Naw. Never mind.

I was thinking about the German character, and had an idea for a post.

Scotch that one.

I am not all that interested in the German character, really. I know several, of course, but to have to think about the mirk that is the German mind, well, it is all too much.

What is funny, though, is that the thing that triggered the thought was listening to Edvard Grieg, who is one of our far northern cousins. Not really a German, but not really not a German.

German music? Love it.
German art? For the most part, yes.
German literature? In small doses.
German politics? Ach! Nein!
German language? Well, it is fun. Small doses.
German fascination with bowl movements? The less said the better. Scheissaffe!
German food? Now, we are getting somewhere. Tonight we had Bratwurst and Sauerkraut. Have I written about Rouladen? I should. I should. I should.
German photography? pre-war, yes. Contemporary? Spare me.
German film? Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.
German wine and German song? Naturlich!
German women? Did I mention how pleased and, yet at the same time, saddened I was to learn that Melanie had a little German ancestry mixed in with her Irish side? Fortunately her features are purely Lusitantian of the Azoran bent. We Krauts are a strange looking people, when you think about it. Of course the rest of you would kill to have eyes like mine.

So that is about it for the dear Vaterland and its Volk tonight.

People really should never live North of the Alps. It is a land of wolves and barbarians.

Now, if you excuse me, I have some jodling to do.

A Tale of Two Ballplayers

Barry Bonds is an amazing athlete. He does not have a reputation for blowing up and needing to be physically restrained. He does have the reputation for being a bit aloof, but he has not attacked anyone who alleges that he did what just about every ballplayer in the league has been doing (and keep in mind that steroids are going to have more benefit to pitchers than to hitters anyway). The media dumps on him every chance they get. The commissioner acts the complete ass when Bonds breaks a record. The Giants, a team that has been utterly dull the last few years, with the exception of Bonds, fires him. Fires him. The same year he broke the all-time home run record.

Now we have Milton Bradley. Milton Bradley has a deserved reputation for blowing up at the slightest provocation. He was caught being a jerk to an ump and made a big deal of it with the ump who reported him. The ump may or may not have said something unprofessional. Milton Bradley has a tantrum and attacks the umpire and, in being subdued, injures himself. He claims that if his self-inflicted injuries make him miss the season, he is going to "take action" against the umpire. MLB suspends the umpire. AOL, in its reporting, has a survey asking if the league "did enough". Not whether or not it should have done anything. Not whether or not it should have taken action against Bradley.

I don't get it.

I hate this kind of headline writing

"Vic, Ruth: Here's the latest 411 on red meat in 94596"

oooh, how clever! The latest 411! Using a zip code to identify a region! How hip.

The surefire way to sink a declining readership is to indulge in trite hipness. It is rather, well,....liturgical dancingesque.

Ender's Game

Over the last two nights I read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. I am not normally a fan of science fiction, but once in awhile something comes along with the right recommendation that I will pick it up and read it, as did this book. I also came to it knowing full well that Orson Scott Card is a member of a demon cult, and that he is a smart fellow, one who would probably try to insert demon cult stuff into his book.

He doesn't, for the most part (there are a couple of things that look Deseretean, but he keeps pretty clean of Smithite/Youngite nonsense here), and the book is worth reading, although there is something just a little syrupy about parts of it, and the ending just plunges into it.

Overall, however, I would recommend this for a last summer read. It is not a great book, but it is a good story, well told.

Giants and Fortyniners... Bah! Humbug!

The only reason to watch the Giants for the last two years has been Barry Bonds. That's it. Otherwise, they have been a crappy team, and show no signs of improving. Unlike the A's, they do not have a good track record of finding good young talent on the cheap.

I have been one of the few dual loyalty fans of both the A's and the Giants for years. Certainly the Giants have the better ballpark (which makes crossing the Bay Bridge a hassle whenever they have evening games). When they cut loose the only reason to see the team a big part of me hopes they pick up, pack up their congestion-causing ballpark, and go to San Jose.

Especially if they take the 49ers with them.

It will be great. The transbay rivalry will become the cross-slough rivalry. Whoo-hooo! Go Fremont!

Who cares? If I have to take up the cause of an East Coast team then I will simply abandon baseball. Soccer (as played by Europeans and Latin Americans) is a better game anyway.

French Symbolists, Roasting Pork, A Good Pinot Noir, A Bite in the Air....it must be.....ah! yes! autumn!

With the tertiary colors favored by the French Symbolists, not to mention the inherent autumnal notion of decadence in their work, it is probably natural to speak of them at the beginning of autumn. Perhaps the rescheduling (it was originally to be July or something), was a bit of Divine Providence (now, if only He would help us with the advertising!).

I love autumn. I like to cook in the autumn. I like to roast pork and saute wild mushrooms and short braise lacinato and bake focaccia and listen to John Coltrane (middle period - the modal stuff like Crescent or the duets with Johnny Hartman) and feel the bite of the evening air. Soon the fall-blooming osmanthus will make that evening air almost intoxicating, especially when tinged with the perfume of fire and rotten leaves. I can start to think of eating polenta without first grilling it in the autumn. The season for heavy cabernet sauvignons is just starting, and I can still get a good tomato (but the writing is on the wall there. We are nearing the end of that). A cigar on the porch with a Scotch. It is time to read denser stuff, too: I am always in the mood to wrestle with Eliot and Pound and Homer in the autumn.

My studio is finally coming into a form that I can see hope in. It is far from ready for work, but I can actually imagine the work space, and have some idea of where everything will go (and some of it has actually started to go where it needs to!). This means that the other website will finally go live, preferably with some new paintings to kick it off with a bang (it has been way too long since a brush of mine, loaded with oil and pigment, touched canvas).

Summer, for me, is hit and miss. If I get it off to a good start, it can be amazingly productive. But, you see, there is this thing called spring, which is a ghastly season for my productivity. Everything is in bloom. Life and excitement are bursting out all over, or however the song goes. The world doesn't really seem to need MY creative energies: look at it. I get very energized by the spring, but rarely do I do my best work in the spring.

Winter is like summer. If it gets off to a good start, with a particularly vigorous autumn, then I will will have a good, productive winter. Winter is a good season for wood working projects, since the trees all look like wood anyway.

So, if you missed the lecture last night, and most of you did, fear not. We are thinking about creating a St. Anthony of Padua Institute art series for television/video. This one will certainly be part of it. And with that, it is time to call the pupil back from recess!

A Few Things

1. Dawn Eden is a really good speaker, and her book, which I have not yet read, sounds interesting. Her talk at UC Berkeley was quite good, and I hope she is still doing the lecture circuit when Amalia is older and needs to hear some of these things from someone who is not a (yawn) parent (especially when the (yawn) parent is a fascist, and when Amalia calls her father a fascist, you know she is not just whistling Dixie). She is also a really personable sort: easy to get along with, smart, etc.

Which reminds me: where is her blog on my sidebar? Will have to fix that right away.

2. The nineteenth century was a confused mess, but it was a confused mess that we are still living in, and it was a confused mess that produced some great artwork. The French are a confused mess, yet they are are a confused mess that still influences us, and that produced some great artwork. Want to know more? I knew you did:

Erik Keilholtz (your humble blogduce) will be speaking TONITE! TONITE! TONITE! at St. Margaret Mary's in Oakland at 7:30pm on French Symbolism and Neo-Byzantine expressions in nineteenth century art. I hear that there are refreshments, but probably not the sort of refreshments that I will be looking for after the talk. If there are others who will be looking for those sorts of refreshments after the talk, I know of a couple of very good establishments in Oakland that serve the purpose well. Of course perhaps after a talk on this French stuff, my usual post-talk beverages, which come from those islands, those islands, those miserable islands, are not appropriate. Perhaps I will have to sip cognac or chartreuse or (preferably) absinthe. Must I also pick up a package of Gauloises? Now, where is the beret?

Yes, you guessed it. 3:30. Up at 8. Fueled by espresso, adrenaline, and delirium.

3. This storm system is from Canada. I say we launch a retaliatory expedition and seize their timber and oil reserves. Meanwhile, I have a stack of mdf boards that will come together into a cabinet someday. However, in the meanwhile they are in one 230 lb. box, right in the line of the probable flood path in my studio. The door to my studio is blocked by a fallen tree branch (the rain was introduced by ferocious gusts of wind). I still have images to scan for the talk. It is a school day, and Amalia needs her lessons.

Espresso. Adrenaline. Dementia.

Talk to you later. Pray for me!

Crazy!

So I accept comments from anyone and everyone and the spam slows to a trickle (only about sixty spam comments so far today)! I don't get it.

Anyway, thanks to all who helped me try to figure out the problem. I am still baffled. Thanks to Julie who suggests Wordpress, but I would not want to pester my web designer to make yet another change (Blogger to MT to Wordpress).

Speaking of my web designer, I have mentioned that she is very good, no? She is also reasonably priced and easy to work with. Find her at Pink Mochi. Now, where have you heard that name before? Easy to remember.

And, finally, remember:

1. Dawn Eden. Tonight. UC Berkeley.
2. Me. Tomorrow Night. French Symbolists. St. Margaret Mary's Oakland.
3. The system coming in tonight might effectively end the tomato season. Getcher last BLT, just in case. And plan on picking a lot for putting up. You might not have another chance until July.

Allright...try this

I don't get it. Setting the thing to not accepting any comments seems to have done precisely nothing.

So it is back. If you tried to comment before this morning and your comment is not in the post below, please let me know here. Thanks.

It is time for the Keilholtz Academy to start up. Posts of more substance later (yeah, right! Is there ever a post of substance here? They might take away my license).

Two quick things, though:

1. Dawn Eden will be speaking at UC Berkeley tomorrow night, co-hosted by the St. Anthony of Padua Institute and the UC Berkeley Lepanto League.

2. Your humble blog host will be speaking on the night after about French Symbolism and nineteenth century neo-Byzantine trends at St. Margaret Mary's in Oakland.

Eden's talk will be at 7pm. Mine will be at 7 or 7:30. I will have to check to make sure that I am there on time.

Oh yeah, did I mention that we got a gecko?

Watching it eat is beautiful.

We're back (almost)

We are in Redding, en route to Vallejo. When I came on to check the blog, there were about 1300 spam comments. So much for disabling comments. I am not going to change anything until I get back tomorrow, but I have a favor to ask:

If you could attempt to post a comment on this post, I would appreciate it. Then I will see if any legitimate comments are getting through. Then, if your comment does not show up tomorrow night, when I will be changing the settings, then let me know by way of a comment on Wednesday.

This spam thing is driving me batty.

Away for a few days

We are going camping for a few days. I have turned off comments, to avoid the thousands of spam comments that would otherwise await me.

Have a good week. I will be back Sunday or Monday.

Where Does She Come Up With This Stuff?

Today Amalia had a great schoolwork session. However, her room is not fit for human habitation, so I sent her up to do some picking up.

"You mean I have to clean the whole thing?"

"You just need to pick up the animals and dolls and toys"

"All of it?"

"Well, yes."

"I can't"

"Why not?"

"Because it's too hard."

"No it isn't."

"It is too difficult for some people!"

Some people. Yes, I suppose, some people, out there, might find picking up some clutter too difficult. Unfortunately for Amalia, I don't consider her one of them. Egads.

The Mixer...

Gregg mentions my fixing of the mixer.

I was able to extract the broken gear (a nylon worm gear that had become worn down to sort of a nylon putty), to replace it, pack the gears with grease and to get the whole gear assembly back together. Yippeeee!

However, in my fiddling, I managed to disconnect something from the motor, because when I went to test it, I got a dead zero. Nada.

Which is not really all that bad, because it means that the highest probability is that one wire got knocked off a terminal or I forgot to reground it or something easy to fix like that. However, cracking the thing open, keeping track of all the screws, taking apart the gears, finding the wire, putting the gears back together, etc., is going to take a good couple of hours. Grrrrr.

That, of course, is why God invented beer.

Melanie walked in the room and asked, "what are you doing?"

"Oh, just some blogging," I replied.

"It's not one of those 'I have nothing to blog about ones, is it? Those are the worst kind of blogs.'"

I will not comment on the weather. I will not comment on the weather....

I might not comment on the weather, but I am just about at the point of posting other such mind-numbing mundana, just to let the world know that I am still here.

Of course, without good content, does it matter?

Will there ever be good content here?

Has there ever been good content here?

Pro'ly not, but some folks keep coming back for more. Gluttons for punishment.

I am not even going to say "oh, check by tonight, cause that's when the good stuff gets posted," because who knows? Perhaps. Probably not. I don't know. This weekend might be a tough one. I have to finish compiling the database of my paintings by Sunday, and there are already demands on my time. Perfectly good demands, and not altogether uninteresting, but that is how it goes. The good ones are the worst ones, because I have even less incentive to wiggle out of them.

No luck in finding a good arachnid book, by the way. The hunt continues.

Speaking of hunting, recess is over, and Amalia and I are going to check out an area with ample wasps' nests (with bug vacuum and first aid kit). Wish us luck!

Another worthwhile use of resources...

Or, the doctoring industry strikes again!

Who authorizes funding for this sort of crap?

In other news...I know I have been absent these last few days. Busy weekend (inlaws in town, trip to Marine World (know known by the horrid name Six Flags Discovery Kingdom: Sea, Land, Air), cooking, more cooking, fundraising event (I scooped more ice cream in one day than in the rest of my life. It took two days for feeling to come back to the pad of my thumb)), followed by the start of school (with me playing the role of teacher - speaking of which, this post will be brief. Class at the Keilholtz Academy starts promptly at 9am).

I know, that is no way to run a blog, and all that. I still haven't posted my photos of Vegas, I still haven't ranted against Sacha Cohen, I still need to post more pictures of art (and that is another story, and another reason that blogging will probably be light - I have to get this stuff done).

The fun thing? We are studying arthropoda, particularly spiders and insects. I bought Amalia a bug vacuum and she is turning into quite the little hunter. Now I need to find a good field guide for arachnid identification. I have a good insect book, but need arachnids.

Recommendations?

Chupacabra?

For those of you into cryptozoology, treat this article as an early Christmas present.