Monday, August 29, 2016

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING




I've been blogging far too often lately. Readers grow weary of persistent bloggers. It's kind of like a persistent rash. Or a guest who outstays his welcome.

I know some bloggers who refrain from writing until they have something important or profound to say. Hell, if I did that, you'd hear from me once a year. Importance is no longer in my repertoire.

I not only worry about boring my readers, I'm also concerned about plying them with too much of a good thing.
(you can't see my wry grin, can you?)

My recent post Sharing a Cher Moment

was slightly unpopular because I turned it into a rancid political rant. After I posted it I could feel the temperature suddenly drop 80 degrees - - and I could sense readers backing off like they had encountered a Quarantine notice.

An angry mob with torches and pitchforks is clamoring up the mountain path!

I do these rants deliberately - solely to annoy certain people, and it works like a charm. Being annoying is one of the few legal pleasures I have left. 
Anyone who knows me well, knows that my bark is far worse than my bite. Most of the time.
WOOF!!


 Butterfly photos taken today

Then I quickly posted a few of my piano videos (previous post) to impress certain people. And wouldn't you know these certain people didn't show up. 
I read all of your kind comments, but I didn't respond to all of them simply because I'm lazy.
And modest.

Hell, how could I respond?
"I'm even more talented than you perceived?"

I'm grinning again. I've had a beer (or two) to cut the nasty edge off the afternoon. The heat is intense and persistent - in the 90s with extremely high humidity.

 The humid jungle-like back yard

Last evening there was an extraordinarily horrendous thunderstorm. The lightning was sharp, but the thunder was so close I feared I might be struck and rumbled to death.

Another storm is predicted for tonight. By now the weeds on my property have assumed King Kong proportions. They're 15 feet high and impassable. It would take scythes and safari guides to get me the hell out of here.

I no longer give a shit (or a crap - if you want the Disney version). I've been in a severe depression for a very long time. I never write about it. Why should I? Heck, you're still recovering from my Cher rant.....


 View from the back porch this morning


I've been tossing a few recent photos into this post, simply to make it more interesting.

Of course, I'm damn interesting even without photos.  



Moon in the morning.
Can't remember what day I took these, but it was some time last week. 


  
  
 Check out my other blog - you won't regret it. Well, not much, anyway....
http://cabinetofcurioustreasures.blogspot.com

Saturday, August 27, 2016

SHARING A CHER MOMENT

  Warning:
parts of this post will offend sensitive liberals. That is my intention. Proceed with caution.

After I posted my previous blog tirade about Hillary's unbelievably atrocious designer outfit, and after I posted those weird photo ops with her and Cher...
I suddenly remembered something.

I've met Cher!!
No lie. I had completely forgotten about it (which just goes to show how memorable it was). 

Let's all pause and rewind the tape.

I was a nineteen year old kid (I won't mention the year - it would kill me).
I'm at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the L.A. Music Center, attending an event with a friend - who is a Hollywood set designer. We're having a drink at the private bar for the Founder's Circle patrons (that's the Big Shots, for those of you in Hoboken).

In walks Cher and Sonny (they were still married then). They recognize my friend and we exchange a few casual words. That's it. 
What? You were expecting more??

Hey, I'm not Hedda Hopper. I was a naive kid (well, sort of naive). I hadn't yet turned into Satan's accomplice.

So, what was my impression?

They were a nice couple. I only saw them for four minutes. Maybe five. Hell, everybody's nice for the first five minutes. Even the Hillside Stranglers.

Cher was wearing a slinky gold-colored gown. Her hair (wig?) was either pulled back or pinned up. Sonny had on dark trousers and a greenish Nero jacket. I think he had lifts on his shoes.

I always thought Cher was very tall. She's 5'9".....but Sonny was 5'5". I think Cher deliberately wore heels and high hair to dwarf him.

I met them during their Hollywood heyday. Later, Cher went crazy and Sonny went into politics. The rest is history.


 A very young Cher
before fame

Cher looked her best au naturel - before she completely ravaged herself with cosmetic surgery. According to a 1988 article (which I still have), she had surgery on her nose, chin, navel, butt, and breasts. And she had two ribs removed to make her waist slimmer. That was in 1988. Gawd only knows what she had done since.

She now resembles a gaunt, horse-faced zombie - with thick lips, chipmunk cheek implants, heavy-lidded eyes, and complete immobility of the face.
Typical Tinseltown makeover.


Cher in recent years

In my humble opinion, I always thought Cher looked great before plastic surgery. She didn't need it.


Cher in better days

One more thing before I forget. It's about the boob job. Cher didn't have her breasts augmented. She had them reduced. After her two pregnancies she thought her breasts were getting too big. She never wanted to have to wear a bra.

Now let's fast forward to the present

In typical Hollywood know-it-all liberal fashion, Cher made a complete jackass of herself last weekend when she addressed a mob of gays at Fire Island.

With absolutely nothing intelligent or enlightening to say, she compared Donald Trump to Hitler and called him "A fucking idiot who doesn't give a shit about work."

Her quote, folks. Not mine.

She didn't say anything positive about her hero Hillary, of course - mainly because there's absolutely nothing positive to say.

Cher claims that Trump wants to make America "straight and white".
Is that opposed to gay and black??

Her feeble political tactics are pathetic. She's a clone of Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, and all the other typical has-been Hollywood babes who hate the white male establishment but made their millions with it.
 

 Cher, with a mob of gays at the Fire Island Hillary Rally

Remember when Meryl Streep went to Congress and told us that poisoned apples were killing our children?

In my blunt opinion there are still too many kids alive. And I eat plenty of apples. Without washing them.

I lived in Hollywood but could never tolerate the Hollywood anti-establishment liberal agenda. Everything about it is fake, hateful, immature, biased, and infuriatingly hypocritical. 

You might be shocked to hear that I don't give a rat's ass about gay rights, women's rights, freeing the slaves, saving the whales and spotted owls, cleaning up the air, or holding hands and singing Kumbaya.

I've always been an independent thinker and I don't yield to any half-ass assembly line agendas.
I've learned from bitter experience that life is one cruel son-of-a-bitch that kicks you when you're down and laughs when you can't get back up. We have absolutely no one to depend on but ourselves and no amount of Marxist rallies or sob sister stories or freedom trains are going to help.

I wouldn't be presumptuous enough to think I deserved privileges or rights.

Well, you're not a woman or a minority, Jon.

I sleep with whom I want. I do what I want. I don't have agendas or requests for favoritism. I do my best to keep ticking and wake up to see another day.
That's not selfishness. It's survival.

Question:
Did this Cher post suddenly turn into biased political rant?

Hell if I know. I didn't notice.

A Cher look-alike at the Fire Island rally. Does he look better than Cher? You be the judge.
He certainly looks better than Hillary.

Friday, August 19, 2016

WEBS, GHOSTS, AND GOSSAMER WINGS

 
Every morning I wander outside to see the spider web at the edge of the forest. It's most clearly visible after the fog lifts and when a rare shaft of sunlight makes it glisten with dew. Yesterday I managed to take some photos before the rain came.



This morning, during a light rain, I happened to see this butterfly on a pink weed blossom. Butterflies and dragonflies are everywhere. It's a lazy time of year. Summer is slowly yawning to an end, the days are already getting shorter. The cloudy weather and perpetual rain have tempered the heat.


Late at night when I can't sleep, I enjoy scaring myself witless by turning out all the lights and watching  the most frightening YouTube videos I can find. Haunted houses, wandering ghosts, abandoned places, unsolved murders.

Imagine being in an extremely isolated area, at the edge of a forest, entirely alone at night.......my cats are asleep, coyotes howl in the distance, and then  thunder begins to rumble.....

I love it. I've always enjoyed pushing the limits. 

I had initially planned on doing a completely different post today. It was a long one entitled The Hollywood Pretty Boys and Me. Then I suddenly wondered if my critics are right. Do I write too much about myself? Are people tired of hearing about my sordid past? Am I stuck on myself?

To be annoyingly honest (which is one of my traits) I think I'm interesting and I enjoy resurrecting the ghosts of my past. My blog is definitely frivolous and self-indulgent. If you want valuable information or  redeeming life-altering experiences, you're in the wrong place.

I was going to mention my encounter with Rock Hudson. Is that self-indulgent? 
How many of you had an encounter with Rock Hudson?
I rest my case.

This rare moment of humility (?) won't last long. I'll be back to my old self soon.
I just can't live without me.


My other blog is intended as an antidote to counteract the poison on this one:

http://cabinetofcurioustreasures.blogspot.com

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

THE BIG QUESTION



There's one thing that really annoys me.
Well, actually there are thousands of things that annoy me, but for now let's concentrate on one.

I'm in the checkout line at Walmart. The unenthusiastic cashier glances at me and says "How are you?"

It's not a question of genuine concern. It's a generic nicety that isn't intended to generate a response.

"Fine," I answer. 

"Fine", in fact, is a drastically contrived abbreviation, utilized solely for the sake of brevity and courtesy.

My genuine answer would go something like this:

"How am I? Have you ever gone three consecutive nights without sleep, the result of which has rendered you disoriented, dysfunctional, and disassociated with every semblance of reality? And when you finally do doze off one night for three minutes at 4:00 a.m. a cat suddenly makes a flying leap for the bed and lands directly on your chest? And while you're trying desperately to at least partially recover from shock and chest pain, another storm suddenly blows in with thunder so loud and penetrating that the bed shakes and I'm miraculously and inexplicably remembering Bible quotes that I haven't recited since I was six.

"Despite not having sleep for 72 hours I crawled out of bed right after the storm abated, and was struck with such agonizingly crippling back pain that I was hobbling like a bad imitation of Quasimodo while the cats clung to my ankles in greedy anticipation of breakfast. The word agonizing isn't sufficient to describe the back spasms that stunned me as I valiantly tried to fill cat dishes with food and clean water.
And if you think that's bad, it's nothing compared to lifting two heavy litter boxes loaded with cat shit that I seemingly clean every half hour.

"Despite my unappealing morning I somehow managed to get dressed and drive into town. The harrowing mountain road was so unnerving that my legs are still wobbling like a leftover jello mold and - despite ingesting four or five beers - my hands are still cramped with rigor mortis rigidity from gripping the steering wheel.

"I have heart palpitations, neuralgia, insomnia, paranoia, inexplicable momentary episodes of impending doom, massive migraine headaches, and panic attacks that would baffle Freud - - and that's on a good day. I won't mention the times when I happen to look in a mirror and go into debilitating regions of shock when I realize that I'm not twenty anymore and am starting to turn into  a frighteningly reasonable facsimile of Baby Jane Hudson.

"But despite the ancient mental baggage that I carry like a millstone and the few minor  physical maladies, I'm still a fantastic kisser and damn good in bed if I'm with the right person. Are you doing anything Friday night?"



That was supposed to be funny, but I can see that I'm the only one laughing. 
Humor obviously isn't contagious.

It's not easy being funny - - and it's even more difficult conveying it in a blog when you're drunk.

I had more than a few beers today. Drove into town. It was unusually crowded and the shoppers annoyed the hell out of me. I didn't buy half of what I needed. It was hotter than Hades but a beautiful day.
I wanted to stop and see my cousin on the way home, but I had frozen food and the interior of my car was 850 degrees.

Massive thunderstorms last night. More are predicted for tomorrow. And the weekend.

Is there any significance for the dog photo on your header, Jon?

Nope. None at all.
Dog days of summer...... 

 

Monday, August 15, 2016

THE COLOR OF WEEDS

Rather than fight them, I've learned to accept them: these rambling acres of defiantly obstinate, rampantly multiplying weeds.

I sprayed, I cut, I whacked - - I destroyed what's left of my crippled back in a herculean effort to eradicate the weeds, but to no avail. The daily torrential rains have consistently thwarted my efforts - by nourishing my enemies and encouraging them to breed and flourish.

Some of the weeds are now as high as my neck. I'm not a munchkin. I'm 6'1". 6"2' in boots.
Places where I used to walk are now impassable. I feel as isolated, bewildered, and threatened as the narrator in The Willows by Algernon Blackwood - eternally trapped in that hostile, surrealistic region of wilderness along the Austria-Hungarian banks of the Danube.

Sorry. My imagination has gone rampant, like the weeds. So I'm a drama queen. Shoot me.

I've learned to overlook the insurmountable obstacles  and search for the positives and pleasures. Copious amounts of beer tend to aid in my optimistic approach. Yes, the weeds offer sporadic splashes of color - which somehow softens the sadistic harshness of their presence.

I wandered outside early this morning, after the fog lifted, and admired the purple and yellow highlights among the weeds. 

In the distance, a huge spider web glistened with dew in the morning sunlight (rare sunlight between rainstorms).

Most intriguing was the little butterfly that sat on my left forefinger and stayed there contentedly for several minutes. I wish I would have had my camera for that. I suddenly felt like Snow White in a glorious Technicolor Disney movie.

Does a friendly butterfly signify good luck - or am I going to get pulverized by a runaway logging truck?


There was a horrendous thunderstorm last night - - and it rained today all afternoon. If nothing else, Tennessee is wet and weedy. And humid. And buggy.
But, alas, I'm dispelling the enchantment.

All of the letters have worn off my computer keyboard and I keep making mistakes. This fact has nothing to do with weeds, of course.

I never planned on doing a post about weeds. It's boring and mundane. Fortunately, I have a knack for making boring things interesting. At least I think so.

I was going to write a review of the Rio Olympics, but I didn't want to horrify and offend any of my sensitive readers. After all, they're still recovering from my review of the Democratic Convention.

Weeds are neutral and non-threatening. If you don't live with them.

Actually, I get a thrill out of offending and horrifying my hyper-sensitive readers. It's one of the few pleasures I have left.

I was brushing my cat Scratch (Kitzee) this morning, when she suddenly jumped up and did a double-take at the window. A deer was looking in at us! No lie. Unfortunately he disappeared by the time I got my camera. The only photo I could take was one of Scratch. Rolling.


 I should explain that my house (shack) is built on a slope. The front is very high up - in fact, the front porch is like a balcony. The back of the house is on ground level. That's where the deer was looking in.

Does that make any sense? Well, anyway, here's a picture of my grandfather clock. I know this will excite and enthrall you.
My cat Bosco knocked that lamp over and the shade has never been right since.



 Tomorrow (Tuesday) I think I'm going to have to make the dreaded drive into town. Again. I have to buy tile for the two bathroom floors. And some plumbing supplies.

Insomnia will accompany me all night.

Here's a photo of the moon I took a few nights ago.
  


 What? You didn't see my art collection?? Check out my two previous posts!

also

Civil War Soldiers
Cabinet of Curious Treasures 

(this is a sorry example of shameless self-promotion) 

Saturday, August 13, 2016

POMPOUS RICH GUY

I was hesitant to post my previous blog entry because I thought it would make me look like a pompous rich guy showing off his stuff.

Hey, I might be pompous but I'm not rich. Trust me on that. When I said that I lost everything in Texas it wasn't an exaggeration - but I won't go into ugly details. Fortunately I still have most of my art collection (minus some that the movers "lost").

Eventually I'll have to consider selling some of it - - but dealing with greedy, unscrupulous art dealers is another story I won't go into. Believe me, I've had bitter experiences.

I've had an "expert" sniff at my Venice by Moonlight painting by Paulucci and tell me it's worthless (see previous post). I've since discovered that one of Paulucci's paintings sold for $18,000. No lie.

But what about me - a pauper collecting art? It started long ago when I decided that it would be neat (yes, I still use the word "neat") to own one antique painting. I snagged a very old painting for a low price at an auction: a family home painted in 1732 by someone named Lounsbury. 
My first art acquisition. Not much to look at but ancient, nevertheless.

 Thus, my passion for collecting antique art had begun. I always look for bargains - the lowest prices I can get. Fortunately I know a lot about art, which helps. The paintings that I purchase are not always the ones I want, but the price is usually right.

I got this 65 year-old painting of a deer on masonite for 9 dollars. Yup, nine bucks! It's very large and I still have it hanging on one of my walls here in TN.

  
I admittedly paid a sizeable sum for my two Henriette Ronner paintings. I threw them in the trunk of my car when I moved to Tennessee. That was an extremely fortunate decision. If the movers got their hands on those paintings, I would have never seen them again.


When the two Ronners were shipped to me from Italy, they were held in customs and sprayed (sprayed with what, I don't know). 
I think it would be a great idea if all foreigners would be held in customs and sprayed.
Some of my "sensitive" readers are cringing right now. Jon is a heartless Nazi!

Another of my more expensive acquisitions is this 1850 painting of a harvest scene. I bought it from the mayor of a city in New Jersey. It hangs above a piano in the living room.


 Sometimes I'm intrigued by paintings simply for the colors. I love this 1915 German mountainscape (below) which hangs in my bedroom.


I also like this snowscene (below) which I gave to my Mom for her bedroom when I lived in Texas.


I have numerous portrait paintings - but it never occurred to me until recently that several are smokers. That's merely coincidence (see Boy With Cigarette on previous post).


 The boy with the pipe is circa 1885 and painted on a wooden panel. Huckleberry Finn, perhaps?

 This 1949 painting is by Otto Helmut Eberspracher, who lived to age 101. He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

 Another bargain basement 19th century painting from France. I think it was around 20 dollars.

I have a large collection of antique drawings and watercolors. The best part about this medium is that they're more compact than oil paintings.

 A watercolor of the ruins of Fort Ticonderoga, with the signature C.N.Doughty.
Fortunately I recognized that "pseudonym". This in fact painted by John Joseph Englehart (1867-1915) who was a very well-known landscape artist.


 Two watercolors from the early 1930's



I have dozens of watercolors. Let's skip to some drawings. 

 A German pencil drawing titled Vertrauen (trust, or confidence), dated Christmas Eve, 1837

 A pencil drawing from England, circa 1845

 I have a portfolio of drawings by this German landscape artist (above). I have his name in my files, but unfortunately I can't remember it and am too lazy to look it up. These drawings were preliminary sketches for paintings.

 San Paolo (St. Paul)
by Giuseppe Beghelli

This post was a continuation of my previous post, and these examples are only a small part of the things in my collection.

I won't bother to mention the fact that I have a small insignificant unframed painting of two trees, which I got from a woman in France, and which has a curious but familiar signature on the verso....
C. Monet

I am not jesting. Could it possibly be........???