La Danse, by Henri Matisse

My old friend, Jon Carroll, of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote the following column a while back. I was just going to quote it, but it is such a good read (and so hard to find) I think I'll just steal the whole thing.

Chronicle Books published a collection of Jon's columns a few years back, Near-Life Experiences. I will tell you this: his column "How To Drive In Indonesia" is worth the price of the book alone. I have read it so many times over the years, laughing out loud starting about the third paragraph and on through the rest of the piece.

In the eighties, I used to see Jon at the M&M Tavern, at the bar, stack of magazines and papers, a drink, a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray arrayed around him, deep in concentration, reading, working. He hates me to say things like this, but he was a true hero of mine in my youth, along with David Bowie, Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, columnist Herb Caen, and, of course, Kojak.

Herewith Jon's Matisse column: 

If you're going to read only one thousand-page book about a French artist this year, make it "The Unknown Matisse," by Hilary Spurling, in two volumes, winner of many awards, filled with big fun, poverty, struggle, scandal and lots of paintings. Cast of hundreds, many of them famous. Can't miss.

I do want to direct your attention to the color plates in the first volume, particularly plate No. 6. The caption reads: "The Dinner Table,' 1896-97. (100 x 131 cm.) The first in a long line of Matisse's works to outrage the public at the annual Paris salons; the other three remained too disturbing to show to anyone except friends in private."

Oh my; it's those naughty French artists again, free and zany in Montmartre, painting things to shock the bourgeoise. And what could it be? It is a woman arranging flowers at a dinner table. The woman is fully clothed. The food on the table is mostly fruit, including pears and lemons. The painting is, if not precisely representational, entirely uncryptic -- a plate looks like a plate, a chair looks like a chair, a wine decanter looks like a wine decanter. There are no disemboweled rabbits, watches floating in space, great smeary bits of color, glued-on bits of hair and fingernails -- nothing like that.

LP Cover Lover: The world's greatest album covers

Being a blogging blogger means more than just putting up old album convers with naked women on them, but right now it seems like enough.	I spent the entire weekend finishing the final piece, The Forever Spring, for my upcoming cd of electronic orchestral works, Sun Transform System. I am too tired transcribe the poetry these masterpieces elicit. Maybe tomorrow.

Intellectual Whores Homepage

Home of the Ladder Theory in male/female relationships.

I can't remember how I found this site - so often the case, isn't it? But I periodically return for a laugh. This guy has given the nature of attraction a lot of thought. And I must say that his theories and analyses of the the ongoing situation are consistent with my own extensive experience and observations over the years. 

I have been both asshole and nice guy in years past. Nice guy (listens to her problems, is sympathetic, polite, etc.) almost without fail gets relegated to friend status. Asshole (showing up drunk once or twice a month and rapping loudly on her window after the bars close) gets welcomed into her warm bed.

Ladies: You can protest all you want, but the facts are the facts.

I love his bit about what women say they care about but really don't: intelligence, sense of humor, honesty, sensitivity etc. ... I know ... that stuff counts ... later. 

Not saying I agree with everything he says all the time, but the Intellectual Whores Homepage, but much of what he says rings true.

Salient excerpts from the site after the jump on the "Cuddle Bitch"— a place no man wants to go, and also on Beethoven's Fur Elise, a brilliant analysis of how Louie von B probably used the same piece of music to seduce countless countesses. 

(Note to self: would this be disingenuous thing to do? Must ponder when time affords.)