Son Jack calls to say he’d been to see the Ang Lee blockbuster, but that he doesn’t like it all that much. “I’ve seen this movie before,” he said. “But it was called “Same Time Next Year” with Alan Alda and it was a lot better and a lot funnier. It even intended to be funny, unlike this movie that was only funny when it tried to be so melodramatic. This emperor has no clothes.”

Guess which fox will investigate the henhouse of whether Bush violated the laws when he ordered wiretaps on all of us? Why, the inspector general of the NSA who approved the wiretaps in the first place, of course! Who did you expect?

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 11, 2006; Page A04

The National Security Agency’s inspector general has opened an investigation into eavesdropping without warrants in the United States by the agency authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a letter released late yesterday.

The big piece of my Saturday was spent, regrettably, with beautiful young models. Boy, don’t you just hate it when that happens? To make matters worse, they were shooting fashion and that included running around in not much clothes at all. Yes, very sad for me. Of course, I was a grown up and averted my eyes at the appropriate times. Mainly because their mothers were about, but I was a gentleman and want the credit for that despite any other circumstance.

OK. That was the joke portion.

Really, it was a fascinating adventure. Hairsylists, make up artists, photographer from Dallas, and about five models were involved along with the lovely Juliet from Elastic Cafe that provided all the assistance and personnel needed for the shoot of her models. The part I watched and/or participated in was along the west side of Western about 4th to 6th Street in an industrial area around the Oklahoma League for the Blind, just south of Linwood Diagonal. The workmen and gang members and whatnot kept circling in their pickups and we soon learned not to let models in skimpy clothes stand on a corner. LOL. If they stopped, I told the guys that the girl was my daughter and that got them to leave. How do you say “That’s my daughter” in Spanish? OH! “Esta Mi Familia”? Anyway, you can imagine how curious people were to see these leggy young girls sitting in a chair in the middle of an empty street next to an empty corrugated steel warehouse along the railroad tracks. The young women seemed to have fun climbing over huge truck tires and onto smashed, wrecked cars in short dresses and wild costumes. I think I was the only guy on the shoot not wearing eye liner or mascara. What’s that about? Anyway, it was fun and some of the pictures (digital, so we got to see them fairly quickly on nearby laptops) were very good. Moms actually were present overseeing the action, so it wasn’t anything any mom couldn’t see. Later, everyone went to Juliet’s house for some lingere shots in her basement and bedroom, but I didn’t participate in that. No, really, I went to get some dinner instead. Shut up.

I went from there to Paseo for a lovely meal and stayed for the band, Tincture, a reggae group made up of members of other bands. One of the bandmembers was from The Ills, and I heard from Craig the bartender that the keyboard artist from the Ills had tried to separate two fighting dogs and got one joint of one of his fingers bitten all the way off. Not good for a keyboardist.

Anyway, the band was jammin’, as they say in the reggae world.

I sat with my hero, M. Hoffner, and we had a long talk about women, and came to the conclusion that we know nothing at all. Also, that we are very unlikely to ever figure it out. Also, that our past experience had only been confusing and not enlightening. Also, and this is the most important conclusion of them all, that the number of really great looking women that walked into Galileo’s last night was unique in our experience.

Really. Shut up.

Both male and female, it was a great looking crowd. Lots of guys with square jaws and broad shoulders mixed with boys with curly, unkept hair and puppy dog eyes mixed with long lines of absolutely gorgeous women. I first noticed about three or four brunette, Mediterranean women come in and each of them was a knock out. After that, a few Hispanic girls with dark hair and eyes and olive complexions came in. Then, the Nordic, tall blondes came in, followed by the Russian law students all dolled up and it just kept on going like that.

By 11:30, after the band FINALLY started playing (my one gripe is that the band was very late starting) the dance floor was full of people dancing, although not necessarily with one another. It was one of those chatty, buzzy, electric nights that we go to bars to experience. People having fun without getting loud, obnoxious and very drunk. Of course, I saw people I know like Jonathon Majid and his son, Josh, and Kat with a K, and Jasmine the belly dancer, and Mumblin’ Jeff and on and on. Eventually, Juliet showed up for a bite of my d’Cheny pizza, but she was tired and made an early night of it while I stayed on for the music.

Well, the weather is too nice for me not to be out with the Miata top down, so if you want to know more, get out more.

Art by new artists, great food, belly dancing, great music, great friends, it was a fun filled Friday for Blogblah!!!

And the last shall be first, as it says in the Bible…

I bought a Watermelon Slim CD at his release party at Kathy Reynold’s Sober Grounds coffee house last night and I’m listening to it on the laptop whilst I write this drivel. Damn good blues. Da-um good. The house was packed with folks jacked up on coffee and Slim and the Workers knocked ‘em down with a great performance and great music. Wow! What a wonderful way to end the evening. Saw about a dozen folk I know rockin’ out. Joked with Pinky from the Snakeshakers about her being a blues singer out listening to blues on her time off. She’ll be playing at Sober Grounds in another week or two (forget which, but I’ll plug her if I get a chance). I’ll have to say my Armani suit was NOT in keeping with the general motorcycle Teeshirt and jeans attire, so dress casual.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the evening…

We gathered as ususual at the Paseo for coffee, drinks and desultory discussion of matters sexual. Somehow on friday, the talk always goes to sex. This Friday, the table was dominated by too many males for the talk to be very interesting. Just the usual lockerroom stuff without the feminine finesse we usually get. As the women started showing up, SuzArt and the Debster for example, we decided to do the Friday art show first of the month openings.

The first place I went was across the street to Sowzierre, Diane Coady’s place. She was showing some works by Paul Wingo that I really liked and as soon as I get the next little piece of cash together, I’ll buy at least one. The pricetags were too low not to take advantage. Diane says Wingo is not well and undergoing treatment, so a little cash won’t be a bad thing for him, either.

Next, to the PAA space just north. Michael Wilson was showing some killer stuff and I took a minute to see her portfolio. She’ll be a collectable artist very soon. PAA also had their portraitist working on an oil of a lovely young black woman. I also still very much like the work by local attorney Garvin Issacs and hope to acquire especially a small piece with a modest price being shown there at ArtSpice.

On our way to my first visit in a very long time to IAO to see a couple of Austin artists, we stopped at Joy Reed’s JRB Art and I am SO glad we did. The Michele Mikesell paintings of human figures with bird heads were wonderful. I was completely knocked out by the cardinal and blue jay figures and the one with the yellow as primary color was without question the best piece in the show in my opinion. It wasn’t the first piece to catch my eye, though. A Jennifer Barron oil was posted on a closet door and it was an architechtural and design cityscape of a stairwell and I very much liked it just as I walked in. The Gary insisted we look at the photography of Melanie Seward to see one particular photo of a young man in the nude. “If I’m going to have ab envy, I want the rest of you to have it, too,” The Gary insisted. Joy is showing the works of a dozen new, young artists and I highly recommend the show, juried by Joe Andoe.

It was a little odd going back to IAO after my boycott over my last summer’s fit with the governing board. But, it was a new year and, after all, it’s not about the assholes on the board, it’s about the artists and the work. In this case, I particularly wanted to see Dana McBride’s work as she’s connected to The Oz. I was oddly drawn to the textural quality of the stained concrete work of the other artist showing (can’t recall his name right this second, dammit) and understood immediately why Dana was chosen to show her oils, brightly colored and much more in the way of round, feminine shapes than the male artists we ordinarily see. “Claude remembered” struck a deep emotional chord and if you don’t know why, then you aren’t likely reading my blog.

From there, about 8 of us went to dinner at Gopuram on west 23d street for both the India food buffet and the belly dancing. The blonde Jasmine with glasses had told me she’d be belly dancing and, of course, I had to go see. It was worth it. I love the Chicken Tiki Masala and the lamb korma and Nan with yogurt and dill sauce and … well … YUM!!! The dancing is in a separate room, but for a kick on a Friday it is well worth the effort. Young Jasmine was lovely, of course, as were the brunettes who led the dance troop.

This is when we went to Sober Grounds, to complete the circle of this post.

A successful evening by my lights.

Lit Bar Mosaic Exhibition

“Fractured Light”

This show will feature a selection of works from 18 mosaic artists from around the nation and Canada, curated by Brooks Tower, including such artists as renowned author and artist Sonia King, Irina Charny, Lynn Moor, Sudarshan Deshmukh, Julie Richey and others, showing a range of materials and styles. “Nut and Bolt”, a work by Kristi Bunch that won best of show at the Society of American Mosaic Artists 2005 annual exhibition, will be one of the pieces. Brooks Tower, a local mosaic artist who displays and sells his art nationally and internationally, will also display some of his work, one of which, “Bucky loves Meemaw”, will be in the 2006 SAMA exhibition.

Running from Jan 17 to mid-April. Opening Jan. 17, 6-8 p.m., at the Lit Bar, 208 E. Sheridan, in Bricktown. Contact Brooks Tower at 405-528-0612, [email protected] for further info.