Friday, 18 November 2016

FFFFFing TARANTINO on your doorknob

Pardon my futur antérieur...?

January 2016: Sioux Center, Iowa 
President elect Trump said :"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." 

Sat 12 Nov NY protest rally (that photo from March, 2016)
Trump Tower!     


anyone remember that 1974 movie The Towering Inferno- hey it's a Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden. Anyone remember that President Bush used tax-payers money paying Hollywood screenwriters et al good money to come up with possible post 9/11 attack scenarios! Who could make this shit up...?


What if people started shouting “shoot Trump” in the middle of 5th Avenue?. Is that …? legally he is not yet President. What if one lone person started shouting that? Could that not be argued to be satirical response? People in NY shout in the streets on per second basis. If such were ever singled out, that be be legally defined as harrassment and impingement if not blatant denial of the 1st Amendment. You will find out what the law is like once you are sworn into office Mr. Trump. And, perhaps, you will be amazed at its efficacy. The allegations of those women against him (that I hope for their sake are true…God will not help you if they aren’t) will definitely impeach him.

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Having said that, Kirby Dick came a ‘cropper’ last year with his doc The Hunting Ground about sexual abuse in colleges. The girls who started their campaign are unbelievably naively brave and tenacious to get their cause all the way to the White House in Washington. Unfortunately for respected director Kirby Dick, the trial of his ‘lead subjects’  had just got underway before the Sundance Fest 2015 premiere. And the director’s use of so-called facts was fairly embarrassing in an otherwise urgent and powerful doc. Therein lies the problem for colleges taking action that when a case goes to trial facts are necessary. And the galling problem for the campaign recognizing college rape is that the facts, if there, are quashed and massaged or dragooned into a grey realm. Harvard Law School quite justifiably issued a press release. The campaign for justice by Andrea Pino and Annie Clark…thankfully thunders on!
Not a world particularly I want to live in anymore….I’d rather drown with the mermaid (s) and die happy…

BTW- must be fun for the kids going to Radio City Music Hall being confronted by heavily armed police bearing machine guns. True! Not that I distrust the officers or their judgement with those weapons (at least in New York City). (I wish I could say the same for London). Examine the 'nitty gritty' facts and you'll understand why I again raise this issue.

What are the police outside Radio City Music Hall going to do, though, in the event... that? It is nigh impossible on the ground to get a clear-shot in those crowded streets. But 'Collatoral Damage' has always been one of America's biggest bad-boy movie stars.

And Lou Lumenick of the NY Post called for banning Gone with the Wind last year. Perhaps looking down upon your own doorstep this year, sir?

Ask Yourself Why?

Nocturnal Animals (I thought long and hard before placing this here. (Saw the movie Friday night in NYC). You are very brave Mr. Tom Ford. I did not enjoy sitting through your movie at all. Yet totally applaud you thrice for creating it. There is nothing surreal in that film. Tomorrow is another day...

Sunday, 13 November 2016

Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016)-Canadian


Ballad of the Absent Mare




Françoise Gilot: The Greek Horse (1969)-Lithograph
Reference: Stone Echoes catalogue raisonné (p. 63, plate 29)

Printed at Mourlot Graphics, Ltd., New York Edition: 100 (Also 2 Trial Proofs, 3 Printers proofs and 10 Artists proofs.)

Monday, 7 November 2016

Any dream will do.....!!!!!

Once Upon a Time..!!!

AGONY !!

I've been wanting to say how brave is/was actor/director/humanist Mark Rylance in criticising British arts companies be in theater, art, whatever for accepting BP sponsorship. Well there/here we go. 'Cause I am very too 'pissed off'. As well, if there some! I heard Rylance in an interviewing saying that British and American arts organisations were different. Well: in a way yes, but in a bigger way NO!

Deepwater Horizon was the worst-ever US oil spill in history. BP bears 67% of the blame; Swiss-based drilling rig owner Transocean Ltd takes 30%; and Houston-based cement contractor HalliburtonEnergy Service takes 3%.

In his 153-page ruling, Judge Barbier said BP made “profit-driven decisions” during the drilling of the well that led to the deadly blowout.

Peter Berg's film of the disaster (of the same name) is very brave- I imagine many people's lives are/were made that little/greatly more difficult nigh impossible if they didn't/don't 'toe the corporate line'. The film is also rather ummm factual without being creatively factual. I finally caught up with it. Ain't I just now a nightmare for PR's. We can't control him! (As if you ever did- and Brit PR' great and small were 95% on the whole very accommodating to freedom of speech. America: it's still terrified:((

A lecture in film theory: the viewer should utterly believe in the facts even if they ain't quite true. (YAWN- Picasso's lie about art making us realising a truth.) -Who could yawn at Picasso? !- No: I am not re-fashioning myself as the next Jerry Saltz- (well only maybe  to get a click from him;)
Factual accuracy is I always believe critical. Berg's film, I believe gave us that. But he didn't quite make us BELIEVE in the accuracy. Is that fair?

Americans want to know the truth but not quite really. If they knew that then America would not be the Great Great country it most clearly is.....(not sure how many Pinter dots""""""""")

When is the US election?? Any Brit know. They/we/you are still so so consumed with Brexit!

The 'aliens' LOVE the American election. It's like 'Trick n' Treat for 'them'. They are all doing 'Rocky Horror' Trump hair singa-longs far far away. (You don't know how Vidal Sassoon that is for them..!) Don't ever knock a good head. shot.

Planet Earth has became for them, like: well- I would like to say Twilight Zone (but in Peter Berg fairness..) more X-Files. Berg wins that one;) They don't care they know it will eventually get hit by an asteroid and then all their memorabilia will be Bonhams-esque sky high in 'air credits'. Not dis-similar to earthlings who befriend Elon Musk...;) There is no escape earthlings. You are doomed!!!!! Who said that! Little voice rises again. That Dalek is a real baberooty magnet (alien slang..)

BUY the LuvresLondon Alien Slang book. (The Latin-esque title so Bo-Ho-Slo Alien).
It's all in the mind so if you buy it you still can't read it here. Perfect intellectual tree/forest conundrum.

[I was going to add something about what is the difference between serial killers/otherwise and corporate killers. Isn't the pre-meditation the same? J
ust for different results. But that would ruin the sales of my alien slang book. See: creatures are not that much different anywhere since the Big Bang.

Anyways.... 




part of your world !!!!


anyone on earth remember that: ERIN BROKOVICH girl- the squid just couldn't take her anymore...! Know what I mean? (Film ref joke...:) ahh, come on it's easy as forgetting birthdays, guaranteed...
Guess: your prize: a week on an oil rig (sponsored by Musketeers Moleum. Elon Musk sued for title in 2075- (senile mffer but didn't win...ha ha :)

The prize guarantees to be as energy efficient and as environmentally sound as ummm SIGOURNEY OIL INC (she became like Jane Fonda -bless her- married an oil tycoon in 2025 as America umm, became challenging..)

As far as I know: hairstyles were still in!

Thereby hangs a tail....

BIG question of the night, is, having set all that up: don't we need a closing number? !

It's not sink or swim, and I could just as easily leave it in your mind. But then if I did that you would have nothing to fight against...

let me tink...

ahhh: I just had millions of alien 'feedfors': who thought that 'aliens; could be savoir faire nah savvy with the Broadway musical. Bowie (well he made it West End) like he would not have had sold out houses for Baal in the flesh...even way back when...was really up there) oops...divulging Price Water-Anderson-Alien House Coopers) here...no John Waters? (ahhh but you see ...ummm...that's complicated because 'they' have issues with that..) the aliens that is.

tink...(my est wine is running out) ..cloudy night they couldn't transcend...

it is maybe one of the bizarrely most successful musicals of all time. about a guy who had his life and career unjustly ruined who returns and: not seeks revenge but inevitably can't help. And a child: who believes. A child who may, beaten down, what terrors may come. No more wine: the more you know the less you know....


But he, with help, believes. 


....yeah but then there's the beans and the giant and the........................
 : SHUT UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!! who asked your opinion anyway. Screw democracy! ........!!!!   with all dewey respects Mr. Giant/ess....

..until..

[P.S. It gives me no pleasure in being right that Trump won the US election. But it it gives me great great pleasure that the liberal oligarchy were so wrong and obstinate! The so-called Liberals want 'Democracy'. But the democracy they want is only the sound of their own voice. I am not saying the sound of that voice isn't the one to be heard. But: if your voice can't be heard over the other in a democracy....then maybe you should try harder and another 'ism (btw- history is nit a kind friend iin that regard...needs I remind you).

I know how you feel. I've worked decades for almost nothing. With the most famous, brilliant, most talented people in the world. I come to America and 'they' do not care. If so, rather grudgingly! The only thing almost everyone wants is the/your money. And the more of it, and then they take a little if not all more from you. So be brave or: I am seriously thinking of the OR OR OR! As a final FU: the other 50% of America just didn't want to know/hear why the other 50% voted for Trump. In total fairness, I have to say: good for him. (It's kinda weird and drole that I wrote a drunken interesting post that I never published where I wrote that 'I should have been a contestant on his 'Apprentice' show and I might have learnt something. There was a LOT more in it than that....)

and I worry about Trump and the Muslims. And I beg you Donald Trump not to screw that up. America really isn't a comic book super hero. It ain't the wizened 'Wizard of Oz' most certainly.

Yet there is/will never be a quick fix solution to the Fundamentalist Islam problem. America should have thought about that long long ago before it funded the Taliban and thought it knew what it was doing over there but never ever really quite so. It's an argument the loser can't win. If you say that Trump's just a scapegoat/idiot: then what you are saying is that democracy is a total fool. And if you then journey down that road then woe betide you.. My only advice Mr President elect is 1. Give me a job:)! Because I will try to help you and be fair to those who hate you. 2. Don't ever destroy what Obama has achieved. Because THAT is history. It ain't Roosevelt. ...maybe it could have been more. It most certainly could have been a lot LOT less! [Forgive my whatever typo sins I never intended to write something over these day (and I fear my Samsung device is a Soviet spy:))) ...I am in an oilwell trying to woo the bitch of a mermaid from hell. Was it all worth it??!! I feel like Peter Stormare in a movie. Who Shot the Mermaid??? (btw-Peter doesn't do 'B' movies unless they are directed by ME!;) She deserved everything she got!!!! :)

The following is an 'in joke' for the Colbert Late Show grupees;) What if Sasha suddenly butts in to Malia's dinner questions and asks : HOW could it be that my Dad....





Inferno (1901 oil on canvas 100 x 70 cm)

one of the most extraordinary paintings I have ever seen. Painted by a playwright (famous depending on...) August Strindberg. He was never acknowledged for being a great painter, nor indeed, a great (dare one say) one of the greatest photographers. But he got his dream on stage (not wanted he ...but we all have ego...). It is part of the Safra bank's (interesting story...) collection being auctioned at Christie's NY. Would someone love enough to buy that for me. 

Us. ? 

It is Munch with all the terrible beauty but not angst! 

...until...

Thursday, 8 September 2016

the magic show...


yet another boring day, an excursion to a museum…;)

Two of Britain’s top museum directors resigned this week and today: the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate. In America the Great even Hannibal dances a Ländler when the Brits get a show in New York. Andrew knows very very little about the fall out of Brexit. What I did know was that an exit would be total chaos, resentment and anger at those who embraced a bigger world. Those who would be totally shunned and totally un-acknowledged for their tireless efforts at holictity. I know. I know. Gravy trains blah di blah di blah. But would the gravy breed any more protein in the long term without unification? Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised more than the moon upon German re-unification. He lied. He knew. He knew that an East German economy 25 years at least out of sync would be a problem. But nobody would have wanted to hear that? Nobody would drink to THAT. So he lied. Or rather, perhaps, he dreamed.

Most working men and woman don’t have the luxury of dreaming. Many of my dreams are nightmares. I don’t imagine many others share a difference. The trouble are and always will be with dreams is that those with a will to power and manipulation will usurp utilitarian dreams.

Museums are not filled with monsters nor monstrosities. That, maybe oftentimes, is the realm of a waxwork museum. Museums are filled with the everyday of our human life. Sometimes the everyday wondrous. Sometimes: the everyday magic.

Saturday, 30 July 2016

wouldn't you think my collections complete
....

Andrew listening to the 2016 Proms- a cold tent in ....???? (He's looking 'happy' - trust me!)

The BBC Proms were upon us. 1st Night: The BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo. Sol Gabetta played Elgar's Cello Concerto as if a Japanese garden! Exquisite lines. Sad dark shallow pools...

Listening to the Haitink Proms Mahler 3rd: Andrew's looking sad...ummmm....well...sad/happy the yin/yang dingiddy/dong ting....somewhere in the Catskills me thinks....

Roger Norrington's there somewhere: alive today thanks to an NYC doctor. So there's swings and roundabouts!



When yous figure it all out let me know!....GADZOOKS! It's a cat thing. Or maybe raccoon...there is something every night trying to steal my toes!  Listen up!  Not that I ever wish to promote misanthropic elf-induldulgent films about writers or, or , or indeed CATS! Who -the latter- have but no choice to love and sleep and love and eat and sleep and ...sleep and eat alone with their memories.......

Funny story about Betty Buckley and her Cats debut: she was struggling to find the CAT in her. And then she walked out into the streets of New York. A homeless woman. There was Grizabella; in all her gorgeous dignity. Sounds all like a cliche. As with every single cliche, though, there is the resilience of truth.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 

Maybe: they are finally singing to me...



Wednesday, 20 July 2016

Amy Winehouse

Is this a twee bit weirdly morbid posting a tribute/obit to Amy Winehouse 5 years on? Well what the heck. Ms Winehouse did something very silly ending in her death- probably totally unpremeditated (she was to be attending one of her best friends wedding the following day).

Always the support has been there for Amy when all around there seemed to be a sea of ridicule when she happened to ‘fell’. I’ve had some very interesting conversations in NY-totally happenstance- about the Oscar winning documentary. What I would agree upon is that it would have been so much greater if interviews were attainable with both police and paparazzi. As with life, there are many reprehensible individuals but there are also humans just doing their job (with a conscience), moreover a tiny few doing their job trying to change things with far more than just a conscience: people who cared about Amy as a human being.

I often wondered (and indeed Amy seemed healthier and somewhat happier in the United States) whether if she’d moved (or at least spent more of her life in America) whether she’d have lived longer. Lived happier. Even had a baby Winehouse;) ! Even another musical incarnation! America’s weird irony is that it can indeed be soul destroying; equally if not more so, be soul giving if you are that talented.

This song link may seem sentimental tosh to some (and is indeed often ‘trotted out’ by award show orchestras when they don’t know what else to play;). But it is a beautiful poignant song sung here by the great Tony Bennett-a wondrous gentleman talent- who loved Amy’s contribution to the world of music far beyond death.

………..

I could’ve bought a Steinway grand and a recording studio. Nothing wrong with that. Would that have made me any more creative? Not, I think. Riffing here: I totally admire Marvin Hamlisch but the guy who wrote Kiss Today Goodbye (A Chorus Line) in C major is the same guy who wrote The Way We Were in A major. A lot of great songs have been written in C major. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star You’d think C maj had run out of possibilities. Well, maybe. But put some great lyrics with that key and you’d never really know the difference. Funny story: Burt Bacharach had French composer Darius Milhaud as a teacher. Milhaud told him: Never be ashamed of something that's melodic, one could whistle. The great great Adagio of Mahler’s 9th Symphony is in D major. Of course he totally screws with the tonality but you can do so too in C major. Of course, Herr Mahler screwed with everything. That’s why we still adore him.

Weird shit: you start out by writing about Amy Winehouse and Tony Bennett and and and one one way ends up in interstellar Mahlerian travel! Holy sweet smellin’ mackerel!  Or is that/this just an ‘Andrew’ thing. I don’t flatter myself that much…

My out of tune Young Chang piano (totally my fault neglected it for 3 winters and summers- minus 10 degrees to 96 degrees)- just goes to show how resilient and good a piano it is;) !!

Abbado (Mahler)

Andrew......

no comparison Nintendoed....:

Friday, 15 July 2016

July 14 2016- Nice, France


Charles Aznavour chante What Makes a Man

Antidote for Night

There’s the moon, in the high window, her wall-eye
glancing off me, and a few bobbing stars,
every tawdry shining thing
I’ve identified Venus more times
than I can count as an agent for insomnia,
a broad sail that catches the wind and slides away.
Not even halfway through the hours,
his fitful sleep, wheeze of a saber saw,
waves receding on a rocky shore,
breath whip-snaking down a chute, until his body
forgets—how still, how close the kingdom,
one stalled-gulp away,
and I jostle his dying shoulder—he recoils, yes,
rebels, back now, mouth full of silver,
What? he moans to darkness, what?