Category Archives: Art

The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel?

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Those are the words Samuel Johnson uttered on April 7, 1775, according to James Boswell:

Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apothegm, at which many will start: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. 

But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest. 

On the National Mall tonight, thousands of flags represent those of us who won’t be able to attend the new president’s inauguration because of the pandemic. Fifty-six pillars of light represent the fifty states and six territories.

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Beauty From Above

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Two British brothers make and sell their photographs at Abstract Aerial Art. 

(If you get these posts via email, you might [need] to visit the site — or better, their site — for a good look.)

They explain:

We are two brothers and best mates from the UK, JP and Mike Andrews . . . we specialise in photographing bizarre, aerial images of planet Earth. Captured using our unique style of drone photography, we aim to show you the world from a perspective not many have the opportunity to witness.

. . . every aerial photograph we take is of a real place on our planet. We like to compose our images as artworks rather than traditional photographs. Other than slight colour and contrast enhancements none of our images are manipulated in any way. 

Posters start at £35 ($48). Full-scale prints go for £225 ($305). I’m tempted to buy a poster or two — or maybe a print when my ship comes in.

Good Riddance

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Snippets from our last day of 2020 (I dare you):

As the U.S. confronted a new wave of infection and death through the summer and fall, the president’s approach to the pandemic came down to a single question: What would it mean for him? (NY Times)

We came all this way to let vaccines go bad in the freezer? America did not plan how to get millions of people vaccinated. (NY Times)

For months, Americans who despaired about the country’s coronavirus-suppression efforts looked desperately to the arrival of a vaccine for a kind of pandemic deliverance. Now that it has arrived, miraculously fast, we are failing utterly to administer it with anything like the urgency the pace of dying requires — and, perhaps most maddeningly, failing in precisely the same way as we did earlier in the year. America’s vaccine rollout is already a disaster. (NY Magazine)

Txxxx returns to Washington early as allies plot challenge to Biden victory. (The Guardian)

Whenever the MAGA set whines over someone calling for the Republican Party’s demise, one need only point to the fleet of prominent Republicans who have demonstrated their contempt for democracy. [Senator] Josh Hawley reminds us that the GOP is the sedition party. (Washington Post)

The stock market is ending 2020 in record territory, even as the virus surges and millions go hungry. (Washington Post)

Year ends on low note as 787,000 more Americans file for unemployment (The Guardian)

[Senator] McConnell refuses to budge on $2,000 stimulus checks. “Just give us a vote on the House-passed bill, and we can vote on whatever right-wing conspiracy theory you like,” [Senator Schumer] said on the Senate floor. (CNBC)

What did the Democrats win? The minority repeatedly thwarting the will of the majority is intolerable and untenable. (NY Review of Books)

Bomb cyclone in northern Pacific Ocean breaks all-time records. (Washington Post)

Knausgaard returns, with a collection of earnest, tedious, minor essays. Is excessive literary production a social offense? (NY Times)

For psychics, a year like no other: “Everybody wants to know what’s coming”. (Washington Post)

2021 is going to be like the math professor who took over for Ted Kaczynski. (Conan O’Brien)

Happy New Year!

Beyond Bizarre

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In 1960, after we’d already been introduced to The Twilight Zone, DC Comics gave us Bizarro World. Wikipedia explains:

In the Bizarro world of “Htrae” [“Earth” spelled backward], society is ruled by the Bizarro Code, which states “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!” In one episode, for example, a salesman is doing a brisk trade selling Bizarro bonds: “Guaranteed to lose money for you”. Later, the mayor appoints Bizarro No. 1 to investigate a crime, “Because you are stupider than the entire Bizarro police force put together”. This is intended and taken as a great compliment.

Millions of Americans are  now living in Bizarro World, where up is down, left is right. From Oliver Darcy of CNN:

Here’s a transcript of a conversation [radio agitator] Rush Limbaugh had with a caller [on Tuesday]. It’s important to keep in mind that right-wing media has absolutely convinced a fairly significant portion of country the election was stolen. What that leads to, I’m not sure. But it is a dangerous lie:

CALLER: . . . I thank you for everything you’re doing. And my comment today is that the national news media and the Democratic Party are using the fear factor in order to control the people. This is right out of the Alinsky, communist playbook. [Presumably, the caller means that the media and Democrats are inappropriately warning about the pandemic.] It’s to divert people’s attention to the real facts of what they’re doing. It’s clearly a stolen election. We’ve seen the election results. We’ve seen the fraud that’s taken place. We need to have our place in court. We need to never stop fighting. We need a prayer chain and millions of people to get out in the street so that the national medicat ifnore the populace.

LIMBAUGH: Well, that’s gonna be a tough thing to pull off.

CALLER: I know that.

LIMBAUGH: The national media, in the first place, it isn’t media. You’re asking them to all of a sudden start reporting the news, when they don’t do that anymore. . . .

CALLER: If the streets are lined with truck drivers and the roads are lined with people and clog these cities up, it becomes a desperate action. But if they steal this election, they’ve stolen our libertry, they’ve stolen our freedom.

LIMBAUGH: Yeah, I know.

CALLER: We’re done.

LIMBAUGH: Not just that.

CALLER: That can’t happen.

LIMBAUGH: They have forever corrupted the Constitutuion. I mean, the stakes are quite serious.

CALLER: Well, we need to ever stop. The people have to stand up. There too many people too quiet sitting by the waywide, unfortunately.

LIMBAUGH: Why do you think they’re doing that?

CALLER: Well, if 40% of the people are still watching the propaganda — it’s not news, it’s the progranda media for the Democratic Party — anybody that refers to the national news as national news is a fool. They are the propaganda wing. They are the Democratic Party.

LIMBAUGH: Right, I know. Bur why are so may people just sitting by doing nothing?

CALLER: They are just in the phase that nothing can be done. What they don’t understand is Txxxx is Txxxx, and he is the major factor standing in the way of a revolution. This is a revolution. It’s the corporate world and politics mixing together to overthrow democracy and to put control on the people.

LIMBAUGH: Well, there’s one thing. Txxx does know that. Txxxx is very, very aware. He knows what’s at stake too. And that;’s why he’s not going away. It’s why he’s not conceded yet. That’s such an important thing. That has the left kind of discombbulated. They’re running around saying, “We told you, Txxxx will not participate in a peaceful transfer of power”. He’s not gonna concede yet because there go his legal optionns if he does. If he concedes, then it’s officially over. . . .

So Txxxx is not going to concede while all of these legal challenges play out. And it’s got the Demcorats just perplexed because they thought by now that they would have seen to it that the chances that Txxx has for vicctory here are so small, and so tiny, not even worth pursuing. But Txxxx doesn’t see it that way in any shape, manner or form.

Unquote.

Txxxx and his gang have lost over 50 lawsuits aimed at reversing the presidential election. There is zero chance the Republicans will succeed in any court in America, including the one in Washington that now has six Republicans and three Democrats. But it won’t matter. The Republican Party chose a demagogue to run for president, a foolish or rabid minority elected him, and we’ll continue suffering consequences after he leaves the White House.

83% of Republicans polled after the 2020 election said they didn’t believe Joe Biden won

Once you’re at home in Bizarro World, why go back to the real one?

Sometimes the Internet Works For Us

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Yesterday, I visited YouTube to see what the algorithms had for me and saw this video:

Brian Wilson – Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) (Demo Vocal Tracks)”

It’s 2 1/2 minutes of Brian and I guess some of the other Beach Boys performing background vocals for a beautiful song on the Pet Sounds album, my all-time favorite (and #2 in the recent Rolling Stone Top 500 — “Who’s gonna hear this shit?” Beach Boys singer Mike Love asked. . . ).

This morning, the video popped up again. While I was listening, I noticed a link to a song by Fleet Foxes, one of my favorite groups:

Fleet Foxes – Shore (Full Album) 2020 

Fleet Foxes has a new album out? I didn’t know. So I played the first track:

“Wading In Waist-High Water”

It’s beautiful. Fleet Foxes often remind me of the Beach Boys. I wondered how the new album, released in September, was being received. A search for “Fleet Foxes Shore” turned up a review from Pitchfork magazine.

On his fourth album, singer-songwriter Robin Pecknold refines and hones Fleet Foxes’ crisp folk-rock sound, crafting another musically adventurous album that is warm and newly full of grace. 

They gave the album an 8.3, which sounds high.  

As I was looking at the review, I saw this:

Elsewhere, there are explicit nods to contemporary classical music, as on “Jara,” which features hocketing by Meara O’Reilly, and “Cradling Mother, Cradling Woman,” which pairs O’Reilly with a snippet of Brian Wilson counting to resemble Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach, and, in its sampling, also recalls the early work of Steve Reich. 

A snippet of Brian Wilson counting? Well, I had to click on that.

Surprise, surprise! It turned out to be:

Brian Wilson – Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) (Demo Vocal Tracks)”

Yes, YouTube had twice recommended one of the thousands of Beach Boys/Brian Wilson videos they offer, of which I’ve watched many, and that took me to somebody else’s album, which uses part of that particular Pet Sounds session, which is in a YouTube video that’s probably getting attention because Robin Pecknold borrowed Brian Wilson counting “one-two-three-four” for his new Fleet Foxes album, Shore.

In the old days, only ten years ago, I might have quickly ordered the new Fleet Foxes CD. The internet would have succeeded in selling me something. But since CD technology is fast disappearing and I almost never play one except in our 16-year old car, there’s no rush. I can play the whole thing on Spotify and see if I want a copy for the car. 

Was I manipulated? Sure. Were a few more bytes of my data stored away in Google’s innards, only to be mined for heaven knows what purposes? Yeah. But sometimes it’s nice to be a tiny cog in a vast machine, even something to be a little bit thankful for.