painting.

Presented without commentary (No wonder we're walking around with tape attached to our sock)

2011-10-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

Dancer #4

2011-10-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

Does this help? Or is it a distraction?

Playing With Myself

2011-10-14T14:04:00.001-07:00

Saw this guy last night in the Troy Music Hall.

Really amazing.

My favorite part? Well--all of it, really. I mean, it was quite extraordinary. Gave significantly deeper meaning to the phrase "playing with myself." But my favorite, favorite part was when the two-horned speaker behind him started to rotate for the first time. Truth of the matter, it was turned down too much for the room and you couldn't tell any difference (or at least I couldn't), but just watching that thing spin around filled me with the joyous notion that the potential of the universe is either vast or infinite. Either being fine with me.

Eating Well in Troy

2011-10-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

I know you completists like to consume every detail of my life. So okay, here's what I had for lunch:

And before I get to specifics, let me just say that the suggestion that it's impossible to have a decent meal in Troy is a complete falsehood. For example, today's lunch consisted of a torchon of moulard duck foie gras from Elevages Perigord in Quebec (the only place I go for that stuff), served with some crystallized apple chips, some celery-branch batons, Granny Smith apple marmalade, candied walnuts, frisee and juniper-balsamic vinegar.

Me? I recommend shoveling it onto brioche toast like cheap caviar. The key, however, is to do it in small batches so you can keep the bread warm. If you let the brioche cool down it becomes heavy and stiff. Because this requires a bit of this-ing and that-ing, I decided to make it at home, while the paint was drying, rather than attempting to find it on 2nd Street.

The NIght Peerless Pete Threw Up

2011-10-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

CAUTION: CONTAINS GRAPHIC, POTENTIALLY UNPLEASANT CONTENT

Have you ever started to sneeze and then ended up throwing up? Of course you haven't. Neither have I. But the question leads us inexorably to the night Peerless Pete threw up at the Peter McManus Cafe.

Lots of people at the PMC have nicknames. Bobby the Gravedigger; Bobby the Mailman; Grumpy Dave; 20th Street Dave; Dave with the attractive girlfriend; Dave with the hat (who is the same as Grumpy Dave); etc. And that's just the Bobs and Daves.

Me? I don't really have one. Geoff the painter, maybe. But since the reason for the nicknames is to differentiate people who share the same first name (because nobody knows anybody's last name), and nobody else in my particular circle of friends is named Geoff, I don't really need one. Although I do sometimes hear behind me, as I make my way to the bathroom, things like That Fucking Pantload or What An Ass. But these, technically, are descriptive phrases, not nicknames.

All of which leads us inexorably to the night Peerless Pete threw up. Peerless Pete, just so you know, is a fictitious name (no doubt subconsciously inspired by the work of Damon Runyon). Throwing up in a bar is embarrassing, and I don't want to further embarrass the guy who actually did it (who's a good guy and shit happens), so there you are.

The event unfolded more or less like this: Joined on several levels by The American Worker, I was collecting annotations at the Peter McManus Cafe on a warm Thursday night a couple of weeks ago, having arrived there from Zuccotti Park around 4:30 that afternoon. The first three hours and twenty-five minutes were uneventful. However, at 7:55 or so, John from Troy called me up and invited me to a party across town. At 7:56 I told him I didn't think I had the strength to make it all the way across town (which is code for being over-served, which is, in turn, code for being drunk). It was, let's say, eight on the nose when Peerless Pete, who was standing at the corner of the the bar known as Howie's Corner began to sneeze. Everything in slow motion now, so I guess it was 8:02 when he realized, mid-sneeze he didn't really have to sneeze but rather throw up (or, more likely, do some version of both). By 8:05 he had managed to turn his head violently away from the bar and towards the floor. By 8:10 somebody had shown up with a mop and cleaned the stuff up. In my head I could hear the jukebox playing the super-emo version of White Rabbit by Emiliana Torrini that showed up on the Sucker Punch soundtrack, although that could just have been in my head. And then it was over.

Actually it all took place in the blink of an eye. Me? I was fortunate to be three stools away. One stool closer was my buddy Lance. One stool closer still was my buddy Adam. Neither have nicknames.

Much like hand-grenades, collateral damage from episodes like this decreases as a function of distance. So I was unscathed. On the other side of the coin, Adam had a significant amount of wet substance sprayed across the back of his shirt. Lance appeared to be okay, but I quickly realized he was experiencing some version of post-traumatic depression.

Regarding the bar itself, there was considerable skepticism as to the integrity of our beverages. That is to say a kind of "Excuse me, but what's that floating in my drink?" sort of a concern. Johnny the Fireman wiped everything down and gave us new ones. Adam, as resourceful a soul as I know, said something like "I'm going to the men's room to change my shirt." Who, I then wondered, brings a change of shirts to a bar?

Anyway, we all calmed down after a while. Pete--embarrassed a bit, I believe--beat a hasty retreat. When I saw the anxiety on Lance's face, I took him to another bar where the drinks were significantly more expensive but there were a lot of really attractive girls. Which seemed to soothe him considerably.

Thank God I didn't leave the painting at the bar.

Dismembering Volker

2011-10-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

So I'm stretching and priming a canvas. It's gonna be a black and white and I'm thinking about titling it Dismembering Volker.

But then there's Volker, Dismembered.

Or Volker, Dismembered Fondly

Which opens the door to a companion piece titled Volker, Remembered Fondly.

I'm calling this post "Front Row Seat for the Revolution" despite what Scully says

2011-10-11T10:49:00.001-07:00

This, I think, is moving forward nicely. Might, in fact, be done. Comments in red were inscribed at Zuccotti Park--the epicenter of Occupy Wall Street. Black annotations were the general public in front of the NYSE the next day, and revelers at my favorite watering hole that night.

There are a number of interesting things said on this painting, not the least one being:

Apologies from a Baby Boomer for our miserable custodianship of advantages entrusted to us.

Pretty strong.

Anonymous vlogger...

2011-10-10T16:29:00.000-07:00

I don't even know what this is, but it happened on Friday:

My preference would be to have not been grinning like the late-career David Bowie at the end. Other than that ... good clean fun.

Twelve Bucks Well Spent

2011-10-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

This from my personal correspondence file:

Watched the George Harrison/Martin Scorsese documentary on HBO. Which is free, if you subscribe. Part one was really surprisingly underwhelming. Part two, however, was pretty much fun. After I finished sobbing I went on my Kindle and bought Pattie Boyd's autobiography. Which cost twelve bucks (although not the twelve bucks I refer to above) and might not be the best use of my money, but it was a spasm.

The twelve bucks I'm referring to were spent when I then went downstairs to the studio and bought the remastered version of All Things Must Pass (which I know I own on vinyl, but who could possibly find it).

George was always my favorite. It couldn't be more wonderful.

A friend of mine, in a related discussion, said Ms. Boyd must have really been something to have inspired two of the greatest love songs ever. I suggested it must have been something in the way she moved.

Morgan Stanley at the brink...

2011-10-05T12:48:00.000-07:00

Me? I think they've done the responsible thing and their net position, vis-a-vis French banks specifically and the larger picture in general, is stronger than people think.

Thus:

It looks like a piece of toast to me.
That's what they'll be if I'm wrong.
It also looks like a puppy.
I think it looks like one of those condom vending machines you find in men's rooms.
Yes. Certainly that.
Certainly.
Or a bunny.

Like White on Rice

2011-10-05T07:29:00.000-07:00

Funny thing, rice. There was a period of time when I lived in fear of disturbing a cooking pot of rice in any way at all. Taking the top off, for example, just to see how things were going--being a cautious man--was completely verboten. You take the top off, the thinking went, and everything went to hell in a hand-basket.

Hemingway would hate that sentence.
Which one?
The next to last.
I'm done with Hemingway for the moment. So I don't care.

Now I'm much looser with my rice ... just as I am with my painting. In fact, I was staring at some cooking rice last night, top in my hand, stirring it a bit, and everything turned out fine. My friend Chuck uses a two-stage method for cooking his rice. He starts it on the stove-top, waits til it comes to a boil, then puts it in the oven at 325 degrees for 18 minutes. I may have the numbers wrong (18 minutes seems a short time), but that's the gist of the thing.

Me? I'm wondering why he doesn't just leave it on the top of the stove like everybody else.

All of which leads us inexorably to this:

The painting is whiter than it appears here--pure white, in fact--but if I blow it out any more I worry about losing the contrast.

You may notice the change in title. I wanted a more direct parallel to this:

I couldn't be more pleased. Were I the Beatles, this would be my White Album.

The urge to write "The BEATLES" as my first annotation is palpable.

Actually, there is a very real chance that I'll spend part of today transcribing the cogent annotations from the now extinct American Investor 2. If I had a 220z Brown's Whiskey Barrel Aged Porter it would be a hell of a lot more fun.

American Worker

2011-10-04T12:47:00.001-07:00

Surely you remember this:

And then, yesterday, was the idea that I might have missed an opportunity amidst that whole Erased de Kooning discussion...

And now, opportunity grasped, we are ready to occupy Wall Street. Unless somebody has beaten us to it.

It's impossible, working with this photograph, to fully appreciate what's going on here. And the SanDisk in my Nikon blew up, so I shot this with my point-and-shoot. Which does okay, for what it is, but still. And because it's cloudy, I couldn't get the sharpest image regardless. Suffice it to say that in the flesh the painting's pretty rocking.

And it goes without saying that once the background (which is a little bit more difficult to differentiate from the subject, given the givens, than my usual stuff) is filled up with angry rants, the whole thing will come together like Black and White Krugman.

So I'm fired up.

The general thinking is to do a little bit of touching up, then go to NYC tomorrow night, go to the demonstration on Wednesday, NYSE on Thursday, then see what Friday holds. It should be fun.

Thank you, Robert Rauschenberg.

Productivity

2011-10-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

After a bit of generally being clogged up, the productivity level in the studio is so high that I'm literally walking around with blue painter's tape stuck to my foot.

Which is perfectly fine til you try to put your shoe back on.

Note to young painters

2011-10-04T09:20:00.001-07:00

I'm listening to the Barry White channel on Pandora and it's just about right for painting and generally screwing around in the studio. For the record, I don't own a single Barry White song. But it's pretty mellow, and every once in a while you have to giggle a bit.

I may have missed an opportunity...

2011-10-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

Remember this from yesterday:

It's intriguing seeing the image floating through that coat of gesso. Kind of like this:

And kind of like this:

Now, while holding all these images in your mind, let's return to the middle one. For those of you not completely in the loop, it's a work by Robert Rauschenberg titled "Erased de Kooning Drawing."

First of all, make a note of the Jack Daniels part.

Quick personal aside: I bought a 22oz bottle of Brown's Whiskey Barrel Aged Porter from the Brown's person at the farmer's market on Saturday and drank it during the Giants game. Brown's is a Troy-based brewery. Unbelievable. I never expected that much of the whiskey. Just won the best beer in New York competition, or something like that.

Then the part about "It'll have to be something that I'll miss" is wonderful.

Then a couple of seconds later, the part about "I'm gonna make it so hard for you to erase it"--also really cool.

So it occurs to me that I might have liked the painting more if I'd retitled it "Erased Raymond" and gone over the image--but not the annotations--with white paint (which is more translucent than gesso), and ended up with something floating somewhere between Black and White Krugman and Erased de Kooning Drawing.

Completely different idea than Rauschenberg's, but still...

Wikipedia weighs in

2011-10-03T09:15:00.000-07:00

Am delighted/flattered/touched/moved/humbled/vindicated/amused to see a Geoffrey Raymond Wikipedia page. When I first saw it I was in my studio. Now my head has expanded so dramatically that I can't get out. I'm literally full of myself.

And you think this comes as news to regular readers?
No. Paraphrasing Jefferson, we hold this truth to be self-evident. But sometimes moments of profound self-realization are worth sharing.

For you completists, I'm listening to Janelle Monae singing Come Alive. That girl is like nobody's business.

Sports Monday

2011-10-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

Analyzing sports results is such a subjective thing that I've decided to attach monetary values (not to be confused with betting) to significant outcomes. Thus:

Giants beat Cards--$185
49ers beat Eagles--$110
Detroit beats Yankees--$125
St. Louis beats Phillies--$95
The Jets game ends too late to be included in my edition of the New York Times, thus not ruining my breakfast--Priceless!

All of which leads us inexorably to this classic Raymond:

Drivel

2011-10-02T17:23:00.000-07:00

You know that drivel I was spouting recently?

Big category, my friend.
What is?
The drivel you've recently been spouting. Can you narrow it down?
About loving your paintings like they were your children?
I remember that, yes. Something about a Subaru commercial as well.
Forget that part. Let's stick to the paintings-as-kids notion.
Okay.
It's drivel.
Duly noted.

You perhaps remember this:

I hate that damned painting. Hate it. So now it looks like this:

Huge improvement. The relief is palpable.

That said, actual people were nice enough to write stuff on the painting formerly known as American Investor 2. When it ends up as Inverted Bernanke, I'll give some serious consideration to transcribing the more cogent ones.

Also, if I ever do paint another American Investor, I'm going with this as a resource photo:

And I might call it European Investor. Even though it's the most American of images.

I AM Charles Kuralt!

2011-10-02T08:48:00.000-07:00

Do you know how they always close CBS's Sunday Morning with that really mellow 30 or 45 seconds of bison grazing by a river in Montana, or some such thing. With the birds chirping?

This, on a Sunday as cold and wet as a kiss from a dog, is my version of that:

Editor's Note: If you double click it, it will enlarge to full screen and you won't have to watch it through the archives. Which is annoying.

Now, let the football begin.

Old Bobby Lee

2011-10-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading Killer Angels and feeling a lot of anger towards Robert E. Lee. Who, as everybody knows, I once painted in a manner so perfect as to inspire tears:

I tell you what. When I sold it, I sobbed.

Like Longstreet sitting on that fence, watching half his army march to their doom?
Exactly.

Wow! That's a painting. But what's that stuff on his forehead? I don't remember that.

Perhaps it's a physical manifestation of the guilt he felt for sending Pickett up that hill against Longstreet's strong resistance.
You mean like hives or something?
Yeah.
Possibly.

Anyway, I'm at the point in the book when Longstreet and Lee are debating what would later be known at Pickett's Charge. And I keep hoping that Lee will see reason, but I can promise you (based on years of experience comparing what you wish had happened with what actually did happen) that he will not. And those Rebel boys, la belle fleur du Virginia, are gonna get their asses blown to bits on that wide grassy meadow.

That's why I never read history. Too frustrating.
I know, right?
They should have court-martialed Stuart.
Yeah. I'm angry at him too.

And, ironically, they're playing Crimson and Clover on Pandora. By Tommy James and the Shondells, if you can believe that. Which could have been the theme song for Pickett's Charge.

It's upsetting to think about.
Yes it is. I'm making a list of paintings I wish I still had.
That's a mistake, my friend.
The Fallen Prince.
No good will come of this.
Old Bobby Lee.
I love the button right at the bottom.
It's a beautiful button, isn't it.
It's a general's button.
Elena in the Morning.
Stop it right now!
The Annotated Fed.
I loved the look in his eyes.
That was wonderful, wasn't it?
It was.
That goddam Fuld painting.
That would be money in the bank, wouldn't it?
Yes it would.

Just for the record, these are George Pickett's eyes:

In some corners of these United States, Lee is still called Bobby the Butcher.

Going to Jail via the Met

2011-09-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

My boy Eric ended up in the hospital after eating a half-smoke at New Shea on Wednesday (more on that later).

Me? I was fine after eating mine, but I think I narrowly escaped a trip to jail after tripping the alarm at the Met's "Sensitivity to the Seasons" show of Japanese screens and such. Take a look at this:

Now, since you're all fired up, go here and check out one of the nice features of the Met's newly revamped website--the infinite zoom into significant works. You can see a much better rendition of the low-res image you see here.

Editorial aside: Disregard what you just read. The infinite zoom thing doesn't seem to be working in the link I gave you and I don't have time to go back and re-find the correct one, nor do I feel like re-writing the above. You DO, however, get a nice hi-res close-up. And you should click through. But don't blame me.

This screen, in the flesh, is a thing of such serene beauty that it takes your breath away. Do you know how sometimes, when you are watch Pan Am and they are fetishistically, if that's even a word, sliding the camera over the stewardesses as they walk, en masse, down the jetway? Like the way Hannibal Lector, had he been a cinematographer, might have photographed Clarice Starling, had she been a stewardess? And you realize that, without knowing it, you've left your seat on the sofa and are now standing directly in front of the television with your nose pressed against the glass?

Well, I had the same experience with this screen. The way they set it up is this: they create compartments in the walls so the screens, which measure maybe 4x12--some longer, can be raised slightly and recessed a couple of feet in the compartment. The screens, if left slightly folded (are you with me here?) stand up by themselves, and the zig zag only adds to the zing of the thing.

There's no glass on the front of the recessed compartment. You appear free, should you choose, to take a Sharpie, lean in, and write something like "Lehman Brothers was the first domino" right on the damned thing. What nobody tells you, however, is that if you try to get too close to the screen, a sensor lets off an alarm.

At which point the violator (me) is given a stern lecture by the security person and made to feel like an asshole. I survived, and I didn't go to jail in the end, but everybody in the room did turn and stare at me. And that's something, I suppose.

One elderly woman hissed, "Aren't you the one that caused the ruckus at the de Kooning show?" Which just goes to show you that word does get around.

I'm having this idea about rejiggering my black and white stuff to engage in a painterly conversation with some of these Japanese screens ("painterly conversation" being another term for "ripping off") and then writing something about the coming European melt-down along the bottom. I haven't quite figured it out, but the first one is going to be called (as differentiated from what is written on the face of the painting) "Love-note #1 to Gretchen Morgensen."

Have we discussed this?

2011-09-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

Although I'm fond of it, especially with the dots, I'm not sure how good it is. I wish Clement Greenberg was still alive.

Likewise, have we discussed this?

There is some thinking about retitling the second to read: "It's Even Worse in Europe".

Can you even do that?
Of course I can.
Have two paintings with the same name?
Of course I can.
Are you going to erase stuff? You're like a madman with the white paint these days.
Yeah. I might just white it out and start over. It would be fun to catch the tail end of the Wall Street demonstrations and strike an optimistic note.
You think this painting, retitled, is striking an optimistic note?
Of course I do.
Oh. I kind of liked it the way it was.
I'm of two minds.
Aren't we all.

Live-blogging the New Television Season, Volume 3

2011-09-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

Charlie's Angels.

I don't like surprises. So the good thing about Charlie's Angels is that it is exactly as stupid as you thought it would be. Unfortunately, that level of stupidity is extremely high, so they do get a bad grade.

D

2 Broke Girls

I've received some abuse from regular readers about the grade I gave 2 Broke Girls. Having now seen two episodes, I'm lowering it slightly.

A-

This is why I don't live in L.A.

2011-09-27T08:48:00.001-07:00

This is a picture of Vanessa Hudgens filling up her car.

Which isn't important on any level. But how 'bout those three guys taking her picture. Plus the guy who actually took it makes four. Minimum. I mean, she's filling up her car. She's not even dressed up.

The thing I like about living in Troy is that people never bug me for autographs or ask to take pictures while I'm eating. I say this with the assumption that I'm way more famous than this woman. Who is she, even?

I thought everybody in Hollywood drove electric cars.
Apparently not.

Live-blogging the New Television Season, Volume 2

2011-09-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

Pan Am A+

I'm giving you my grade ahead of time, plus the logo, just so you know where I stand. I enjoyed it a great deal--although I must admit that I:

a--was in a fragile emotional state post-Jets
b--didn't start watching it til perhaps half-past-midnight
c--because of this may have been delirious.

But enough with the disclaimers. Disclaimers are for sissies. I stand behind my grade.

There was a time in my life when I actually did something for a living. A subset of that time was spent flying Pan Am First-Class from New York to London. And back, obviously. I was doing this a decade or so after the period of time in which the show is set (for example, they'd renamed Idlewild as Kennedy Airport by then), but it was before flying had completely gone to shit. And let me tell you, Pan Am to Europe was perhaps the best flying experience the American airline industry had to offer. I probably flew that route a dozen times or so. Certainly enough to get the hang of it.

In the history of commercial aeronautics, you could argue that everything started to go to hell in a hand-basket--whatever that means--the day Delta bought Pan Am. Or at least they bought the planes and the routes and the crews. But the day they whited out Pan Am and wrote Delta on the tail of those planes was some version of the night they drove Ole Dixie down.

Brief personal aside: Am currently reading Killer Angels--the famous Gettysburg novel--so I've got Dixie on the mind.

I tried Delta once or twice after that, then said Screw This and started flying Continental out of Newark. Which was significantly more convenient and, while horrible compared to Pan Am, dramatically better than Delta.

I, by the way, have never forgiven Delta and I refuse to fly them to this day. Easy to say, since I never fly anywhere anymore, but still...

All of which inexorably leads us to Pan Am, the TV show. What's not to like? Everything is so clean and nice. Particularly the stewardesses. One of them, as near as I can tell, even has a side gig with the Central Intelligence Agency as a spy! And I've had a fond spot in my heart for Christina Ricci ever since Samuel L. Jackson chained her to the radiator in Black Snake Moan. And the whole thing is carried out with such frothy aplomb that it makes The Playboy Club (which desperately needs some frothy aplomb) suck even more in comparison.

Pan Am A+

Arch West, dead at 97

2011-09-26T08:07:00.000-07:00

It's a black enough day, what with the Jets and the Singapore Grand Prix. But now we hear of the passing of a guy named Arch West. He's widely credited with creating Doritos. Oy gevalt.

On a personal note, we all have little ways in which we practice self-destruction. The human experience is often not a happy one. Life at best, I was once told, is 80%. Which means the average must hover in the mid- to low-60s. No wonder we sometimes look for solace in a plastic bag.

You're not talking about drugs, are you?
No. I'm talking about Doritos.
Oh.

To paraphrase Paul Simon, "I do declare there were times when I was so [insert chip-appropriate word here] I took some comfort there." By there, at least speaking for myself, I'm referring to a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos and a thing of onion dip.

Not hookers?
No.
Because I think hookers was the original intent of Simon's lyrics.
I'm talking about chips, man.

And I could have used some during the 4th quarter of the Jets game.

But hey, it could be worse. I could live in Europe.

Live-blogging the New Television Season

2011-09-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you remember when Ziggy Stardust and his spiders arrived from Mars in the form of David Bowie, but I do. What made Bowie cool back then was his extraordinary otherness. A sort of detachment. As in: I'm gonna play this stuff and you can either like it or not--I don't give a shit. I'm not even from this planet.

Me? I liked it a lot.

Now fast forward to the recent past decade or so. If you have the misfortune of seeing David Bowie perform now, he's smiling at the audience and wrecking the whole thing. Who wants David Bowie smiling at you? I don't want a new drinking buddy; I want the Thin White Duke.

The whole thing reeks of desperation. Like Sally Field accepting her Oscar. It makes me want to puke.

And all of this, dear reader, brings us inexorably to The Playboy Club. Which also makes me want to puke.

You could argue that I've been waiting for this television show since I was fourteen. Smiley-face here. And what I got when it finally arrived is such an unmitigated piece of shit that I erased it after the third viewing. It, like the new Bowie, appears desperate to please. Desperate to hit all the right politically correct buttons. Bunnies are depicted as spiritually empowered women--role models for the future. They were, my guess is, really just cocktail waitresses in uncomfortably tight outfits. And since the 60s were a time of great change, the producers have devoted a portion of the show's storyline to emerging gay rights. Really? Gay rights? Lets not even start on the Chocolate-Bunny-as-a-symbol-of-the-Emancipated-Black-Woman business. The guess here is that some kind of pact was made with Playboy Enterprises (or whatever) to depict the whole enterprise as an engine for the social good. The whole thing stinks of desperation.

At least when Robert Johnson made his pact with the devil, the blues he started playing changed the world.

The thing about Mad Men (which is the reason shows like The Playboy Club and Pan Am even exist) is that it goes about the business of crafting immaculate television without caring whether you like it or not. And of course you do. The Playboy Club is so worried about being liked that it has the opposite effect. It makes you hate it.

Maybe "liked" is the wrong word. Maybe, conversely, it's the fear of being excoriated as manipulative sexist cheese-ball nonsense. Although when has that ever been a bad idea on television?

I have a passable ear for dialogue and I believe I could have written a better first draft of a pilot in less than a day.

F+

Your time would be better spent watching 2 Broke Girls.

A

It's Even Worse in Europe, Volume 2

2011-09-22T13:49:00.001-07:00

A couple of stops along the road...

Just to show you I'm doing something.

This is why Johnny Depp moved to France

2011-09-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

Vanessa Paradis (Mrs. Depp to you) casually tosses this on the table:

Quite a beautiful bit of film. And I love how she lies down at the end. But me? I can't stop watching this one:

If you're a diligent reader you already watched it from a couple of posts ago. To you, I would ask only that you watch the first fifteen or thirty seconds--the long camera push in while she's sitting on that platform.

This is the stillest I think I've ever seen anyone sit while singing. Her mouth is moving--because she's singing--and her right foot is twitching. And that's it. I find it strangely compelling. It's like the Sphinx singing Jumpin' Jack Flash. Kinda.

My favorite part of the Faithfull video is that at the time she was singing it, she had been dating Mick Jagger, of all people, for quite a while. As the video proceeds, there are just a few glimmers of a smile on her face. I like to think that's her thinking about what Mick was gonna say about her performance.

These, of course, are the Stones:

How many times can you hear As Tears Go By? I love Brian Jones playing that Dobro (if that's even what that is) with the feather.

A Moveable Feast

2011-09-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

Just put on some black and trapped a bug while doing so. Which only adds to the protein content of the work--so that surely must be all for the good. Moments earlier I finished The Sun Also Rises, which was good clean fun for sure, and immediately bought A Moveable Feast.

Which was a mistake (albeit a damned easy one to make--one click of a button on my Kindle and there it appears).

Not a mistake because A Moveable Feast is a lousy book, but because later, when I think back on the two, having read them back to back, I'll never be sure whether the thing I'm remembering comes from the first book or the second. I mean, I'll remember that the bull-fights were in one book and Gertrude Stein was in the other. But the small things... Those are the ones that are going to get confused.

The plus side of the coin? In my incipient dementia I can still paint. I mean, what's to forget? It's all just staring back at you.

It's Even Worse in Europe

2011-09-20T10:15:00.001-07:00

Cold rainy day. Priming a canvas and reading the last pages of "The Sun also Rises" and drinking tea. Which is not a bad way to spend a cold rainy day.

Brief personal aside: am trying to write an entire post without using a comma as a nod to Hemingway. Who hated them, as near as I can tell.

Had to buy 7 oz. cotton duck at the neighborhood art supply store and it's like painting on tissue. My hope is that several coats of primer will stiffen it up. It surely would me.

The objective is to paint a black and white titled "It's Even Worse in Europe" and sell it quickly. Not because of an acute need for money but because it would be nice to sell one quickly. Just to see what that feels like.

And I think it is worse in Europe.

And it wouldn't be TYOMP if I didn't touch on this...

2011-09-18T10:59:00.001-07:00

Basketball, as opposed to football, was always my game. Nonetheless, had I played football, I would have wanted this guy to be my coach:

His name is David Bennett and he's the coach of the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers.

And before you jump to conclusions, let it be said that this is a man widely admired by people who should know such things. The Times, in all its wisdom, wrote a virtual love-letter to the man. Read it here. Lovely.

It's guys like David Bennett, and Shelby Foote, and Irby Cauthen, and William Faulkner that make it sometimes okay to imagine living in the deep South.

Let all the children boogie...

2011-09-18T10:24:00.001-07:00

Lately I've stopped typing band names into the Pandora selection box and, instead, have been inserting song titles. To wit, I typed in "Sister Morphine". I was then offered the Stones option and the Marianne Faithfull option. I chose the Stones' version.

Wow, the stuff that came out. Everybody from Cobain to Robert Johnson. And some other stuff too. And eventually, out came "Wild is the Wind" by David Bowie. Which I then typed in the search box and wow, the stuff that came out. Not the least of which was the version of Starman he recorded for the BBC Live. Really, it was just lovely.

When you type in Robert Johnson, are you referring to the Johnson & Johnson guy?
No. That's Robert Wood Johnson.
Oh.
I'm referring the old blues guy who, reputedly, sold his soul to the devil.
And you don't think the Johnson & Johnson guys have done the same thing?

Anyway, somebody once wrote that Keith's guitar work on Sister Morphine was the finest musical embodiment of the heroin experience ever performed. Hard for me to tell, not having gone down that road, but I do like the song. I was watching an interview with Keith on that Charles Kuralt show a couple of weeks ago and the inquisitor asked something like: "You've given up a lot of vices. Which one do you miss the most?"

Keith stares into the distance for a minute and then says, "I really miss heroin." Then he laughs and adds, "But what junkie doesn't?"

Which, of course, brings us to this:

She looked less-good strung out.

To quote The Kinks, "I'm dying to get at her."
All I can think about is Mars Bars.
You are a very bad man.
She's not quite as vivid a performer as Mick, is she?
No. But what's that quote about Communism on a sunny day?
"Demure de merrier?"
No.
"To see her in sunlight was to see Marxism die." Perhaps that one?
You know it is.

No One Is Safe, plus a list of The Best Movies Ever

2011-09-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

Brief personal aside: I post this because when I was in New York I stopped by the Sunshine Theater (Houston between 1st and 2nd) and watched "Senna." More on this later.

No one is safe if the trend towards remaking "Rendezvous", Claude Lelouche's epic Ferrari-hurtling-through-early-morning-Paris documentary, continues. This one, apparently, features a Porsche blasting through a European city I don't recognize. My preference would be that the woman shut the hell up, but I, obviously, wasn't the sound guy.

All of which is fine, but if you only have time to watch one 9-minute madman-hurtling-through-the-gloam movie, watch this one instead. If for no other reason than the driver's complete disregard for red lights (@18 of them by my count), this wins hands down. It is simply unbelievable:

The miracle of this movie is, of course, the sound. The current thinking is that the camera itself was mounted on the bumper of a high-performance Mercedes sedan because the ride, and thus the image quality, would be smoother. Lelouche then created the soundtrack using a Ferrari 275. Because no matter how you slice it, Ferraris sound better than Mercedes.

And, as promised, here is a list of the best movies ever:

Documentary, under 10 minutes: "Rendezvous" (see above)
Documentary, under 20 minutes: "I'm Keith Hernandez" (insert this phrase in the TYOMP search box and you'll find it)
Documentary, 60 minutes or longer: "Senna" (in theaters now)
Documentary, 60 minutes or longer, not involving cars: "Confidence Game" (Directed by Nick Verbitsky and still in post-production. I just saw a rough-cut. Interviews with yours truly, plus my portrait of Jimmy Cayne featured heavily.)
Full length Fiction: I'm still going with "McCabe and Mrs. Miller." But I could be wrong on this one. All my taste is in my mouth.

I have some additional thoughts about both Senna and Rendezvous, but I'll wait on those for now.

U.S.Open update

2011-09-16T09:21:00.001-07:00

Back from several days in NYC and doing some housekeeping. Thus, a couple of items:

I was delighted to see that Serena Williams got her ass handed to her on a platter in the finals. She's one of my least favorite athletes. Conversely, I'm a big Venus fan, and am saddened by her recent illness. So don't be calling me a hater. That being one of the things Ms. Williams called the chair umpire during a tirade during the match she lost and is, to my mind, a suggestion that she believes she's discriminated against during tennis matches because she's a black woman.

To which I say, give me a break.

The only person I know who loathes her more than me is George Vecsey of The Times, although he's too nice a person to come right out and say it. His recent observations about the difference between her on-court belligerence and her cloyingly cutsey, little-girl persona during post-match interviews was satisfying reading. For us haters at least.

The whole piece can be read here, but the relevant snippet is this:

... This time the anger again tumbled out fast, a huge contrast to the girlish giggle that Williams affects in her mandatory interviews after matches. They are extreme opposites. In between there is no responsible adult, no attempt at reflection or remorse, even feigned.

Second, and more important, is a correction to the tennis post of a week or so ago. The Grandstand (which The Times refuses to capitalize, by the way) is not appended to Arthur Ashe stadium. It's stuck on the side of the Louis Armstrong stadium.

I apologize for the error because I know you people treat this stuff like it's gospel.

Sir, you'll have to get up or we're calling the police...

2011-09-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

Do you know that old thing about how infants go to sleep in response to sensory overload--like really loud music? Prior to this week, I always thought about it in the abstract, although its very disintuitiveness makes it almost certainly true. Kind of like Wall Street.

But all that is history now. Rewind to this past Tuesday, the sixth floor of the Museum of Modern Art, and me coming out of a perfectly pleasant nap with a prison guard ... no, make that a security guard ... nudging me with his night stick ... check that ... walkie talkie, and saying something along the lines of "Wake the fuck up, you miserable bum" ... no, check that too ... perhaps more like "Sir, you'll have to get up or we're calling the police."

So I struggle to my feet and ask what happened.

"I found you asleep in the final room of the de Kooning show," the guard explains, not without a bit of attitude.

And an old crone (cue central casting: Scene One/MacBeth) hissed "And you were sucking your thumb!"

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with your use of ellipses in the second paragraph.
Me neither. But dashes didn't seem to be doing the trick.
Hmmm. Certainly commas wouldn't have been enough.
They're like eunuchs.
Commas?
Yes.
Yes they are. Certainly in this day and age. Although a portion of the blame for that must surely be laid at your very feet.
Because you feel that I overuse them, is that it?
It most certainly is. An apt parallel would be super-bacteria, nosocomial infections and the societal overuse of antibiotics.
Wow. I might have gone with a comma after "infections."
That's because you like to tell people you studied at Oxford.
Perhaps I should stop doing that.
Perhaps you should.

All this by way of saying that the Willem de Kooning show at MoMA was literally more than I could stand. It's arranged chronologically, and by the time I hit the late 70s I was experiencing a profound melancholy. And by 1985, I was starting to gently weep. I couldn't help but lie down for a bit.

My boy Willem gets a lot of shit for his really late work; the rough argument being that you can't paint masterpieces if you are experiencing dementia.

Me? I don't accept that. For one thing, what's to forget if the whole thing is sitting on the canvas, staring back at you? It's not like writing a novel where you have to remember what happened in Chapter Two as you're writing Chapter Thirty. And although there was plenty of intellectualizing back in the day (the fusion of background and foreground to create a unified image in portraiture [see: Woman I by W. de Kooning; The Annotated Fed by G. Raymond] was certainly carefully calculated to rock everybody's world), I think my boy Willem was more of a doer than a thinker.

That is a crass simplification of the reality of de Kooning's process.
Yes it is. Can you just shut up and let me finish.
Please do.
Thank you.

I understand that this is a crass simplification of the reality of de Kooning's process, but that doesn't mean it's not without its own bit of truth. And if he became even more of a gesturalist in his leaner days, that doesn't mean he couldn't still bing out a good one every once in a while.

This one jumps to mind:

Me? I'm sharp as a tack and I'd have a hard time squeezing this out. Shows you that clarity of the mind is an over-rated quality. Anybody from the Peter McManus Cafe can attest to this.

Anyway, here's the kicker:

I googled "late de Kooning" then, once it came up, hit "images" to find the juicy example of a late de Kooning you see above. I found it on the second page. Google (if you don't know) is nice enough to tell you the source of the image when you click on it. The source of this one, I was delighted to find, was yearofmagicalpainting.blogspot.com.

Which really is kind of magical, if you think about it. The entire post, from about 2 years ago, reads like this:

_________________________________________

Live-Blogging the Mets, Volume 2

As if!

Actually, I watched the Mets/Yankees game last night virtually live. Started on time, but then paused and painted during the commercials. Eventually I got far enough ahead to control my own destiny.

Fun game. Less fun at the end. But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

I'm here to talk about Derek Jeter ... and the aging of same.

Me? I'm a huge Derek Jeter fan, so don't take what I'm about to say the wrong way. But watching him last night made me wonder if we weren't watching Father Time slide the rug out from under the guy. Sure it's just one game, but he looked like hell.

We'll get to this in a minute, but this is a de Kooning ribbon painting from the very end of his life.

I love that little hint of a breast in the white panel on the right side. Good to know the old bird was still thinking about women.

Back to Jeter. He's 36 years old, just for the record. Which is old for a shortstop, let me tell you. And watching the Mets' ground balls carom off the tip of his glove over and over again last night reminded me of watching Kareem Abdul Jabbar's final season. It was as if he was aging right in front of our eyes ... and it was a painful thing to see, dear reader.

There's a part of me that's thinking all this talk about a contract extension for the guy may be a bit premature.

Anyway, when de Kooning was dying of Alzheimer's Disease, there was a lot of talk about how his late work was somehow invalid (as in NOT valid). I always thought this was a bunch of guff.

Here's another late-stage work:

And here's one of the de Kooning Motherships (Woman V, it's called--the kind of stuff he was painting when he was dating the then-deceased Jackson Pollock's former girlfriend, Ruth Kligman) :

All of which brings me to the story about how I almost burned up my kitchen the other day, but I'm not really in the mood to talk about it right now, other than to say that the beauty of being a painter is that the whole thing is staring right at you. It's not like being, say, a novelist. Where you have to hold plot strands in your head and remember what you wrote in Chapter Four as you craft Chapter Eleven.

No, dear reader. It's all right in front of you.

Isn't it.

_____________________________________________

Which shows you, if nothing else, dear reader, that I have one or two original thoughts and just keep churning out slightly modified versions to feed your appetite for my stuff. I apologize.

I would have gone with a question mark at the end of that last sentence.
I would have too.

And furthermore...

2011-09-05T08:18:00.000-07:00

For the record, this is the Red Bull Formula One car.

Although it is hard to tell from the picture, it is almost certainly, as depicted here, kicking everybody's ass. Given that the unofficial sponsor of TYOMP is Ferrari, this troubles me beyond belief.

The simple fact is that the Red Bull cars, at least for the last two years, have been hurtling around the tracks behaving very much as if they are fueled by Red Bull energy drinks. The others, including the shiny red cars from Maranello? I'm thinking chamomile.

If I were a rich man

2011-09-05T07:43:00.001-07:00

I was sitting in a bar the other day with a bulldog named Cannonball Adderley, drinking the heart out of a beautiful day, reflecting on what I might do if I were a rich man. Not rich like your accountant calls you up and says your net worth just exceeded ten million for the first time kind of rich. I mean giga-rich. Buffet rich. And it hit me.

I'd do exactly what the Red Bull guy did. I mean, how much fun is this guy having? I was sitting in the bar, absentmindedly staring at the television, which had no sound on, and realized that I was watching one of those airplane races where they drive between pylons floating on huge rafts in the Hudson (This was, of course, pre-Irene. The pylons are gone by now, I'm sure). And one of the planes was festooned with the now (if you are a Formula 1 fan) familiar red, white and blue Red Bull colors.

I mean, how much fun is this guy having?

Prolly not so much. The problem with guys like the Red Bull guy--whose name I don't even know, but he's Austrian so it might be something like Gerhard Richter or something like that--is that if you are driven enough to become giga-rich, you're less inclined, from a personality profile kind of a way, to kick back and enjoy the peripheral stuff. Like going to every F1 race on the planet.

Were it me, I'd hire the best number two guy in the world (which is hopefully what Steve Jobs has done) and see if I could get a ride in one of those planes.

My friend Howie

2011-09-04T09:54:00.000-07:00

Another way you can tell you're getting older is when your friends start collapsing in the middle of the day. My friend Howie ...

... lies in Bellevue Hospital fighting for his life.

I painted him eight or nine years ago. Now I'm just thinking positive thoughts.

Growing Old

2011-09-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

My father used to say that getting old isn't for sissies.

That said, and before we get into the meat of the matter, let me just state for the record that I don't give a shit about tennis. Particularly men's tennis. Despite this, I attend the first Thursday of the U.S.Open every year. I'm not sure there's another sporting event in the world that gives you less return on your time invested than a five set men's tennis match. Sure there are exceptions, but you could watch two basketball games in the same amount of time it takes for two guys to essentially play women's tennis for five sets.

By that I'm suggesting that men's tennis used to be sharp and quick. Serve, volley, win the point. Keep moving. Now so much of it involves standing behind the baseline and just wailing away at each other. Sure there are exceptions, but I'm just saying that men now play what used to be more typical of the traditional women's game--and five hours of it is agony.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand:

Me? I don't think I'm old, as such, but I'm getting older. And the older I get, the weirder I feel when confronted with vertiginous situations. If that's even how you spell it--I get dizzy just typing the word.

Case in point, I found myself at the U.S.Open last Thursday, sitting in what's called the Grandstand--which is an architecturally ungainly appendage to Arthur Ashe Stadium. At some point, I wanted to refill my water bottle. So I walked into the shared corridor between the two stadiums and asked the guy in the yellow shirt where I could find a water fountain. He pointed up a flight of stairs, so up I went.

About five flights later, I arrived at the top level of the exterior of the Ashe stadium on a long open balcony that looked directly down at the Grandstand court and the women's match I'd just left. With women's tennis, I always just root for the most attractive player. Since neither player was that attractive, I don't remember who played or won. But that's not the point.

Brief personal aside: The last time I watched a match on this particular court was perhaps five years ago and Maria Sharapova was playing. And she, dear friend, is attractive. And this was before she bulked up--so you do the math. Transported (transfixed perhaps--words fail me), I found myself shouting out my home telephone number during the really quiet moments just before one of the players serves. Until a guy in a yellow shirt asked me to stop.

The point is that I was leaning against a railing, standing fifty feet above this tennis court, watching the balls whiz back and forth. When I get that high, I always have an irrational fear that my glasses are going to fall off (which they simply never do---that's why it's irrational), so I'm holding onto the side of my glasses with my right hand. I'm also concerned that my hat is going to fall off, so I'm holding that with my left hand. And I'm concerned that I'm going to fall over the edge (even though the railing is low-chest high) and I'm not sure whether I want to drop my hat and hold onto the rail.

And I have that feeling in the depths of my bowels, at a point equidistant from my navel and testicles, that I get when panic sets in.

You know this feeling. Flash back to the last time you were pulled over for a speeding ticket. You know that the worst thing that's gonna happen to you is that you get the ticket, you pay it, you deal with the points on your license, and that, more or less, is that. But still, sitting in the car watching the cop step out of his squad car through the rear view mirror, you can't help thinking that somehow you are going to end up in the general population at Rikers, and every Saturday night being gang raped while wearing one of those rubber Newt Gingrich Halloween masks.

The assumption here is that the Rikers' population skews Democratic?
That's what I'm thinking.
As big as Rikers is, they don't have a single Sarah Palin mask?
Believe me, I asked.
Wow.
You're telling me...

Anyway, that's the feeling I'm talking about, and I'm not sure I would have had the same feeling were I twenty-five.

I stayed for ten uncomfortable minutes (it was an interesting vantage point for the match itself) then went back down to my seat. Troubled by all of the above, I stopped, en route (or en croute. My French is terrible and I'm referring to whichever isn't the one when you're wrapped in dough and baked), and bought a blueberries and cream smoothy (7 bucks). That made me feel a little better.

Crack your cheeks, Irene

2011-08-29T08:08:00.001-07:00

The Hurricane was pretty interesting. I wasn't taking it seriously til building management put a note under my door telling me to set aside some emergency water and fill my tub so I can flush my toilet. So, feeling like an ass, I did both those things.

Then I looked around and wondered what would happen if the electricity went off. My response was to go to the freezer, pull out an entire pint of Battenkill Creameries local interpretation of Cookie-Dough Dynamo (which is some really good shit, as they used to say in the 60s), and eat it.

I still feel bloated.

The Hudson has jumped it's banks here in Troy, but it's not much of an issue from where I stand. I'm sure others have a different perspective.

Ahhh, sweet mystery of life... at last I've found you

2011-08-26T13:29:00.001-07:00

I remember singing like Madelyn Kahn when I finished this bad boy up.

The kinky part is the eyes, in my humble opinion.

I mean, really.

Otis "Required" Reading

2011-08-26T09:53:00.000-07:00

You know how athletes sometimes have engaging nicknames? LeBron "King" James, for example? Barry "The Last" Word? If I was Otis Reading, I would request that people call me Required.

How confusing would that be?

That said, I am here to tell you that it was Otis Reading that called Ahmet Ertegun "Omelet." Which makes me seethe with anger, but I'm a big enough man to cough my inadequacies up like hairballs.

Warren bails out BofA

2011-08-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Man, is Rick Perry gonna be pissed. Speaking of which--this from my iPhone:

As regards Bank of America--a parable:

A struggling painter is sitting at the bar of the Peter McManus Cafe several years ago, poor as a stick, trying to talk Howie out of a free Bud Light. He's finished the last of his peanut butter, eaten on a slab of bread that was both stale and dotted with those blue furry things, and feeling pretty down. His buddy Rich comes in, assesses the situation, and, being currently employed, says something like: "I'm feeling a bit flush right now, you want me to slip you a C-note?" To which the painter responds somewhere along the lines of: "I've had a shaky couple of weeks and I appreciate a friend giving me a vote of confidence. I don't need the money, but it never hurts to have more capital in a volatile time."

He then winks at Howie, who understands everything, puts a twenty on the bar and orders another Bud. And a shot.

I'm not sure that's a parable.
Maybe an anecdote?
Prolly.
Or a metaphor.
Maybe.
I know it's not a simile.
Grammar's hard.
Is it grammar or syntax?

Regardless, back to BofA.

Buffett throws Five Large at Bank of America (at what can only be described as usurious rates). The Head of BofA, a guy named Brian Moynihan (who I think used to coach basketball at St. John's. Who are they gonna hire next? Lenny Dykstra?) says: "In the shaky couple of weeks that we've gone through in the financial markets, it's a good time for this vote of confidence by a savvy investor. We didn't need the capital, but it doesn't hurt to have more in a volatile time."

He then puts a twenty on the bar and orders another Bud. And a shot.

The similarities are spooky, yes?

I don't think it was Moynihan who said that. I think it was Chuck Holliday, Jr.
Same thing.
Perhaps.
Spooky though, yes?
The similarities are staggering.

Once Rich Perry finds out about this, he's gonna looking to string Warren up too.

Spooky, yes?
Perry? Yes.

Otis Reading

2011-08-26T09:12:00.001-07:00

The Commentariat observes:

It was Otis Redding who called him Omelet. Mick Jagger's not that clever.

A) I'm not certain this is true and I'm too busy painting Rick Perry to check into it just now.
B) You don't have to be that clever to go from Ahmet to Omelet.

I'm sticking with Mick for now. But anybody who steps up and writes something on the annotated painting that is The Year of Magical Painting deserves his or her due. More on this later.

And of course, Jerry Leiber. May he rest in peace.

2011-08-24T11:48:00.001-07:00

Do you remember Ahmet Ertegun, head of Atlantic Records, who died five or six years ago? Mick Jagger used to call him Omelet. Which is either more or less funny if you consider that the guy died of complications from a back-stage fall at a Stones concert.

Some months prior to the accident, Jerry Leiber rerecorded, as a birthday gift to Ertegun, one of his hits with a new set of lyrics:

"It Had To Be Ahmet" by dbfly

Jerry Leiber, ladies and gentlemen.

And of course, Standard & Poors

2011-08-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

Emboldened by my success with Black and White Krugman--which every time I look at, I'm even more impressed with myself than I usually am--I'm also painting Deven Sharma (departing S&P head) in the same manner. I'm titling it "The Ghost of S&P." Maybe. What a run those dudes have been having. As I mentioned earlier today to the aforementioned Dealbreaker, S&P (and the rest of the rating agencies) never fully got its fair share of shit.

Me? I'm here to right the wrongs. Like some weird fusion of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Lone Ranger, but with less drugs. Like Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, but with more testosterone.

Do you ever see those commercials that begin by asking you if you don't feel as good as you used to? Then they suggest your testosterone might be too low.

Low-T?

They even have a cute gimmick of a name for it.

Low-T.

Fuck you. As if you even needed further proof, this clearly shows that when it comes to who's the Great Satan of American business, Big Pharma tops Wall Street by a clear margin.

Compared to what, I would ask in response. Compared to when I was 20 and dunking backwards with two hands (9.5 foot basket)? Of course I don't feel as good as I used to.

Does Bank of America need another bailout?

2011-08-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

Imagine the shitstorm in Congress if it did? I mean, the mind reels. Rick Perry would be hanging everybody for treason. You can read a bit about it on Dealbreaker (a regular supporter of my humble efforts and certainly a site you should be reading daily, dear friend).

Me? I only bring it up so I can drag my old painting of Ken Lewis out of the garage.

Pinteresque pause.

Actually no. It's such a disaster I think I'm gonna leave it in the garage. Some things, as they say, are best left unsaid.

Instead, how 'bout Cramer: Naked, Short...

If ever there was a time to be naked and short--or at least just short--BofA right now would be it.

Is there anything you'd like to add to that?
No.
Are you sure?
Well yes. I suppose I should say that I have no idea what I'm talking about and anybody who manages their portfolio based on anything said in this blog is a complete idiot and deserves what they get. No subsequent squealing allowed.
Nicely said. In this regard, your blog is much like Cramer's show.
Yes it is.

I also suppose this would be as good a time as any to announce that I'm painting Rick Perry upside-down as we speak. That is to say, I'm actually doing it. There is a canvas on my floor and there is paint on the canvas in the rough shape of Rick Perry. So I'm actually painting. As opposed to painting in my head. Where, it should be said, I'm quite prolific.

I believe my first annotation will read something like: "If we can execute people who are clearly mentally incompetent, what's the harm in stringing up Bernanke?"

Something like that.

Flo and Eddie

2011-08-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

If you turn on Pandora Radio, then click to your Byrds channel (I cant listen to Esperanza Spalding all day), and start painting, eventually you get to the Turtles singing It Ain't Me Babe. A choice which, I suppose, is at the essence of Pandora's music-genome search and selection function.

Me? I'm not much of a Turtles fan, and Flo and Eddie--a nomme d'something for the two leaders of the Turtles--once had a radio show in New York--WNEW, maybe (how the mighty had fallen by then)--and it was one of the most excruciating listening experiences you could imagine.

More excruciating than, say, scraping fingernails down a blackboard?
Vastly.
Wow.
I'm here to tell you.

All that aside, their Ain't Me Babe version was actually really rocking.

An a related note, it is worth considering that no sooner did I mention Esperanza Spalding (ten or twenty posts back) than she ends up on the cover of the Sunday Times' "T" Magazine. Which proves that I'm cooler than The Times (how hard is that?), and likely cooler than you, dear reader.

Although it isn't a contest.

Quick Moment of Live-Blogging (Really!): Oh Shit! Now it's playing Happy Together! The greatest Turtles hit ever, and a song that, truth be told, always makes me smile.

I may have to switch to my Buffalo Springfield channel. Two Turtles songs about maxes me out.

Quick Moment of Life-Blogging (Really!): Crisis averted. Now they're playing the Kinks. To wit:

'Cause he gets up in the morning,
And he goes to work at nine,
And he comes back home at five-thirty,
Gets the same train every time.
'Cause his world is built 'round punctuality,
It never fails.

And he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

And his mother goes to meetings,
While his father pulls the maid,
And she stirs the tea with councilors,
While discussing foreign trade,
And she passes looks, as well as bills
At every suave young man

'Cause he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

And he likes his own backyard,
And he likes his fags the best,
'Cause he's better than the rest,
And his own sweat smells the best,
And he hopes to grab his father's loot,
When Pater passes on.

'Cause he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

And he plays at stocks and shares,
And he goes to the Regatta,
And he adores the girl next door,
'Cause he's dying to get at her,
But his mother knows the best about
The matrimonial stakes.

'Cause he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

Is it "live-blogging" or "life-blogging"?
I don't know. There appears to be a fine line.
That Kinks song is good, though.
Isn't it? A classic--I love the line about the girl next door and how he's "dying to get at her."
We've all got girls like that.
Yes we do. My list currently includes Mila Kunis and the podium girl from the Tour de France who handed the daily stage winner his trophy.
The one on the right?
Exactly.
Dark hair; always wore a black dress and a yellow headband?
She haunts me.
That smile...
It haunts me. What's that line?
What line?
You know. The one about Communism on a pretty day?
"To see her in sunlight was to see Marxism die." That the one?
You know it is.
Hah. You've got a better chance with that Kunis girl.

American Investor II

2011-08-18T13:52:00.000-07:00

Hold in your mind, for a moment, the Subaru commercial where the guy with his smoking hot wife shows up at his college reunion and spies his first great love across the room. Cut to flash-back of them frolicking amidst fields and poppies and whatever; driving around in a beat up old Subaru. Cut to the married couple, arriving home from the event, pulling their shiny new Subaru into the driveway. He gets out of the car and looks across at the old Subaru, which he still has. The voice-over says something like, "You never forget your first love."

Clearly this marriage is already in trouble.
Clearly. Although she's really attractive.
I'm just saying.
I hear you. But it is worth noting that it's just a commercial and all the people in it are actors, chosen for the specific purpose of having you buy a Subaru. They're probably not even married in real life. In fact, it would be exceedingly odd if they were.
I'm just saying.

Fine. Now the questions: Do you have children? If yes, do you have more than one? If yes, then you will understand, to a degree, how I feel about this painting:

Because, no matter how hard I try, it isn't as good a painting as this one:

But dog--that's not how it works with your progeny. You accept them as they come, sprung from your loins like lightening from the head of Zeus. You love them without prejudice. You don't compare; you embrace. Blah, blah, blah.

Quick personal aside: Children are a colossal pain in the ass--there's no arguing that. And mine are no exception. But to have lived life without them seems unthinkable. So there's that too, I suppose.

Plus, somewhere in there is the moral from the Subaru commercial.

And all of that aside, the work we are calling, for ease of typing, AI2 is what it is. And I'm taking her to New York next week and we shall see what we shall see.

Now, on to Inverted Bernanke.

Whatta a golf match

2011-08-16T08:45:00.001-07:00

I was rooting for Jason Dufner despite the disconcerting waggle.

I'm not sure that was a waggle.
Really? What did you think it was?
Something a bit more deeply seeded. A psychological kink, perhaps?
Hmmm. It certainly was disconcerting.
Does the name Mackey Sasser mean anything to you?
Yes it does.
I rest my case.

Does the name Mackey Sasser mean anything to you, dear reader? He was a Mets catcher in the late 80s, maybe 90s, who's career was cut short by his inability to throw the baseball back to the pitcher after a pitch. He'd try to, then double-clutch, then try again, then double-clutch again. It could go on for several more repetitions before he finally released the ball. And then, once released, the ball sometimes reached the pitcher on the fly; other times it hit the dirt in front of the pitcher's mound. Frankly, it was agony to watch.

Major league pitching is as much about mindset as it is about technique. Imagine having to keep your head screwed on straight when you can't even get the ball back from the catcher in a predictable manner.

I could understand his waggle better if it was a predetermined thing. Like everybody else's.
You mean like a standardized set of physicial motions you go through to prepare your body to strike the ball?
Yeah. Like everybody else's waggle.
You, as I understand it, are suggesting something a bit more deeply seeded.
Of course I am. I just said it a minute ago.

I always shot foul shots the same way: I'd lightly toss the ball in the air and let it bounce once, during which time I'd arrange the legs of my basketball shorts so they weren't binding. That done, I'd catch the ball, crouch down and bounce it twice quickly, for timing. That done, I'd catch it the second time and rise out of my crouch while rotating the ball so that the seams were horizontal and the lettering (Spaulding, Wilson, etc.) was no longer visible to me. I'd splay my four fingers across the open expanse of leather, look up at the basket, align my elbow, and let fly. I call it the Modified Winter Method.

There was a bit more to it than that--mostly related to the Zen of the thing--but I always did it the same way. And that was one of the two things that bugged me about Dufner's waggle. Which is to say, he seemed to have no predetermined number of waggles before striking the ball. It varied as a function of club selection and mood, as near as I can tell.

And the second thing--and this is huge--is that one usually comes to a pause after the waggling is done. A moment to compose oneself before the deed itself must be done. With Dufner, the last waggle immediately preceded the shot. You could suggest that all the waggling was, in fact, an integral part of a vastly complicated (both physically and psychologically) swing motion.

Thank God Lucien Freud's grandfather wasn't around to see this.

Anyway, it bothered me a lot.

Upon reflection, I'm not so sure everybody else's waggle is as standardized as we seem to be suggesting.
Perhaps not. But I stand behind everything I just said, regardless.
And you, as I understand it, don't play golf.
No. I do not.

The perils of Troy

2011-08-13T11:52:00.000-07:00

This from the Boston Globe:

Actually, it's from Reuters. The Globe just printed it.

I know this because my friend [Redacted on the advice of my lawyer] from [ditto] sent this to me this morning. So, delighted, I wander down to the local newsstand and say something like, "Do you have a Boston Globe?" The guys says something back like "I used to carry it, but the distributor can't get the Globe to me til a day later. Who's gonna buy a day-old Boston Globe?"

Fair enough, albeit annoying.

I have this strong feeling that, if I lived in New York, I'd be able to find a same-day Globe.

Editorial Shout Out

2011-08-12T13:37:00.000-07:00

I'd like to give an editorial shout out to my friend [Redacted on the advice of my lawyer] from [ditto] for not only recommending the Crumley book to me in the first place, but for also coming up with the exact opening line when I reached out to him earlier this week.

Thanks [Redacted]!