No Regrets

Wednesday Rotogravure: Freud et Wagner à Paris

Sigmund has retreated to Paris to recover from a run of remarkably bad luck in les affaires de couer. He contemplates the City of Light from an atmospheric Parisian rooftop just made for solitary brooding.

Sigmund realizes, belatedly, that he's been looking for love in all the wrong places.

It's true that once or twice he thought he'd found that special friend...

...but he always sensed that his interest was never fully reciprocated.

His attempt at a classic ménage à trois was a bust: the ladies treated him like dirt. "What do women want, anyway?" Sigmund wondered.

One day, Sigmund encounters his old chum Richard Wagner near a prominent Paris landmark. The popular composer and noted Bill Murray look-alike greets him gladly!

They head to le Marais for some manly-style sightseeing, with perhaps a quick stop at Il Fait Beau.

Àpres pedicures and a seaweed wrap, they're ready to stroll the gardens at Notre Dame. What excellent posture they have! And so very well-groomed.

So much to do, so much to see à Paris!

After sundown, they head to Montmartre to sample the nightlife for which Paris is famous. Richard dances divinely: his knees can bend. Sigmund is, well, a little stiff, but he's got the cigar.

The music, the moonlight, the magic: Sigmund and Richard profess their deepening attraction...

...and seal it with a kiss. What rapture!

Their enchanted evening continues with a midnight visit to the Tour Eiffel. And so to bed, perchance to dream...

Next morning, the entire world seems fresh and new, bathed in golden light. Sigmund admires Richard's lovely yellow vest...

And Richard admires Sigmund's cigar. Ooh-la-la!

And on that happy note, we bid adieu to nos amis Sigmund Freud and Richard Wagner, leaving them in the warm embrace of the City of Love. Perhaps we will see them again, soon!

 

 

 

 

Wed. Rot.: Hand, Nose, View and Hurricane

In New York last week, for one of our periodic infusions of culture and vodka. The hurricane was a bonus. We toughed it out, just like the natives; here Answerjack pits a rapidly deconstructing umbrella against 50-mile-per-hour gusts howling along 58th Street, near Columbus Circle.

The wind won, all over the city. Early in the morning after the worst of the storm, street sweepers used shovels to clear up all the umbrella carcasses.

Waiting for The Nose to appear at the Met...go ahead and click on the link, it's fantastic! Answer is justifiably proud of his uncanny ability to score terrific seats at the last minute. It's a gift.

The seats were so good at The View From the Bridge that the big fight scene at the end nearly took place in our laps.

A Behanding in Spokane featured a large suitcase filled with severed human hands, which elicited a strong reaction from the audience when its contents spilled across the stage. At home, we have enough hands lying about to fill maybe a computer case, and none is human.

Happy Hour at the Russian Vodka Room. Answer looks awfully serious for a man who just downed a few 2-oz. shots. It's great not to have to drive.

Still serious, at the other Met...

The Freud Feature.

Deer of the Week, in the Sculpture Garden at MOMA...

Sheep O' The Week. O.K., perhaps it's a goat. Hotwire booked us into the Über-cool Hudson Hotel: twee wee rooms and devastatingly hip public spaces, just the spot for a bit of droll taxidermy.

The view outside, from in there.

Wednesday Rotogravure: Owls, and Another Arrow Through the Head

Pulling into the driveway of my sister's house in Jacksonville, I saw this fellow sitting on the fence and snapped him with my iPhone.

Back home in the Bay Area, I found an antique print of a group of owls and cut out the best of the bunch to be framed for her birthday. These guys didn't make the cut, but they're still pretty cute. Maybe next birthday.

Even serial killers need sleep. Here Murphy naps under the watchful beak of a new sofa pillow. When I emailed this picture to my sister, she responded with a link to this droll etching:

Which had just been posted on the one of my favorite blogs, the scan-mad BibliOdyssey. It's early 17th Century, from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It looked familiar, because...

I own a similar print, a hand-colored plate from a 19th-Century French book. I love the dead rats around their necks. (See Murphy, above). It's a small world, or, as my sister says, "DNA magic."

Not all DNA is magical, however. This is my maternal great-grandmother in 1918, looking very Bertolt Brecht-ish, with my incipient grandfather behind her skirts. I call this "genetic terrorism." Actually, forget Brecht—she looks more like Helen Thomas. Apologies to both ladies.

Boys definitely had more fun in those days. My father at about age 20, in 1946.

As near as I can tell, my father spent his youth roaming the streets of Chicago with his buddies, dressed to kill and smoking like chimneys until they were captured, domesticated, and made to engender offspring.

Fun with a baby head and some quail eggs.

Another dream-world Deer of the Week. In the real world, I am losing the battle, but have one metaphorical arrow left in my quiver: the pending arrival of a shipment of dried coyote pee. Take that, hoofed ungulates. More arrows through the head here.

Sheep o' The Week, with a wolf thrown in for good measure. From the collection.

Wed. Rot. on Thursday: Catch, and Eat

My father catches a ball in a vacant lot in Chicago by means of levitation.

Thirty-one years later, he staged this shot of his grandson trying to catch something in Dolores Park.

Farmer's market truck, Chicago 1944. That's my babcia hefting the cabbage.

Antique cabbage print from an Italian flea market.

My father rides a motorcycle in Texas, 1946.

Not as cool as this one, snapped last night in San Francisco.

Hanging fig, in our yard.


 
Hanging fig, from my archives.

Deer of The Week, part one: doe and fawn in our back yard in Marin County.

Deer of The Week, part 2: venison on our table in Memphis. No relation to the deer above; we got it at the local Whole Foods.

These desiccated critters were found in my mother's house and yard in Florida; my sister Chris sent them to me. She knows what I like.

She also sent the three little sheep, this week's featured ovines.

Tiny Becca and Johnny Stitches Set Off on a Big Adventure

Tiny Becca is an artist/curator/designer.  Johnny Stitches is a photographer/curator/skater and master of an extraordinary online domain. Together they're setting off on a couple of big adventures: they're getting married at the end of this summer, and they're launching an art gallery in San Francisco's Hayes Valley tonight.

Fecal Face Dot Gallery is the offspring of FecalFace.com, the amazingly content-rich, comprehensive, multidisciplinary art and culture website. It's been around since 2000—an eternity online—and  now greets between 11,000—15,000 visitors a day. FF occupies a unique niche online and in the "real world," chronicling and shaping the contemporary arts scene in the SF Bay Area and beyond. It's helped launch the careers of many a creative, catalyzed a community of artists working in various mediums around the planet, and provided thousands of people with the opportunity to see photos of my daughter peeing off the side of her and John's sailboat.

The brick-and-mortar branch of the FecalFace gives us all a chance to view in real time some of the art seen on the site. They'll have a new installation each month, with opportunities to meet the artists. If you make it to the opening, you'll see  Kill Pixie, Jay Howell, Kyle Ranson, Jeremy Fish, Kelsey Brookes, Andrew Schoultz, Hilary Pecis, Tara Foley, and Maya Hayuk as well as Tiny Becca and Johnny Stitches. Even if you can't make it, go to FecalFace.com. between 5 and 8 o'clock PST tonight. There's a good chance the opening will be streamed live. I hope so, because 150 miles and a monster Pacific storm stand between me and the start of their big adventure, and I'd so like to keep an eye on the proceedings.
Fecal Face Dot Galley, located @66 Gough near Market, opens tonight with the show Welcome Home from 5-8pm. An epic after-party is sure to ensue—details on the gallery site. Bon chance, Sweeties!

Here is a "before" picture. That's Tiny Becca behind the counter. Paint's kind of lurid, huh?

In progress.

 

Further along. That's Chatty Natty with her sister there.

Johnny Stitches has been practicing his party manners. Button up tonight! It's going to be a wet one!

<Gallery-in-progress pix pulled from fecalface.com>