Hillary's Final Two, Obama's Final Four & Japan's Finale

Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that after her term as Secretary of State, in two years, she is out. Japan is out if you believe the media. Qaddafi is murdering his people by bracketing. Egypt is winning in its tournament by killing their opponents. And the whole Middle East is a powder keg of explosive action.

Why would anyone care about the march of madness in the world when March Madness is upon us here in the United States. Any bartender or wife that switches to a news program will be murdered and their killer will be found innocent by reason of temporary March Madness.



If by chance radiation wafts over the Pacific to our land of plenty there will be a plenty of skeletons still sitting in recliners holding beers with their dead eyes still pointed towards a television. It appears that will be the case at 123 Hog Back Road, Anytown, US 54321 as well as at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500. Unfortunately, they won't find out how the madness called foreign policy ends.

As an American I am so pleased, actually tickled pink, that the president has finally found something of interest to fill his term of office.

The Pratt Fall Of The Avant-Garde

Avant-garde, the vanguard, became a cliche the minute the phrase was coined in art, literature, fashion and society. All after was mere conformity to the actual vanguard. It has been so since. In my studies of art in college and in NYC, professors spoke of the future of avant-garde through history while calling any artist that depicted a penis as so avant-garde. Students, then clutching their wine and cigarette, yearned to be part of the avant garde. Once members they felt they could man the barricades of social change and shout into the wind. It was really boring.

For painters, foto-realism was in, which meant I was out. To me foto-realism was a more expensive paint-by-numbers methodology that I had conquered as a child. I still remember the paint-by-numbers boast, "Every Man A Rembrandt". I also remember the kits cost less than the college course. My practice of painting from life was considered passe.

I moved on to photography because as a foto-realist, I felt merely a middleman between a photograph and a painting. Once again, artists of the vanguard came into play. I had no desire to lug an 8 X 10 Deardorff camera out to "capture" landscapes nor did I want to take the time to learn the Zone System (I did). I wanted to use the camera for what I thought it did best which was to capture a moment. Wrong again. I still have portfolios of images of leaves, trees and organic landscapes. I found it especially ironic in NYC to sit in lofts rhapsodizing over landscapes of nature as I thought of trudging home through the landscapes of man.

Politics, thankfully, played in the background though if behind in output a picture of someone down trodden could buy some time and possibly bump in grade. Civil Rights, as a movement had passed as an in vogue moment, but a pissed off indian was still a pretty good, but hard to find image in Times Square.

I worked out the physics of angle and light that would allow me to photograph without the necessity of the viewfinder and I liked what I produced. I savaged the Zone System and went into the clubs and bars and captured images that I liked complete with halos, swirls and deep blacks that created inhuman shapes within the frame. I sought out photographers whose work I had seen in undistinguished galleries. To go to Hell's Kitchen or deep into ravaged Harlem was a new voyage for me. When I arrived with my puppy eyes asking to learn or "rap" about art from those artists I was treated as I should've been, an interloper, because I wasn't there with my shiny Leica to document pain. I was still fifteen minutes behind avant garde, but it was kicking my butt. My real photography stayed in my apartment. In the closet.

What did I learn from all this? Simple. Avant-garde is a hoax as touted. It is a political platform to sift the wheat from the chaff in the art world by the elite. I didn't and don't care because along the way I met some incredible artists that taught me the most important art lesson of all. Do it. Do it because you love it. Do it because it's in your blood. The best work I ever saw was from an old woman on West 121st Street. She had bought a $5 Brownie and when she could afford to she'd buy film in junk stores. She would never sell me a print because then she'd have to make another copy which she didn't want to do except for relatives. She was the Lartique of Harlem.

In all the art schools, where one meets the finer people, avant-garde is painfully entering its third (or is fourth?) generation of being out front. It is difficult to watch such a spectacle when it is obvious the oldster just wants to die. It can't because art schools and the elite still don't know what avant-garde means. Too many Pratt Falls, but I'll bet that somewhere they have Duchamp's Urinal on a hall poster. Maybe some student will once more tape the poster over a real urinal, take a photograph, and feel avant-garde.

Dick Schumer: The Savior Of Republicans & Fiscal Sanity

Yep, he is! He has to be because if Schumer is for any one thing then all sane people must to be against it. So, if Schumer says he has saved Boehner and Republicans from the Tea Party then they have only one course to pursue.

Finally align themselves with the Tea Party.

Schumer taunts Boehner again: Democrats saved you from the Tea Party

“It’s time for him to abandon the Tea Party, and forge a bipartisan compromise.

If Schumer is talking honesty, fiscal responsibility and compromise my advise to the entire congress is to check for their wallets because something's missing.

I wouldn't believe Schumer if he said water was wet.

Don't listen to Chuckie, slash the budget and do it fast.

A Tale Of Two Cities

and one president

Miami-Dade mayor ousted in recall vote; anger over tax hike...

Denver City Council endorses 6.6% pay raise for elected officials...
Obama team fixated on re-election...

It was the worst of times, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was
the season of Darkness, it it was the winter of despair, we had nothing before
us, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far
like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison
only.  

Apologies to Dickens, but even he had no understanding of the true depths of political stupidity.