Still Crazy

Ben l'Oncle Soul! 

One More Duchamp

The incredible Duchamp painting from 1912, The Bride, which became the core of the metaphysical machine of the piece in the last post, The Large Glass, or The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even.....He stopped painting with traditional techniques soon after.

Bon Anniversaire, Marcel!

Happy birthday to Marcel Duchamp! A pioneer of conceptual art and Dadaism, the artist famously said, “I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste."If you have been following this blog, you have probably noticed that Duchamp is one of my heroes. He profoundly changed the way we look at, respond to and think about art in the early 20th Century. Did you know the Philadelphia Museum of Art houses the largest collection of Duchamp’s works in the world?
Image 1: "Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 1),"1911, Marcel Duchamp
Image 2: "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)," 1915-23, Marcel Duchamp
Image 3: “Fountain," 1950 (replica of 1917 original), Marcel Duchamp
Image 4: "Étant donnés," 1946–66, by Marcel Duchamp
Image 5: "Chocolate Grinder (No. 1)," 1913,Marcel Duchamp
Image 6: "Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy?," 1921, Marcel Duchamp
Image 7: "Marcel Duchamp (Three-Quarter View)," 1933,Carl Van Vechten

Buh-Bye.....

The writing was already on the wall for the one time kings of hate radio Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
In a major shakeup for the radio industry, Cumulus Media, the second-biggest broadcaster in the country, is planning to drop both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity from its stations at the end of the year, an industry source told POLITICO on Sunday.
Cumulus has decided that it will not renew its contracts with either host, the source said, a move that would remove the two most highly-rated conservative talk personalities from more than 40 Cumulus channels in major markets.
The decision comes after negotiations between Cumulus and Premiere Networks, the division of Clear Channel that distributes Limbaugh and Hannity's shows, broke down due to disagreements over the cost of the distribution rights, the source said. Cumulus is known to drive a hard bargain on costs, and Clear Channel is known to seek top dollar for big names. Rush is already playing his blame game...it's all the fault of the over educated liberal women ad buyers who work for the network and hate men.
Perhaps seeing the real writing on the wall with the dozens of sponsors who have dropped their advertising, Limbaugh made a big show of saying that he was considering ending his affiliation with Cumulus last year. Here's the soundtrack to help you savor this moment!

Back To Detroit

Wayne Kramer, who grew up in Detroit at the same time I did published this prescient song on his 

1994 CD, Dangerous Madness. Any one who loves Detroit knows what this song is about and why we have to keep focused of what is happening there!

John Lennon gives us our guitar technique tip of the the day!
(by the way last night my blog counter hit 1,234,567! Congrats to who ever
it was who hit that big one!)

Catharsis

It's not that I have a philosophy. I don't think I am that deep of a dude to claim to have a particular philosophical view on reality. I have written many posts about my absolute atheism, but in reality, what is absolute atheism? I believe in luck. I believe that what many people consider luck has a lot to do with you, Mr. Lucky. The strength of your desire. The power of your your own ability to take chances. It's like a canoe trip on a rough river, something I love, I crave. The flow of the river is so powerful, but if you have the skills, you can see through the rocks, the white water, the rapids. You fix your desire on the other side and what ever happens, you can deal with it. I have always considered myself, Mr. Lucky, because I believe that if I want something, if I want to do something, I will always find a way to do it. I suppose my saving grace is to not want too much. You create your own luck.
Part of my take on luck is my naive belief that if I give, I will receive. I know I can make a difference, a tiny insignificant difference, albeit, but I belief every action is somehow rewarded. I won't waste too much more on this, my philosophical discourse, but I lived in New York City for almost 25 years on the same block in the East Village of Manhattan. In 2001, I had already physically moved to France, but I was still spending a lot of time in NYC. On September 11, I was an eye witness to the destruction of the World Trade Center. I lost friends over the next few years as a direct result of physical effects of the destruction of the Towers. I saw the second plane slam into the tower from few blocks away while on my bike in Lower Manhattan. I escaped the roaring dust cloud from the collapse of the first Tower riding as fast as I could the wrong way up Sixth Avenue through the massive traffic jam until I got to Central Park. I was trapped in Manhattan for a week waiting to have my plane back to France rescheduled. I still had an apartment on East 5th Street and Ave B, but the entire area below 14th Street was under Military control and I had to show ID to leave or enter the "zone". That was a life changing experience. Less than a year later, I was working with Moroccans and Algerians, most of who were ver friendly to me, but a few were openly hostile to me because I was the token American. I resolved to make them like me. I was relentless and it worked. I changed their outlook on the world and they changed mine. I resolved to make my experience an opportunity for me to open my mind to the experience of other cultures and ideologies.  I came out of a chaotic adolescence in the inner city of Detroit. Somehow I became a rock musician in Manhattan and a graphic artist working in a very specialized niche. How did I do that? I believed I could, I wanted it, I created my own luck. I became Mr. Lucky. I fell in love with a French citizen and believed I could be happy in France. It wasn't easy, but I did it. I'm a happily married man with no real income who owns a house and land and has managed to create a life that makes me feel very wealthy inspite of the fact that on paper, I am a pauper.
Again, this is all the result of my hard work, but with out believing in a dream and having the guts play the games, I would be a fat neurotic broken retired railroad dude in Ohio with a fat wife and kids who hated me. But I will never be like anybody else. This week, I got rid of a blog follower after reading a series of utterly inane racist posts on his blog. He began posting about the Trayvon Martin meme being used to discredit him to the effect that the Skittles and Arizona Watermelon drink he was carrying was really evidence that he was going to brew a narcotic elixir which he was addicted to. I thought the blogger was being totally sarcastic and exhibiting a sense of humor that I had never expected of him. Then after posting on his blog complementing him on his clever sarcasm,  I realized that no, he wasn't being sarcastic and he really believed this crap. Then he doubled down on his racist rants. His buddies had a cluster fuck circle jerk and started telling him that they had checked out this blog and it proved that I was not one of them and some how deranged. Well, I am very proud not to be one of them and these dudes are everything I never want to be as long as I live. Today, I asked him him to take my blog off of his blog roll and I got rid of his and now I feel cleansed. Like a dose of the best psychic laxative. I insulted him, his friends insulted me. It's over and history! I feel so much lighter. Now here are a few pictures of my sick and sordid lifestyle if any of these dudes are still lurking around here and want some more evidence:

here I am shovelin horse manure in late April after the ground got broken for my garden this year.

We couldn't get the garden cultivated until late May because of the rain....

Here is the garden today, full of potatoes, melons, beans, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, beets, carrots,
turnips, zuchinnis, pumpkins and spices...we already harvested about 20 kilos of raspberries and strawberries....
the tree on the left is a fig getting ready for a record year. And the guy in the back?
That's me, Microdot giving the racist jerks who are haunting my blog the finger.

Dick Tracy

More J J Cale from 1965!

J.J.

JJ Cale made classic American Music that bridged genres and influenced so many artists who were so much more commercially successful than he ever aspired to be. His first recording was in 1961 and he kept on doing it up to the end. He wrote "After Midnight" and "Cocaine". JJ Cale Has Passed Away.
JJ Cale passed away at 8:00 pm on Friday July 26 at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla, CA. The legendary singer / songwriter had suffered a heart attack.  http://www.jjcale.com/
Here's his first single release, Ain't That Lovi9n You Baby by Johnny Cale from 1961:

Wouldn't You Really Rather Have A Buick?

French Flag from The Revolution in 1792
Live Free Or Die!

The Next Battle of The UnCivil War

I am trying to stay focused on Detroit. What is happening there is going to set precedents that the conservative fascists want to use as a bludgeon to force America into a system that they can more easily control and pillage. Pensions, Unions, Environmental Laws are all the results of the historical struggle of People to obtain and preserve a level of quality n their lives and world. Fair play and your rights are seen as a threat to the unlimited power and the profits the very rich seem to think they are entitled to.
It's this basic, this is the next big battle in the ongoing UNCIVIL WAR! And you have to make the decision:
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

What part of this don't you understand? Read the following sentence: The federal government should bail out Detroit city worker's pensions so that retirees can be paid in full.
Some people will approve of the idea. But others will be shocked or angry. They'll conjure up images of prosperous retirees making a fortune at everyone else's expense. If you were one of them, you've been exposed to some infectious myths being spread in the media and by politicians.
Think again: Does $1,500 a month after hauling garbage cans your whole adult life really sound like a fortune?
Detroit's pension plans may not need a federal bailout. The city may have better options, especially if the politically motivated machinations of its unelected leaders can be set aside. But morally and practically, there's no reason why a rescue of this kind -- or a federal guarantee behind the city's pension plan -- shouldn't be on the table. Here's why.
"Detroit" isn't declaring bankruptcy.
"Detroit" isn't trying to file for bankruptcy (a process currently being challenged in court). An unelected official who was given the power to overrule Detroit's elected government through a right-wing state law is filing for bankruptcy. That's not a democratic process, and it doesn't represent the people of Detroit.
The law which ended Detroit's self-governance was promoted heavily by groups like ALEC and funders like the Koch Brothers. Its purpose is to reconfigure our democracy and our economy so that they serve the wealthy and powerful even more efficiently.
The city's corporate overseer is focusing undue attention on pensions for very political reasons. A nationwide agenda has targeted the retirement security of working Americans -- especially pensions, Social Security, and Medicare. The bankruptcy filing in Detroit, which targets that city's union pensions, is part of this broader agenda.
Pensions aren't the problem.
Unelected city overseer Kevyn Orr quickly zeroed in on pensions, which have also been the focus of much of the press coverage and political debate. But Orr's own numbers put the lie to the idea that pensions are a major problem.
Orr claims that Detroit's ultimate debt obligations will amount to between $18 and $22 billion. But his own fiscal report says right up front on page 3 that the total unfunded portion of Detroit's pension obligation comes to only $600 million. That's less than 3 percent of Orr's higher figure. Even the most aggressive recalculation can't turn it into a significant portion of Detroit's obligations.
Behind all the talk about unfunded obligations lies the real goal: They want to cut the funded obligations. But even that figure only comes to about one-sixth of Detroit's total obligations. So why all the focus on pensions?
They want to set a precedent.
Because Detroit's being used by the austerity economics crowd. We've already seen the needless public spectacle being enacted by Orr and his team as they publicly contemplate selling off the city's property, large and small. (See "The Looting of Detroit.")
Gutting the city's employee pension plan would be a similar kind of ritual sacrifice, designed to break the public's belief in the social contract -- and to set a national precedent. Detroit's unusually severe financial circumstances make that seem more necessary than it is.
Deep cuts to of Detroit's employee pensions, together with the public sale of its property and the privatization of its lucrative franchises, would serve an anti-government political agenda. Once we've this process has been imposed on the first major American city, the next one will be much easier.The 50th city to be gutted will be a cakewalk.
Banks, not city workers, have misbehaved.
This is the tactic in this next Battle of The Most Un Civil War! This is why the conservative media has trumped up the race card so blaringly loud as of late. Most of the civil servants and public employees of Detroit are African Americans...so they are easy targets and easy to smear by the conservative economic media in their attempt to ram this agenda of auterity down the throats of America...They are blacks, they are all welfare cadillac driving lazy baby making irresponsible leeches trying to get proud hard working whities paying so the can live on CPT...That's Colored People's Time.  Once they sell this idea and image, well it will be so much simpler to do the same thing to every one! Read more, after the break!

Iggy Pop, one of the most brilliantly feral artists you will ever encounter in 
your brief lifetime, tells it exactly the way I see it!
Fucking Detroit!

Patches

One of the most soul full moments from the 1994 project by Don Was, Rhythm, Country And Blues.

George Jones and BB King break everyones hearts with their incredible duet of Patches. Don's  over the top production helps a bit as well! I think you have to be from Detroit to understand just why this can be so good!

Sardine Tajine

I made dinner tonight and just followed the instructions in this video. It was great and the music was pretty good too. I love Algerian Rai. I did the second version with potatoes, but I did add a fresh courgette from my garden. I have a great old clay Algerian tagine with a tapered cover. I can get bags of cheap fresh frozen sardines from my local super market, but you could use tinned sardines as well.

The spices are sweet pepper...like paprika and cumin and crushed garlic. I put a few little very hot peppers in it as well! 

The Next Battle In The Civil War.....

This was the headline of the New York City Daily News on October 29, 1975. New york was teetering on the edge of the abyss of bankruptcy under Mayor Abe Beame.  It's become a distracting "talking point" used by conservatives to defend Ford, because he actually didn't tell New York to drop dead in his statement denying federal assistance, but hey, in the spirit of New York Journalism, that's what we do, sum up and reduce the gist of a message to a great headline!
New York didn't have to declare bankruptcy,  the last minute saving act was the cities teachers union lending the city 150 million dollars from it's pension fund to buy Municipal Assistance Corporation Bonds. The Teachers Union had resisted doing this up until the very last minute because they thought that this would be the beginning of the erosion of the hard fought gains that they had so recently won.
But it wasn't just the Teachers Union, it was all of the Municipal Union and Employees of New York City working together to save the city. The Governor, Hugh Carey fought for and supported the city as well. New York not only solved it's financial problems, it rebounded exuberantly. Ford lived to eat his words and the classic Drop Dead headline until his demise.
America couldn't afford financially or image wise the specter of a bankrupt New York, but there were those who were all too willing to let it happen, just as today, The City of Detroit is the focus of a concerted sort of collective Death Wish being prayed for by many of the same forces that wanted to let New York die.

I've heard many people voice the meme that  for much of the conservative small minded southern white population of the south, the civil war never ended. The Confederacy tried to destroy New York by burning it down during the Civil War. The participants who called themselves, The Confederate Army of Manhattan are still considered local heroes in much of the South. The most deadly race riots that ever took place in America were the racially inspired anti draft riots in New York City of July, 1863 during the Civil War. Lincoln had to divert Federal Troops from the war to quell the hysterical destruction and mass murders.
The State of Michigan is trying to force The City of Detroit into bankruptcy. There are legal battles being fought now deciding the legality of such a move. Where in 1975, the Governor of NY State, Hugh Carey actively fought for the city. The Republican ALEC operative Governor Rick Snyder, is actively trying to create a situation where this is the only option. Snyder has been the most active player in the concept of using emergency corporate managers to run cities and disenfranchise local municipal governments and voters. The emergency manager concept is being sold to Americans as the only option by think tanks run by ALEC and The Koch Brothers. In reality, it is disenfranchising millions of Americans and a prime strategy in their long term plan to seize ultimate power and deny us our political rights and voices. They in effect are trying to ram the destructive and disproven policies of Austerity Economics as the only solution down the throats of the poor. It gives them the power to negate environmental laws, loot pensions of municipal employees and in the case of Detroit, loot and destroy it's rich cultural heritage. There are obviously many who wish that Detroit will be the next Greece. Again, this is a false comparison. Detroit is one city in a big country. If it is allowed to fail, it will have a profound ripple effect on the rest of America,  just as Greece's failure was seen as a harbinger of doom by the economic pessimists who predicted the demise of the European Economic Union. This is wishful thinking, in reality, the entire economy of Greece is only 1 and 1/2 times as big as the present economy of Metropolitan Detroit!
But what happened in Greece? The IMF made some tragic mistakes, as they now admit and allowed the banks and the pension funds to eat the incomes of the Greek population. They never addressed the systemic corruption of the tax system which allowed the richest to pay no taxes what so ever. One of the biggest culprits in the Greek financial crisis is the Greek Orthodox Church which has substantial agricultural, real estate and industrial holdings which are totally tax exempt!
The brunt of the burden of Austerity is on the poor and the middle class who are seeing an oppressive tax burden and wages being reduced and frozen as the price of consumer goods are being vastly inflated.
You have to really ask yourself, what is the real basis of the destruction of Detroit? Detroit is perhaps the biggest cultural center of African American Culture in America. Black Music is one of the touchstones and icons of the city. Sure there was Motown, but the churches of Detroit were the proving ground for artists like Aretha Franklin. The fertile counter culture was the perfect medium for the development of George Clinton's visionary Funkadelic! Funkadelic was one part James Brown, one part Iggy Pop and the rest was pure original sci fi fantasy land funk! Because of the once powerful industrial base, it became the magnet that drew millions of black Americans with the dream of a better life. It was the cradle of American Black Muslim Movement. But even more powerfully evil to the minds of the new corporate robber barons of America is that Detroit was the birthplace of the American Labor Movement. I grew up in Detroit in the 50's and 60's. It was the most powerful centers for Labor, the dream of Democratic Socialism and political action in America. It became in the late 1960's the crucible of political thought and really powerful independent rock music Detroit Rock as the most radically powerful razor sharp edge which everything else had to stand up to or wither and die on the vine!   It was everything the Robber Baron Wannabee shark pack knows they have to destroy. One of the most powerful visual manifestations of this energy is in the now threatened Detroit Institute of Arts. At one time, the rich felt it was their duty to share and impart culture with those not as blessed as they were. The Detroit Institute of Arts is still one of the greatest diverse art museums in the world. One of the first things I heard when the imminent bankruptcy was being reported, was the fate of this collection. The sharks started to circle to take their prey. They smelled the blood in the water. They refused to make deals and they are demanding that the municipal employees of Detroit forfeit their pensions. The fantastic collections of the Detroit Historical Museum are already being looted. You can only imagine the lust these sharks are experiencing over the historical automotive collections, but now they want Detroits cultural heritage as well. The real threat an power of Detroit is graphically represented here in this, one of the worlds greatest classically executed fresco murals by Diego Rivera.
He painted this in the sculpture court of the Detroit Art Institute in 1933. In 1931, Rivera was commissioned to do murals in the brand new Rockefeller Center in New York City. Rivera created fresco technique murals that were the most powerful political art ever exhibited in America...it was too much for the Rockefellers...the murals were destroyed and painted over. Lost forever. Like destroying Picasso's Guernica because it was potentially disturbing to German investors. Here is a sample, the piece, Man At The Crossroads:

 One of Rivera's censored and lost murals from his Rockefeller Center frescos

Now, let's take a tour of the modern Sculpture atrium in the Detroit Institute of Arts, while we can. These images are if anything more powerful than the Rockefeller Center works and the video really doesn't do them justice as far as composition and scale. For those who want to turn back the clock, destroy the middle class, get rid of minimum wage, re institute racial segregation, keep America divided and stifle the political voice of Americans to consolidate their strangle hold on power and the wealth of America, this is deadly subversive art that has to be suppressed! 

I believe in Detroit. It is the place that shaped me and I know the spirit, and the inherent resilient strength of it. I know it's history all too well. It is my history!

and just who shall we be today?