Doge eat doge

I talked about this earlier, but I thought about it again the other day when I went to one of the people I follow on Twitter (Arielle Dror, who does a terrific job with National Women's Soccer League stats...) and this smirking idiot popped up:

Apparently the mutt has something to do with Elmo and his repping for one of those crypto scams ("Dogecoin") and for some bizarre reason the weirdo Afrikaaner has slapped it on his site, possibly to remind people that if you "invest" in cryptocurrency you're the word that fills in the blank in the phrase "A ______ and his money are soon parted."

It's irritating, because it's a reminder of this over-moneyed nitwit, and because I don't use the site for things like news, or to visit anyone other than pundits, sportswriters, and artists I enjoy I don't often have to be reminded of the sorts of scumbags that populate the Dark Intellectual Horsepaste Web or whatever they're calling the MAGAt/"alt-Right"/freikorps-o-sphere these days.

(And while I'm on the subject of "Twitter people I enjoy" I'd be totally remiss in not repping Ironlily for her adorable "Ordo Medaire" Twitter waifus...

Cute 14th Century warrior nuns? Sure! Bring it!

Plus one of her tweets made me find the "Combat of the Thirty", which has to be the fucking hands-down most utterly whack 14th Century chivalric thing EVAH. If you like them, too, stroll over to her Patreon and drop a buck in the collection box. I'm sure the sisters will send an Ave Maria your way.)

Anyway.

Point is...while I yield to no one in my contempt for Elmo and his wingnut horde, the sound and fury is still offstage for me. Don't see or hear it unless I run across someone else who has.

But that's kind of how it is living in a blue city in a blue part of the state while working inside a blue Internet. I don't go looking for these assholes, and I moderate stuff like replies to this blog, so I can hunt them down and kill them if they come looking for me.

I can't imagine what it must be like for people like me in places like Mississippi or Tennessee, though, and that's kind of the point. For them it's Elmo's doggie's ass in their faces 24/7. Everywhere. All the time.

Which is why I don't want anyone to have to live there, either.

But short of doing a Bill Sherman?

I can't do anything any more than I can whip Elmo's doge to kennel. The brach gets to sit by the fire and stink.

Holly Jolly

 So it is "that time of year", and - unchurched as I am - I can't dodge hard enough to avoid the reason for the season.

Presents!

In my younger days I labored like a galley slave over the worktable making hand-drawn Christmas cards even though I cared little enough for the day itself. 

Well...I'm like anyone else and like the pretty lights and music and the overall feeling of happy anticipation that surrounds the commercial Western Christmastime we've invented since breaking out of the old winter-solstice/dead-of-winter religious holiday binds.

But I'm barely tolerant of religion in general, and Christmas the holiday has become such a grotesque parody of the notions put forward in the Christian literature as to be almost hypocritical.

So I realized at some point that it was ridiculous to put that much work into something stanning a thing I barely cared about. So, I just stopped.

The one thing I kept on with was doing hand-drawn wrapping paper.

That was quick and fun, and was more entertaining than trying to come up with a single card idea. I could knock out a dozen of these little cartoons and they'd actually be of some use for the real reason for the season - loot!

Being retired has given me time to return to this old December tradition.

 Drachma the Cat always takes a licking on these. Well, all the pets do; they're cute and easy to work into a vaguely holiday-esque sort of image.

Here's the little fuzzy nutling again:

I'm a huge Gojira fanboi, so of course the Big Green had to make an appearance:

In case it's too small to read, the off-stage voice is saying: "You'll never fit down that (the chimney). You know that, right?" to which Gojira politely disagrees ("Shut the fuck up").

Of course My Bride has to make a cameo as Miss Debra The School Secretary:

She's also thinking about a trip to Scotland this coming summer, where she hopes to take a short course on dry-stone walling, so here she is meeting one of the locals:

Of course there are kiddos, so the Girl showed up having grown up quite a bit:

The Boy...mmmm, maybe not so much:

My Bride's comment was: "A bit too on-point, hmmm?"

Yeah. Well, he is what he is.

Well, that's the first hint of KrisKringlism for 2022. Tomorrow I am due back up in Goble to freeze my ass off testing fucking trench backfill. It'll be bloody awful fucking freezing, and I hope that'll be it for the year, but we'll see.

Hope you and yours are looking forward to a peaceful and happy Christmas season.

Whatever you may believe in.

These truths

I'll have a longer rumination on Happy Treason Day, but although I didn't really pay much attention to Benito's oration at Mt. Rushmore the other day, it sounds like it was a really juicy serving of red meat to the Base. "BLM is a commie conspiracy against Good White People (probably masterminded by antifa) and we're NEVER going to surrender on our love for Treason in Defense of Slavery!"

Kreegah, Tarzan. Fucking bundolo. It's a wonder that apes aren't the only ones who understand that shit. Yeah, well, racist goobers, so not a dime's worth of difference, but, still...

What makes this intriguing is that at my stage-struck daughter's request we streamed Hamilton last night (wonderfully luminous art, sketchy history...) and the contrast couldn't be sharper between the two visions of America.

Both include a huge helping of myth and fantasy.

But the one myth is hopeful, broad, innovative, expansive, inclusive...

and the other is narrow, angry, resentful, purblind, intolerant, and vicious.

We the People have a seismic-level event this November that will determine which of those myths we embrace.

I have NO confidence that We will chose the hopeful one.

And yet...the promise of this nation, the standard We set for ourselves, regardless of how often we failed to live up to it, is a truly aspirational one. If we were the nation we say we want to be, we would, indeed, be a shining city on a hill.

But more on this subject tomorrow. Until then, enjoy my favorite Hamilton guy, George the Third, tell us about his love and longing...

Pаспу́тица!

From the delightful artwork of "Waldemar-Kazak" at deviantart:

Hard to say what I love best about this? The Russian faces? Vatushka, the hard-core old Soviet mounted on the BMW-75 that his pop captured from the Fascist Beasts back in '44 and has been kept running with spit and bailing wire since then, going to town, goddamnit, bottomless quagmire or no? Mama clinging desperately to the produce with one hand and Papa's greatcoat with the other, knowing that the old bastard's always made it before but not real sure whether this time won't be the last? Or крошка, the cute little daughter all dolled up to meet her girlfriends (and maybe even a boy or two...), wondering why the sidecar seems so...sideways?

Anyway, I was just noodling around the 'net and found this and loved it. More good stuff at Comrade Waldemar's page; Chief sez check 'em out...

Henk Pander

A Facebook friend of mine recently ran up a sort of challenge where she assigned her commentors each a particular living artist to research. I got this guy; Henk Pander.

His stuff is a strange and arresting mashup of organic and mechanical imagery with an emphasis on wreckage. His human and demihuman figures seem to float - or struggle - through a landscape of broken machinery and shattered buildings.

What intrigues me, other than the purely visual enjoyment, is that Pander's bio puts him in Holland during WW2; he was between 7 and 8 when the German army was chased out of the Netherlands. Clearly some of his work is directly influenced by his childhood, but I wonder; how much of the rest, those visions of life amid the ruins, can also be traced back to his young life under Nazi occupation?

Pander is an Oregonian today, and I like to think that he was also influenced by one of our most delightful public memories: the exploding whale.

Boom, baby!

I Know What I Like

The exhibition itself sounds like a little bit...not little, really; a great big yawn:

"...most of the objects in this exhibition, which covers both iconophobia (hating images) and iconoclasm (doing something about hating images: namely, bashing them with something hard, corrosive, explosive or sharp). It is an engrossing lesson in the ways that the clash of ideologies can produce violence and concentrate it on a work of art, like the sun through a magnifying glass."

One of the objects on display, though, is anything but a yawn.

Ridiculous? Yes.

Uncomfortable, both as furniture and as the-woman-as-household-object?

Yes.

But not a yawn.

I'm afraid where much post-Impressionist art is concerned I'm more than a bit of a Philistine. I just Don't Get It. The Portland Art Museum presented an exhibition of the work of an artist that included four vacuum cleaners inside a plastic rectangle and a circular pile of bronze-colored sacks of something that was functionally indistinguishable from a sandbag mortar pit.

I laughed.

The point of the Tate Gallery's exhibition is that artwork like the contorted lady above was once considered anything but laughable - that it was and is at the heart of this clash of ideologies:

"...on 8 March 1986, International Women’s Day, two angry activists poured viscous paint stripper on the face and neck of the figure in Allen Jones’s Chair, a caricature-sexy female lying on her back and forming the base of the eponymous chair. The result looked distressingly like the effects of an acid attack on a real person; one thinks of the awful experience of two young British women in Zanzibar at the hands of Muslim extremists only this summer."

That's all very tidily awful but, sadly, I can't look at Plastic Clarisse, the Semi-Nude Chair, and have any other thought than "Gee, the spiky stripper boots sure look like an uncomfortable headrest to me."

I guess I just don't know about Art.

Camera Obscura

I will admit to being largely unfamiliar with the work of Andrei Tarkovsky.

I know he made the original Solaris, which I have seen bits and pieces of. It is one of those films I find lovely, and intriguing, and yet impenetrable; I have not been able to sit all the way through it simply because I can't keep my mind from wandering. But it is lovely and meditative, and I appreciate the director's eye for image.

Turns out that the guy was a pretty slick hand with still photos, too. Anyone who can produce arresting images out of a cheesy Polaroid camera? Hmmm.

I think I should go watch one of his flicks. There seems to be something there.

(h/t to the gang at Lawyers, Guns, and Money for the link)

Random Runnings

I have a friend whose son is some sort of nuclear-powered attack submarine of a child.

Seriously; this kid has an internal engine that just doesn't quit. His little family - it's just him and his mom and dad - came out to Portland to visit for an insanely brief time. Mom and Dad had concert tickets and flew in just for the show and then back home. We volunteered to sit for their son, let's call him Atomo the Atomic Boy, and quickly found out about the whole Atomo-incredible-drive-motor.

We went to a hockey game, played videogames, built LEGOS, told stories, played tag...and the little guy was still going. He was like an adorable tiny unstoppable force. Even in his sleep he was still going; he self-soothed, singing and rocking and thumping his arms.

I was amazed that the little family got any sleep at all.

Dunno why I wanted to tell you that; maybe just because it points up how individual people can be and the degree to which they are particular. You really have no idea until you slam headfirst into one of these outliers. And only then you know.

What it tells you? I have no idea.

But the point is that Atomo and his mom used to go out to their favorite natural places for walks. Which always seemed to evolve into Atomo racing away at top speed with mom in dogged pursuit. He wasn't trying to hide, or running away from his mom; he just had so much damn energy that he had to just run.

She called this "random runnings".

That's what I'm doing today.

I've just got the urge to babble, and nothing in particular to babble about, so my mind is randomly running about and I don't pretend to know where it's going to go.

But it starts with this couple.

First, I have to confess; I am a very boring "romantic". Or, ummm..."sexantic". Or whatever you call the part of your life that involves getting intimate with other people in a personal way. Loving them, or making love to them. Whatever, my personal history is deeply, intensely boring, whether you're measuring in an emotional or the physical scale, to any- and everyone outside me (and, I suppose, the other halves of the relationships).

I had the usual sorts of fumbling relationships in high school and college. Platonic, sorta-platonic, hoped-for-carnal, sexual-but-kinda-pathetic. I had several lovers/girlfriends during my time in the service. I got married nearly as soon as I got out and stayed married more than a decade. I got divorced, dated a bit, then found the woman I love, married her and we've been together a touch more than ten years now.

But I have to say; I was fairly stunned at the amount of drama in Laura and Sam's story. Breakups, makeups, cheating, makeups, accidents, incidents, lost parents, lost ears...

It's a hell of a tale and then they get married.

I'm a romantic and so I hope that they've got things figured out, I hope that they are terrific for each other and both grow frail together and compete to see who makes mournful jokes over the other's grave.

But...damn. Just reading about all that drama makes me tired.

Is it just that these two gals are really emo? Or am I just really plodding?

Either way; for all that it sounds like their joys were really joyous I'm sorta glad that I never had a lover put me (or I put a lover) through that.

Speaking of things about me, my employer's HR person sent around a questionairre for our in-house newsletter, and a couple of the questions seemed to provide a certain opportunity for my prose style. For example, here's the one about some particular thing or things that we'd done that we considered "surprising":

What is something you’ve done that would surprise others?

Dunno; (I replied) depends on how easily surprised they are.

I helped another 10,000 people or so “liberate” the Spice Island of Grenada in 1983. I met Sandy Duncan in person and almost asked her which one of her eyes is real. I am one of three people who are credited by the Oregon Birds Record Committee with the first recorded state sighting of a Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) in Oregon; the other two are my wife and my ex-wife.

And there was another about sense of humor: Do you remember what were you doing the last time you had a really good laugh?

Describing to my wife my daughter’s reaction to the moment that our housecat suddenly became incontinent all over the dining room table this past Saturday evening. We both lost all composure. Mind you, to say that I have a sideways sense of humor is not an exaggeration.

I should add that dinner was not on the table when this occurred, which is why the Little Cat is still with us. I feel wretched about her continuing mortal illness, but not wretched enough to be willing to continue to host a pet that cannot be counted on not to defecate on our food.

Here was a real stunner for anyone incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time: the woman who made her bones forcing her teachers and administrators to compete for their jobs and pay by teaching others to take tests turns out to have pretty much not bothered to check and see whether those employees were doing the sane thing and ensuring that the duds, gimps, and wheezers were getting pencil-whipped through the goddamn tests.

Gee. I'm shocked. Shocked.

I've said this before; if you test my teaching with nothing more than a test then I will teach to the test. AND I will do my best to ensure that my gomers (and I know I'll have some gomers who are thick as a brick; every class has them) are shoved out of the way or their scores improved if I can possibly manage it.

You can try and blame me for not making a stone into a flower. But don't expect me to buy your interpretation. The gomers' inability to learn has nothing to do with my ability to teach.

Oh. I've got another post up at Slide Rule Pass that talks about one of my recent diversions; the off-season moves by the front office of my Portland Timbers.

I laid my thoughts out thoroughly over there so I won't rehash them here. But the short version is that after two years of treating team-building like a greedy toddler my club seems to have actually developed some discernment.

This would be a good thing, and I'm hopeful for better things in the coming season. Onward, Rose City!

Speaking of Rose City soccer; only a few months separate us from the debut of our newest PTFC; the Portland Thorns of women's pro soccer!

I'm already fired up, looking forward to sharing my passion - soccer - with my passion - Mojolicious - at the friendly confines of Jeld-Wen Field this spring. We'll be comin' down the road!

Mind you, there are those of us already pretty far DOWN the road, and here was one of them, one of our North Portland maniacs who...

Wait, I have to tell the story as it happened.

So a bit more than a week before this past Christmas our Portland firefighters show up at a house on North Hodge Avenue. Said house is on fire; the smoke-eaters are there to put the fire out.

Problem; resident loony grampa is on the front porch doing his Braveheart thing swinging a sword at the fire crew.

Firefighters say; grandpa, your fucking house is on fire. Your starting to smoulder, dummy. Put the damn sword down.

Grandpa says: Freedom! You want it? Come and have a go if you're hard enough, then!

Firefighters say eff that, back off, and wait for Portland PD.

Portland PD arrives. Tasers loony grandpa off porch. Firefighters put out fire. Loony grandpa goes to loony room at hospital to be cooled down. House is a wreck. Firefighters and cops have another great loony story to tell.

North Portland; even our loonies are a trifle naff.

Speaking of loonies.

I want a trillion dollar platinum coin.

But, more than this; I want the fucking government to quit fucking around with the goddamn debt limit. It's idiotic, and it makes us look less competent than goddamn Kazakstan, where at least the critters can do graft and corruption efficiently.

I expect the GOoPers to try and use the damn thing to arm-wrestle my country into whatever Gilded Age plutocracy they're erect about this week. That's what they do; it'd be like complaining about a park flasher showing his dingus.

But the damn Democrats need to get a pair. It's time they accepted that they can't reason with these loonies and start just hoofing them one and moving on. This crap is just getting old.

Not that I think for a moment they'll do it, mind you. Just a thought.

And one last thought, one that occurred to me as the kiddos watched the movie Tangled for the second (well, the third for Missy, but she says she doesn't remember when we went to see it in the theater) time this past Sunday; one of the fun things about any good piece of work is that it stands up well over time and provides a fertile soil for the inspirations of others.

So whether you're working from Bocaccio or the Bible, Les Miserables or the fairy tale of Rapunzel tarted up for modern times it can be tremendously intriguing to see the latest version of, or someone else's riff on, the original.

Like the little cartoon above, from "Katikut" growing out of the remarkably fertile soil of deviantart

What does an artistic princess do when she fulfills her dream of adventure and romance? Shimmies into a pair of skinny jeans and its off with flip-flops, art supplies, and loyal boyfriend to "art school" to put all those years of painting the walls to some use? Why NOT?

What kind of new dream is it if it doesn't include the help of your inamorata to carry your hair around, anyway?

Cute.

Hope you're getting that sort of love and support these days.

As for me...I think my motor's finally run down. Let me know if I've left anywhere unscrambled, okay?

Back soon.

Her arms long and small

I made Mojo this little valentine and liked the result so much I wanted to post it.The inspiration for the graphic were these lines from William Wyatt's "They Flee From Me":
"...but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, "dear heart, how like you this?"

My love seemed to like it almost as well as the gift card from Sock Dreams. I like that, too.

The Universe, Abridged

I agree with Jason; this is fascinating.
The last 15 billion years as expressed in a 10 minute video filmed entirely of found objects and graffitti-style art. From Big Bang to big bang in 9:55. Props to "BLU".

Love for Three Oranges

I have her blog bookmarked over on the sidebar because her combination of the art of living and the science of adorable daughters is so delightful, but every so often Maia over at Une Envie de Sel really brings the heat. And today she's smoking:

I had to steal this little drawing to show you. Hard to breakdown all the things that make it so terrific. The artistry, of course, the combination of dark and light, straight line and curve, colors and shapes and the arrangement of them all that turns a blank page into a little Faberge' gem that holds a moment within it.

But it's the subject of the drawing that so tickles my fancy. The hopeful daughter pleading from behind her treasured box of prepackaged, preservative- and artifical color-added, Stearman-biplane-orange, absolutely-no-ingredients-found-in-nature "Mac and Cheese"; the horrified veggie-Mom, her finger already raised in dire warning as the fruits of her local-produce-shopping lie packed wholesomely in the cloth bag at her feet...it's every parent's dream, nightmare and reality all lovingly presented in a simple illustration.

I've sent you over there before. But today is just a reminder that you pass her by at your own risk; there's always something piquant next to the saltcellar.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Toddler

"Bee" by Maxine Shaomei Gellar, 2008

I can totally see the bee; can you?

Take Off With Us

Bear with me. I've been thinking about art, creators and creativity.

Somewhile back I posted a classic Warner's cartoon by director Chuck Jones. And talked a little about Jones, and his great forerunner Tex Avery, the real creator of the modern screwball cartoon for grownups. (I really want to talk more about these guys and their influence in a later post. Outside of Japanese anime, where you see a cartoon character in pop culture today, you're seeing Tex Avery.)

Anyway, then another adoptive mom - I'm not going to link to her because she enjoys her private little niche of the 'net - posted a picture her little girl drew on the Etch-a-Sketch and compared it to the work of Joan Miro.

And that got me thinking: why is it that most Americans can identify the work of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones and not Joan Miro and John Cage?Should I think that this is a Bad Thing? A Good Thing? Or just what it is, a change in the seasons of public taste and popular culture?

And that, in turn, got me thinking about why we think of some things as "art" and others as merely "pop culture", and the connection between the two.

I've always had a great affection for the pictures and sounds we gorge on in the modern world. To an extent undreamed of before the electronic age we are surrounded by and move through and in a world of images. Our lives have a soundtrack, if we wish it, often composed and played by others. Never in human history have pictures and music been so inescapable.

Yet, in an odd fashion, we are utterly disconnected from art and music, especially what we think of as the "High Arts", in a way that a moviegoer of Avery's and Jones' would, I suspect, have found shocking. Most of us know nothing of contemporary art, music, and literature. Many of us are also unfamiliar, or worse, contemptuous, of the "classic" great works that helped create the very Western culture we swim in like fish.

I suspect part of this is the very nature of our electronic society. Faster and more ephemeral than ever, we have little time or patience for the older forms. And the immediacy of the electronic arts leaves less for the traditional arts to say. Here's a good example: in 1808 when Goya created his series of sketches and paintings centered on the horrors of the Dos de Mayo his vision was the only way people outside Spain had to imagine the frightful events and picture the lives and deaths of the Madrilenos.But today we would see the images on CNN or Channel 2 news and have been glutted with the frightfulness long before Goya had a chance to touch us.

Still...that doesn't explain the widespread loss of affection for and interest in the High Arts. People sitting in a dark moviehouse in 1950 had newsreels and radio and TV...but think of the kind of knowledge that they needed to really get a laugh out of "What's Opera, Doc?"It's more than just the fat white horse and Bugs in Valkyrie drag; part of the funny is knowing that in the Wagner original Siegfied DOES have a "speaw and magic hewmet", and the conventions of Wagnerian opera. Few of Jones' viewers were hard-core opera fans. But they needed SOME degree of understanding of, and affection, or at least respect for, classical opera, to really "get" the gag. Jones had to know that, too, to have made making his art worthwhile.

But, if you dare, look at the latter-day descendants of Bugs and Elmer in the only profitable Warner's cartoon since 1959, 1996's"Space Jam". The only references in this...unfortunate...thing are to OTHER pop culture icons: Nike, "Pulp Fiction", Disney. It's culturally "dead", self-referential, capable of being fully understood by a kid who has read nothing but cereal boxes and watched nothing but ads and basketball.

Then think back to the John Cage piece I embedded above. Does "4'33"" touch you emotionally? Does it reach you on a really visceral level? Or do you sit there thinking to yourself, consciously working to find meaning in it? Or, worse, are just amused or contemptuous of it as a bit of nonsense? It's art, or a sort, but an art so rarefied and disconnected and self-absorbed as to have lost its ability to reach all but the smallest of self-selected audiences. Try and imagine a Bugs Bunny cartoon that uses 4'33" as a reference point. Hard, isn't it? The thing is so difficult to encompass, and yet so insubstantial, that it almost parodies itself. It, too, is "dead" in a way.

(I have to stop here and tell you a story about this piece. Someone named Batt, best known a "Womble" in Britain, apparently wrote a silent piece that ended up in court as plagarized from 4'33". Mr. Batt had two great quotes about this: first that his was "...a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds." The former-Womble also claimed that "My silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence." Hesettled out of court. Heh.)

So let's agree that "Space Jam" is trash: fun but disposable, commercial crap. But I'm going to suggest to you that 4'33" is trash, too: twee, affected and oblique, you sit in front of it, cough, scratch your ass and walk away, untouched. Much of modern art, particularly painting and sculpture, and huge job lots of modern classical music seem to have this same problem. They are just lost, jealously treasured by a small coterie, disconnected from and disregarded by the rest.

So where does this leave the art and music we hear and see all around us?

This may seem insane, but I'm suggesting that Chuck Jones might be our Goya, the Coen Brothers our Miro.

I'm honestly suggesting that some of what is our "pop culture" IS going to turn out to be our Art. That, much as Mozart was the highest expression of the folk music and popular drama of the 18th Century, Bob Fosse may turn out to be the Mozart, Goya and Nijinsky of our day.

So what do you think?

And with that, let me feast you on one of Fosse's greatest: the "Come Fly With Us" scene from All That Jazz. I wouldn't be my Big Gay Son's Big Gay Dad if I didn't tell you that this is one of my favorite scenes from one of my all-time favorite movies. Pure. Fucking. Broadway. Dance. Genius.
"Now Sinatra will never record it..."

Heh. Priceless.