Feu d'artifice

Here are some fireworks for you. The finale of of one of my very favorite films,

Les Vacances des Mr. Hulot

1953, Jacques Tati.

I am Francis Scott Key's great great grand what ever nephew and I approve of this message.

Soul Brothers

I don't know about you, but I think these guys are beginning to resemble each other, more and more....

You see, I have a theory, there's a condition, sort of like the Midas Touch in reverse. The victims of this condition are usually really smart guys  who try to manipulate everything and everyone around them...then the symptoms start... I call it:

Shit Finger...

Need i say more? Anything the victim touches or anyone who gets too close just turns to....

The Mounties Catch Herpes

This saying was on the wall in The Detroit Police Homocide Headquarters on Beaubien Street
in the Elmore Leonard Novel, Mr. Paradise, which I just finished.
It seemed apt.

Astronomy Domine

1967, live Italian television. Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett. Astronomy Domine.

Move To Amend

A new coalition called Move To Amend is working to abolish corporate personhood in the US; they're working at the local and state level to pass laws to undo the work of Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that equated money with speech.
" Boulder is not alone in this fight, nor is it the first community to consider such a resolution. In April, voters in Madison and Dane County, WI overwhelmingly approved measures calling for an end to corporate personhood and the legal status of money as speech by 84% and 78% respectively. Similar resolutions have been passed in nearly thirty other cities and counties. Resolutions have also been introduced in the state legislatures of both Vermont and Washington...

Move to Amend is gaining momentum rapidly in communities throughout the country precisely because the problems of corporate power are most evident locally. Developers seeking special favors pour money into elections. Big polluters avoid investigations and litigation by hiding behind their illegitimate "rights." Bad employers lie to the public about unfair labor practices with no legal consequences. People see it every day. They get it and they're ready to fight back. Move to Amend is here to help them do that with a strategy for long-term success."

Click on  this link to learn more about

The Movement To Abolish Corporate Personhood Gaining Traction.

Drum Roll Please....

Once a year, the swirling winds from the Kinna hurrah rip through the open fields, lifting farmers from their work and then depositing them hundreds of miles to the south, where they often resettle and open boutiques.

Before working for the Washburns, Tobias was a horse whisperer at a ranch in Texas, but she suffered a nervous breakdown when a horse whipered back. "What stunned me most," she recalls, "was that he knew my Social Security number."

Now her blood froze as she saw a large shadow loom ominously across the wall. Her heart pounded and she wanted to scream. Then she recognized the shadow as her own and , resolving to go on a diet, phoned the police.

The driver had a tattoo on his right forearm that read, "Peace, Love, Decency." When he rolled up his left sleeve another tattoo appeared: "Printing Error-Disregard My Right Forearm."

Stubbs knocked him unconscious and ran away with his wife but not before substituting a rubber blow up doll in her place. One evening, after three of the happiest years of Wilbur Nash's life, he became suspicious when he asked his wife for more chicken and she suddenly popped and flew around the room in ever-diminishing circles, coming to rest on the carpet.


Thank you very much for your applause. You've been a great audience...last call folks, drink up, the bar's closing! Good night , drive safely and may god bless....

Your Daily Duchamp

In 2009, this perfume bottle, from the personal collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge was auctioned for the amazing price of 7.9 Million Euros. It is the only surviving piece of an edition, which Marcel Duchamp created in 1921 as an "assisted ready made". In other words, it was a mass produced object, selected and modified by Duchamp as he tried to redefine the process and and concept of art and creativity. Art became conceptual and the object chose the artist.
He modified a mass produced object, a glass perfume bottle by the Parisian company, Rigaud.  He swapped the labels with his design featuring his conceptual female alter ego, which he used for much of his ready made work, Rrose Selavy. The portrait was taken of him in drag as Rrose by his friend, Man Ray.
Originally, the commercial perfume by Rigaud, was called "Un air embaume" (Fragrant Air). Duchamp makes it Belle Haileine (Beautiful Breath) and refers to title of the Offenbach opera,  Belle Helene, which was about Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, whose abduction by Paris sparks the Trojan War. This play on words, directs us back to the portrait of Rrose Selavey. The Double R spelling of Rrose is a pun....R Rose: Eros. The name phonetically in French sounds like the phrase, "Eros, c'est la vie".
The chain of associations becomes more involved with the words on the lable "Eau de Voilette" (veil of water) and the allusion to the real term, "eau de toilette".
The ready made objects by Duchamp and the interchanging of identities made a huge impact on the idea of what could be art in the 20th century. Both of the ideas that the erotic confusion of identities could be conceptually interesting as well as the idea of authorship were radical issues. By using Rrose Selavy as an alter ego to sign the works of art, Duchamp focuses on the issues of the non-material interests of art, conceptual design and the most important, the issue of perception by the viewer.
By the mid 20th Century, the bottles had disappeared and existed only in photographic collections. In the mid 1960's before his death, Duchamp authorized a limited edition of some of his conceptually ground braking readymade...the bicycle wheel, the snow shovel, the bottle drying rack, the blown glass globe full of Parisian Air and the Belle Haileine bottle. Some of these are in the collections of some museums. The original bicycle wheel and snowshovel though, are in the MOMA in New York.
The bottle auctioned by Pierre Berge though, was one of the originals, given away by Duchamp to his lover, Yvonne Crotti. 

Sublimely Blissful
I aced my integration exam....

Sorry, I was trying to write about Michelle Bachmann and this song kept running through my head.

World Music Day

Today is World Music Day. I try to celebrate music day every day, but here's a great quote by Freiderich Nietzsche,  the misunderstood and often misquoted philosopher who was also a composer influenced by Schopenhauer.

"With out music, life would be a mistake."

KEATON

“This famous stunt in the movie was actually built around what went wrong with the original stunt. Keaton intended to leap from a board projecting from one building onto the roof of another building, but he fell short, smashing into the brick wall and falling into a net off-screen. He was injured badly enough to be laid up for three days. But when he saw the film (his camera operators were instructed to always keep filming, no matter what happened), he not only kept the mishap, he built on it, adding the fall through three awnings, the loose downspout that propels him into the firehouse, and the slide down the fire pole.”  Buster Keaton in The Three Ages, 1923 

Ft Calhoun nuclear plant swamped as Flood berm collapses

See my post on June 23, Mumbley Peg.

my favorite planet

heatwave

An all time record breaking 105 degrees here in La Sechere. Incredible silence.

I will personally kick the fat and flabby ass of any global warming denier who dares to get in my face today.

Meanwhile, here is THE WHO on French television back in 1965.

Tonights Very Special Guest

Yma Sumac or Amy Camus? 

Either, or, in any case, Ernie Kovaks was a very strange fellow.

A Beacon For Social Justice

Why, o, why do basic human rights have to be legislated in America? Last night the New York State Legislature passed a landmark bill legalizing same sex marriage. Why is this important? Because the way our legal system works in America, a legal marriage is the key to insurance coverage, right on down the line to who gets visitation rights when a loved one is dying. Giving legal acknowledgement of a relationship seems to be such a basic concept, but the unconstitutional opposition based on kowtowing to the prejudices of religious groups has been a major social impediment. Here's some of  Governor Cuomo's remarks as he congratulated the Legislature for their brave action:

CUOMO: And what we accomplished with marriage equality, really in some ways brings it all home, because this state, when it is at its finest, is a beacon for social justice. The legacy of this state was that we were the progressive capitol of the nation. And when you look back at so many of the great progressive movements that were birthed here in New York, the women's rights movement was birthed here in New York. The environmental rights movement was birthed here in New York, Storm King on the Hudson.
The workers' rights movement was birthed here in New York after the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. All these great progressive movements, the gay rights movement was birthed at Stonewall. And what this state said today brings this discussion of marriage equality to a new plane. That's the power and the beauty of New York.
The other states look to New York for the progressive direction. And what we said today is you look to New York once again, because New York made a powerful statement, not just to the people of New York, but to people all across this nation.
We reached a new level of social justice this evening, marriage equality. I said to the legislators, you look at the first word, marriage, it's really about the second word, equality. It's really about New Yorkers, our brothers and sisters, looking at us and saying, we want equality. We want equality in society, equality in our relationships, equality in our love, equality in our families. We want full recognition, marriage equality, and we did it today.

FREUD

"Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive
 and will come forth later in uglier ways."
Sigmund Freud

Peter Falk

I had just watched the 1979 Peter Falk/Alan Arkin film, The In Laws.

Peter Falk was one of a kind. Colombo will live forever here in France.