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SORRY

If you are offended by my intellectual Pot- Porie, please let me know and I’ll not bother you with a notice of any of my new blogs.  Believe it or not, my selection of friends from all over the world,  is sometimes mis-directed. 

 ROBIN WILLIAMS REPLACEMENT?

Maybe I have led a sheltered life, but I just came across a British comedienne, Eddie Izzard  -  With a name like that, he has to be a comedian.  He thinks a lot like me but so much more cleverly.  His story of Noah & his Ark may be better even  than Cosby’s classic. But don’t let his dressing up as a woman deter you.

CHERNOBLE!

I have mentioned years ago about the great shed they were going to build over the destroyed hulk of Chernoble Nuclear Power plant in Russia. Well, a world-wide consortium is in the middle of actually constructing the thing. May be the largest movable object on earth. Go to Novarka and find the site that has the computer graphics of the whole project.  Then go to Borgues or Mammoet to see how they skidded the mammoth roof.  While you’re doing all that see the National Geographics short  “0 seconds from Disaster!”, showing why the whole thing exploded and the dangers involved. My son (Zaidi) was at the San Francisco Airport heading for Russia with a small theater group  when they heard about it. They chanced it (The show must go on!) and were not in the area near Kiev where the problem  was. 

SELF PUBLISHING                      

     

  In case you are unaware that I have self-published four books,  I want you to have a chance at any of them .  However, the first one HILLSIDE HOMES may not be available at a price you can afford, as It became some kind of a cult classic and sold for a couple of hundred dollars on ebay for a while.  I published 1,000 copies in 1980 the hard way, writing it, designing the layout, getting the photos made in some weird format, getting the color copies of the cover made, etc. etc., and putting it all together to give to a print shop. But then I was faced with what to do with all these books.  This was all a lot of fun as I could get the page size right, with a square format and a blank spot on right edge for your thumb to capture the page (You just wouldn’t believe how many design decisions go into something like this. Anyway, I ended up selling thru Amazon, paying $8 to print each book and selling to them for $6.  If you do the math you’ll see why I’m not driving a BMW. 

  Later on, after that, I managed to decypt on-line publishing. This is all done on line with no actual contact with another human .  The real benefit is you can virtually order & print one at a time.  I managed to publish ATELIER (the story of renovating an old apple processing plant into Artists Studios) and THE LITTLE BOOK OF BIG TRUCKS (I just LOVE European big rigs!), as well as THE EDUCATION OF AN ARCHIITECT (Kind of a bio on getting into the design business, but a little bit dirty).  You can get most of them on LULU direct or give me a call.

LAMONT'S SUICIDE HOT LINE!

How to kill yourself cleanly, not the Heming-way(Swallow the shotgun, probably the worse  case scenario for you’re  miserable relatives and friends).  Most, if not all of these so-called suicide hot lines are set up to talk you out of killing yourself. We, @ my Hotline, have a different program, convincing you to kill yourself without leaving a terrible, disgusting mess for others. I just can’t imagine what people like Hemingway were thinking when they put a shotgun in their mouth to blow their brains, skull all over a room. What does that say about how he had no concern or respect for the poor bastards (family?) who had to clean up this whole, disgusting mess? Now, I’m no expert, but I’ve found a couple of folks who exited this miserable life cleanly. I found a guy hanging in a Berkeley apartment once who had tied a ceiling light fixture cord around his neck, then kicked the chair out. Now you would think this was OK, but he had bloody ooze hanging out of his nose, in a long disgusting string. Yuck! But now, my recommendation is to pull up a nice comfortable chair in your garage (a Barka Lounger is perfect),  Close up any vents to the outside, Start your inefficient car, set down and sleep right on off this planet. This results in a minimum mess. However, I do understand that when your body dies, it releases your bowels & bladder so be aware to wear Depends or equal. This assumes of course, you have left the inevitable suicide Note. Now, as an added service, I have several Suicide Notes already written, just pick out one that corresponds to your miserable state of affairs’.

NOTE #1

Goodby, cruel  world. It wasn’t my idea to be born here (Don’t be so sure, Buster). 

NOTE #2

I really don’t know if I should really do this. They have made it so hard to die these days. I had planned to leap out into space off the Golden Gate Bridge, but, damn! They just put a net that would prevent me from my last sally forth.

NOTE #3

Aw, FUCK IT !!

BIG THREE

During WW2 Roosevelt, Churchill and General de Gaulle had a conference in Casablanca to discuss the liberation of Europe. Churchill suffered acutely from the absence of alcohol at the insistence of Roosevelts deference to the Sultan’s religion.  Churchill’s program in a note to H. Hopkins for the day was; “Diner at the white House (dry, alas!) with the Sultan. After dinner; recovery from the above”.

VIDEO ALERT

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CASABLANCA

  I came across some interesting notes regarding the great cult movie ‘Casablanca’ while I was reading a book about the Allies invasion of North Africa in 1942.

            ‘Casablanca, city of hope and despair located in French Morocco in North Africa – the meeting place of adventurers, fugitives, criminals, refugees lured into the dangerous oasis by hope of escape to the Americas.’              (Liner notes from trailer)

A play called ‘Everybody comes to Rick’s’ was picked up by  Hal Wallis (Warner Bros.) the day after Pearl Harbor. Rick Blaines’ (The author) attitude corresponded to Walliss’ ideas of the probable involvement of the U.S. in the war.  What is mind boggling is that Ronald Reagan was initially considered for the part. Can you imagine what that would of done to the movie?  Ingrid Bergman was perfect but even she didn’t know how the movie would end a month before shooting was completed.  The original play ended with Ilsa  staying behind with Rick, but Hal fortunately had Rick develop a case of selflessness and got her and Lazlo Letters of Transit to Lisbon and on their way to America (or back into the underground). What a guy!

ON THE BEACH, THE MOVIE

  Near the beginning of the cold war, Nevil Shute wrote a book in 1957 about the death of all people on Earth due to an Atomic war between China and Russia. The resulting movies deviated a bit from the book (Why do they do that?). but still engaging enough that all politicians should have seen or read it. But, that’s just wishful thinking, as not many wanted to think of a scenario that could be so disastrous as all that. Here we are yet able to destroy the entire world with just a few of the thousands of missiles, but, we really don’t want to consider what we are really doing.  Yikes!  The story focuses on the last folks alive, in Southern Australia, detailing some pretty gritty concepts, like, you were going to die in a couple of days, yet, your year old baby would probably live for a few more days, dying alone, un-aided in her last miserable days. Would you give her the free government drug so it wouldn’t happen that way? 

FORSYTES’ SURPRISE

The serial ‘The Forsyte Sagas’ are right up my alley, showing how love manages to draw the maximum amount of pain from all those involved with such shenanigans.  However, on an up-beat note, one of he characters, Bosinny , the far sighted Architect, is hired by Saomes (an up-tight lawyer) to design his country house and forthwith runs off with the clients’ wife (Shades of F. Lloyd Wright), we are treated to a very fine example of contemporary architecture, a huge surprise to me in this Soap opera.  I was so surprised in fact, I had to find out how this design managed to manifest on this series. Turns out the production designer cobbled together four architects, Frank Lord Wright, Rennie Mackintosh (Scotland) and a couple of Brits, Volsey and Godwin, who supplied inspiration for the interiors.  These last  two were influenced by Japanese designs, as the Japs had just come out of the closet after hundreds of years.  Check the series out if for no other reason than to see the house called ‘Robin Hill’ and the interiors were well done also, considering the time in England of 1870’s. 

UPGRADE TIME!

I received an Apple ipod Nano , the smallest thing they make except the watch, for one of my incessant birthdays that seem to come around about every month. The Nano comes with some great ear pods but no directions at all. Since I had no six year old kid around to help me, I went to old Google and found a 30 page document I could download in order to turn the thing on.  I only printed out about half of it as the rest was all about the Podcasts (What the fuck is that?), Videos (I just want music!), Fitness (I’m already doing Tai Chi, leave me alone!), Radio (No! I don’t listen to radios with their constant advertising), and Photos (No! I just want Music !). This is not going to be easy, as I had up-loaded (What’s the difference between up-load & down-loading?)  all my CD’s onto my computer (itunes) so I could transfer them to Joy’s ipod (The bigger one). However, somewhere most of all that got dumped by Apple or someone (I get blamed mostly for this kind of stuff).  However, meanwhile, I gave all my CD’s away as we had them on digital, right?  So now I am running around, asking my friends if I can borrow my CD back for a short time. That doesn’t help a whole lot as now I have to figure how to organize these tunes on Playlists, Songs, Artists, Albums, Genres, even composers (Bach, Ray Charles, etc.). Once I get all this shit unraveled, all I have to do is find a Dock/Speaker/Radio combo (They don’t come without Radio) so I can listen to my swell tunes of Thelonious Monk or Alirio Diaz, guitar. These ’Docks’ cost about $60 but there seems to be a problem. The Nano has downsized the charger from the ipod and they don’t make them yet in the small size for Nanos!  And to think I gave away my turntable with my vinyl recordings!

VERMEER

 

VIDEO ALERT

Artists! “The jig is up”.  I know how you did it! I just saw Teller’s (Penn & Teller) documentary of the expose of the method of Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch painter of 1632 (Remember the Girl with the Pearl Earring?).  Tim Jenison,  who made zillions designing computer games (I think) was inspired by David Hockney’s book that Vermeer had some technological method of painting.  He noticed that all of his paintings were about the same small size.  Tim built a Camera Obscura, refined it and showed how Johannes could copy exactly what the ‘Camera’ showed. Tim had never done a painting before (I think he painted his house once) but proceeded to build a replica of Vermeers room, then projected the image onto a small board. This guy was motivated! He spent about five years, about 180 days, painting his picture. He even had to see it in person in the4 Queen’s palace in

England. You’ll be amazed at his painting. I couldn’t have done better myself.   

 

 

 

THE CHAIR

Every real Designer has to test his mettle by designing and building a chair. I had the opportunity during the mid-‘60s’ and the current owner of the house it was designed for had a German Craftsman, Kirsten Keifer build a couple of replicas as I still had the drawings. (at $2000 each). These were featured in a show I had at the Laguna Beach Art Museum a few years ago.  The real challenge was the chair was adjustable from Lounge to Dining by a very simple wing-nut turn on the base. Recently, Kirsten (from his shop in Germany)  made another but upgraded the materials from mahogany & fabric to Rosewood and Italian leather, plus his excellent craftsmanship.  The photos here are of his latest version but also show my table, with extendable top (+ five feet). $3000. 

 

THIRSTY?

How bad does our ‘Drought’ have to get until we realize we are not utilizing a massive source of potable water in our back yard? Our Santa Rosa Waste Water processing facility alone purifies about  20 million gallons of water a day, but we can’t use this except to water farm land. Water that comes out of the plant is clear, drinkable H2O!. If you put that water into reservoirs used for drinking water, you would have to reprocess it to be clean enough to be drinkable again as reservoirs contain too many contaminents due to birds, run-off, etc.. We have to alter our attitudes regarding the use of this water. The astronauts drink water that is distilled from their sweat (water vapor) and urine as well as the urine from their lab animals (Like rats). Let’s get real and begin utilizing the tertiary treated water from our Sewer Treatment Plants.

 

MOVIE HYSTERIA

When last in Italy, I sent friends on a day trip to Rome . I gave them an itenerary of the usual Tourist Traps ( Sistene Chapel, St. Peters, etc) but all had to see the Treve Fountain. Now, the fount in itself is pretty amazing, as it kind of morphs out a the large adjacent building with the pool in a small kind of ampitheatre. BUT. The tourist crowds there are some of the worst in Rome, and only due to a movie of 1954 “Three coins in the Fountain” an “undeniably Sweet “ movie. It’s a fairly small area but with the throngs of Americans, Brits & Germans it is a madhouse. So everyone has to toss a penny in the water as good luck or whatever they remember from the movie, but the Romans have to clean it up every night as it is full of coins. Maybe they should fund a re-make of it using dollar coins (or dollar Euros, a coin) in order to boost up the rent.

Mob at Fountain

 

 

 

 

April 21, '15

April 21, ‘15

BEYOND GAY

  like myself, most of you have read about people changing their sex. I've always been a little confused about what that really meant. I remember the first one, Christine Joergenson, who changed from a guy to a woman in some scandinavian country.  I always wondered exactly what did He?she do ?  Recently, it has come up due to Snowden or some whistleblower and someone associated with someone famous. So you can imagine my excitement when I was reading "Bangkok 8" ( by John Burdett) and it was a principle part of the plot,  This may not be true but you might as well take my word for it as it sounds realistic. There is a the Charmabutra Hospital, twenty stories high, in Bankok that specializes in this procedure. 

   The author claims Bangkok is the capitol of penis transplants due to the many jilted wives in Thailand who feel that cutting off the wayward dick will solve that problem (Looks like it would to me!).  Anyway, the bottom line is that it's easier to change a penis into a vagina than the other way around as the reconstruction of that Vorpel sword is still in it's infancy. He claims that they do 1000 changes to every one hundred in the West. (And I thought only a few did this over the year). South Africa does a lot of dick reconstruction due to a plethora of botched circumcisions.

  So vaginoplasty  begins by cutting off the penis & balls, turning the correct skin into a hole so that it might function like a normal vagina. He claims all men have the space for it.  I find this hard to believe!   Anyway, that' s not all of it.

They have to be treated with drugs, psychiatry, hormone injections, et all to get the full effect. A women's voice has to be higher, therefor the Adam's apple is shaved a bit to tighten it up. Don't forget to slip in a couple of perfect saline inserts for your perfect breasts, (No silicone, please). Learn how to sashay around a bit and you're good to go. I think you can get this done for about $6,000 in Thailand,

MR NATURAL

  Let's talk about Natural drugs. From my early days of experimentation with Halucigenics,  I came to the conclusion that if you kept to “Natural” drugs, e.i. Peyote and  Mushroom , you would be better off in the long run. My theory is this; With natural drugs, you pay (read ‘ hours of major nausea’) before you get high or an  altered consciousnous, but with chemical doses (LSD, etc) you bypass the sickness part, but wait!  You make up for it afterwards, but unknown to you, it affects your poor brain in ways you don’t notice. The AmerIndians didn’t seem to have many mental problems after using Peyote for hundreds of years, but how many nut cases have I seen due to a long usage of LSD? (You can  check my first wife, for one).  Some people are going to have a bad trip, but at least they are working it out at the source, and not later on, unbeknown to them, as they don’t relate their problems to earlier doses of a chemical.

 

THE BEAUTIFUL KRONER

  Designed by the Norwegian Architect, Snohetta, One side consists of brilliant colors in a  wonderful abstract form, while the other side contains photos of various activities that are extant in the country.

VIDEO ALERT

  Being an old Beatnik/ Hippie/ my Jazz roots go way back and I certainly remember Clark Terry, an outstanding trumpeter, among other talents. As he grew old he began teaching other young Jazz men, such as Quincy Jones, and was certainly influential to Jazzmen like Miles, etc.

This documentary revolves around a young blind piano player who became tight with Terrry as he was dying of old age. Justin Kauflin  was a contender in a Theolonious Monk contest in New York  but but failed to win. However, there is enough piano by Justin to satisfy us all as he is phenomenal. Terry died in 2014 at the age of 93, but before that happens, you'll experience the great love between the two musicians, and maybe, even a tear or two may escape from your hardened heart.   

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APRIL 9

MR NATURAL

One of my role models has been Crumb's 'Mr Natural'. You younger folks probably don't know of him. Early in my professional career I became enamored with him and consequently have acted on some of his principles. The first inkling my friends had that I had come out of the Unnatural Closet was I wanted to grow my beard and forever (it turned out) never to feel the razors edge on my facade. Now that every guy model in Vogue and on the courts and diamonds of major sports has a Micky Mouse rendition of facial air, it may not sound so radical, but in 1960 I outraged the Laguna Beach social circles by such out behavior.Come to think of it, my morals were pretty close to Mr. Naturals also, Zero!

THE GREAT POSTAL SERVICE

The USPS is currently getting bids from major auto manufacturers to design & build a upgraded version of their current vehicle. It seems it is too small, doesn't have air bags, etc. (How many air bags do you need for a rear-ender?) . They have set aside $6,000,000,000 ((That's BILLION) for a fleet of 180,000 mini trucks with big clutch and right hand drive. I hope they do better with the design than Grumman did with the current one. If anyone asks me, I would contract out to a Italian Industrial Designer for a design first, then put it out to bid. Electric drive would be a no brainer here. Maybe they could also just stop printing new styles of stamps every week, forget about the serrated edges (these are not tear off anymore.

GREEN REVOLUTION

Recently we had a new hospital (Sutter) built here in Santa Rosa and they are spouting their new 'Prestigious energy and environmental' rating from the U. S. Green Council. As you must know by now, I am a rabid opponent of these wonderful awards. but wait, lets take a closer look at this one.

First of all, you have to hire a 'Green LEED Consultant’ to the tune of several thousand dollars , mostly to fill out a bunch of bull-shit forms required by the government. And maybe you don't have to do anything special (Other than hire this guy) so let's take a look at the details.

1. They had to upgrade all the plumbing fixtures to low-flow units. Well, the Building Code requires this so what's the big deal?
2. 2. They got some credits because there was a water well on the site.
3. They did use some kind of Fuel cell technology, (I have to look that up).
4. Greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by stopping all vehicles that were idling more than 10 min. How much did they pay someone to monitor all that?
5. They used some recycled content in flooring as it reduces impact on landfills. All that takes is use a more expensive floor.
6. They controlled rain run-off into Swales (Landscaped) before dumping into the storm drain. WOW!
7. This probably took about a thousand pages of documentation to accomplish all this, that by the way, was mostly required by the current codes.

SPORTS

The comedians Key & Peele - Broadcasting a Sports program. (Football, baseball, basketball, hockey)

“ Welcome back to another few hours spent watching adult men play a simple child's game, all the while being paid more than the President”