senior moments @ Xmas charades

the effects of multiple wine courses........ha..ha...

TERRY R. PORNOESQUE PHOTOGRAPHER

really-not-that-so-talented photographer and sex-addict, Terry, shown with his teddy bear....the lovely lady's his mom....his friend Steve...on the floor, puking, and (he's proudest of) a portrait with our President, who is a fan of his art....really! Well.....Bill Clinton played the sax......and Obama likes Terry.....go figure!

JACOB KARR

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DREAM OF A DANCER! I CHOSE HIM EVEN HAVING SEEN ONLY HIS AUDITIONS FOR SYTYCD, AND CHOOSE HIM STILL......WHAT A SENSITIVE HEART LIES BEHIND HIS ARTISTIC INTENTIONS....ON THE ACUTE EDGE OF MODERN MAN, DANCING WITH EVERY FIBER OF MIND CONNECTED TO EVERY CELL OF HIS STRETCHED, EXTENDED BODY......aHHHHHHHAH........

Well, actually not free......this monster from Oakland Tennessee......you know what we're doing there, don't you?

• Cray Linux Environment (CLE) 2.2
• A peak performance of 1.03 PetaFLOP
• 99,072 compute cores
• 129 TB of compute memory
• A 3.3 PB raw parallel file system of disk storage for scratch space (2.4 PB available)
• 8,256 compute nodes

Each node has:
• Two 2.6 GHz six-core AMD Opteron processors (Istanbul)
• 12 cores
• 16 GB of memory
• Connection via Cray SeaStar2+ router

We always check out the "stats" when shopping for computers.....quad core, 8 gigs of Ram, a T/harddrive, and other seemingly important qualifications for our up to 4 grand expenditures....
Our Government and Military has a much larger budget, for sure.....And those immense, wall-size monitors!

halloweeny stuff around here...with nondescript jazz

halloween with nightclub music

I'm always overwhelmed by menus, so....

i just can't decide what's best suited for Anne's birthday.......The Raleigh Trevelyan biography of Sir Walter Raleigh, a set of 6 audio cassettes about internal readjustment of stress through hypnosis, a black silk scarf with flowers and insects from a series done for the Met, a choice of dolls made from clothes pins, an art photo by Veristes of an orchid from Beth, a carved teakwood chip tray with covered cheese, or a Von Berg micro-dermal renewal system with diamond-shaped magnesium oxide......I just couldn't get a call in to Clive Owen....sorry!
what do you think?

A Celtic Celebration by Da Camera

DIVA.........

NOT THE LUNDBERG.......

but THE MAGNUS electric organ....weighing in at 2-3 lbs....a gift from a relative to me, at age 5.......the little keyboard, suited for my then tiny fingers.......two years later, it was replaced by a Hobart Kable upright which could make MUCH more noise! At ten, my step-father gave me a b-flat cornet, which i played very little because it gave me a headache. I'm sure my miniature organ playing gave everyone else headaches!

TOMATO CROP

A bit late getting out of the gate, the vine gift from Gary Walker has finally produced a big, green tomato and smaller ones are forming.......next stop.....BLT!

DEGREES OF SEPARATION

I stopped by a neighborhood yard sale yesterday and, for want of not having found anything else, picked up an old Decca recording of Mildred Bailey from the "free" bin. She'll not be a favorite singer of mine, by far......more in the vein of Kate Smith, I think, but.....doing a bit of research, I discovered not only that Mildred's brother, Al Rinker, was Bing Crosby's partner, but Mildred introduced Crosby to Louis Armstrong and the Chicago black jazz singers of the late 20's......This made me think of the connectedness of points of time and those who exist therein...... worth walking into my neighbor's yard? certainly!

the junk nail

odd found junk ends up hanging from a long nail by the door of the cabin.....
it has become a changing artwork showing, at no expense to it's viewers......

Harpsichord suites of Chambonnieres by Hanneke van Proosdij

RECORDS FROM HOBIE.....thanks so much...i love them!

my friend Hobie dropped by with boxes of old recordings that a client of his was discarding......he gave me a recording of Arthur Rubinstein playing Liszt; The First Drama Quartette (Charles Boyer, Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwick and Agnes Moorehead) production of Shaw's DON JUAN IN HELL; Bruno Hoffmann performing music for glass harmonica; the soundtrack of LA DOLCE VITA; Sililoquies of Molly and Leopold Bloom, from ULYSSES, read by Siobhan McKenna and E.G. Marshall; and the first Stereo recording of Edith Piaf with cover translations........what treasures.....I'm listening right now.......

BACK DOOR TOTEM

Before bridge at Beth's, Reis, Jo and I stopped by the trashy antique store that I always make them visit after dinner.......this wasn't free...it was $6......which was free enough, I thought....and looks right at home....at my home......





Eastern Expressions 2 - Gomera by Ruben van Rompaey

Celebrity Morph

Celebrity Morph -

this isn't me.....it's Branman morphing into Naomi Watts....the closest match........ who'd a thought it!

XENOCRONY

maybe you should mute the LOOP-A-LOOP music's volume, although Frank, perhaps, would not.....

from Joe's Garage to Joe's Corsage, Frank ZaPPA, dying 17 days before his 53rd birthday, left behind a treasure labyrinth of partially finished and unrealized projects and compositions, largely still unrezappaed or posthumously re-released in their various incarnations and reformats...it's up to son, Dweezil, and widow, Gail, to re-represent the great rock and roll genius of "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast", "Inca Roads" and variations on "Weasels ripped my Flesh"......Perhaps a Flo and Eddy revival tour is in the works, and his Varesian works will soon load concert halls with marimba variations for dickpicks and re-recorded 8 tracks from the Grand Wazoo.....I recently obtained some vintage recordings at the neighborhood garage sale event....The "seller" was dumping all of her ex-husband's
"awful....dreadful..obnoxious....records"......
"You actually LIKE this trash?" she asked!
"Just take them, then...Yuk!..Give me a buck!".
....different strokes, I guess....
I'm always gathering up the cosmic debris.....it's the stuff we're really made of, isn't it?

LOOP-A-LOOP

 

I just found the striped "bumblebee" car and have been playing with the "LOOP".....a gift, from childhood, from a relative.....I have a 78RPM yellow, red and blue enamelled phonograph to match....an odd set....and some yellow records to complete the "look".....

THERE WAS A ROLLER COASTER  BY THE SAME MANUFACTURER, I THINK....BUT MOTHER GAVE IT AWAY WHILE I WAS IN COLLEGE, THINKING I NO LONGER HAD ANY INTEREST IN SUCH PUERILE PLAYTHINGS!

DUNNAVANTS

The "Rich's" of Huntsville, Dunnavants was the big department store....elevators with operators, brass and glass cylinders moving receipts, payments and change in meandering vacuum tubes .....departments for denier stockings, boy scout uniforms and plastic-covered lariat cord were not as intriguing as the x-ray fluoroscopic devices in the shoe department, where I became very familiar with the bone structure of my odd feet with their narrow heels and vast arches......that just couldn't be fit with Buster Brown Shoes. Like Rich's, Dunnavants moved to the Malls, then vanished into oblivion.....

BOX OF JAY CHOU VIDEOS AND CD

Spotting an unopened box, containing a concert, Live in Hong Kong, by Jay Chou, a pop artist that I had never heard of......I returned it to the folding card table....The 14 year-old, tending her table of goodies, exclaimed: "WHAT! you don't know who Jay Chou is? I looked at her, blankly, and mentioned that he was "pretty".......She said, "Take it....it's free...to you.....you must take it!".....So....I took the beautifully packaged set home and placed a disk into my computer.......Although I was not very impressed with this standard, commercial teen-pop idol, i did think of the universality of naive' popular tastes.....in a few years, no one will even remember Jay Chou....But, for now, Chinese Idolmakers will make much ado about him, spawning hundreds of replicants and devotees....then, I'll sell this "rare" box of stuff to an ageing Chinese woman who remembers his sexy performance, decades before......

thanks, auntie

while shopping with a friend for a car, for him........i impulsively purchased this cushy vehicle, paying for it with a check on an account that i had inherited from a deceased Aunt.......so, it was sorta for free, i guess.......i had second thoughts about this impulsivity, but then......it was free...and had heated seats and a great sound system.....

the "Indian Rug" robe

a good friend gave me a silk scarf, purchased from Neiman's.....when I noticed that the scarf had been $350, I just couldn't rationalize the expense...for it was just a plain old ecru neck wrag and would have been just one of many that already fill a drawer....so I exchanged it for this terrycloth robe, which I've enjoyed for many years...snags and all....later, i found an identical scarf at the Salvation Army, for $5.....I have never seen another robe like this one, however.....

UNICORNS

 


this panel, now on my glass kitchen door, hung for years on Mother's glass kitchen door.....a tradition, now......

THE SUN AND THE MOON

 

I photographed a chair for a mail-order catalog and the art director handed me this stained glass panel which hangs over the kitchen door light......which shines through.......

THE ORCHID IN A BEAUTIFUL POT

 

my friend Reis asked if i would give some bamboo to a friend of his.......which i did, of course......weeks later, to my surprise, Reis dropped by a lovely orchid....a thank-you gift from the recipient of the bamboo.....an unexpected delight!

FREE ICARTS?

 

30 years ago, i was with a friend, shopping for Tiffany Lamps at LILLIAN NASSAU, in New York......my friend mentioned a friend, Neil Isman, who had a gallery nearby......So, we went to Neil's Gallery.....He told me that he was "thinning our" his inventory and wanted to rid himself of decorative art that he did not consider particularily important....
We went into a back room, where Neil brought out a stack of Louis Icart prints, signed, and bearing the Paris "windmill mark"......I purhased all of them for $135/EA.....a good deal, even then......Within days of returning home, I had sold "SMOKE",
"COURSING II" and a handfull of others for more than I had paid for them all......Over the years, I have relinquished all but one of the prints........They are lovely boudoir art.........

APTERA

If you keep this vehicle for 30 years, it will have paid for itself in fuel-saving.........it would look really strange in the context of most modern cars on the road, however, wouldn't it.....?