Artist on art quotes continues

 Nixon expected "square entertainment " from the Ray Coniff singers at a White House gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of Reader's Digest magazine on 1/28/72. However,  Carole Feraci, a singer, decided she wanted to give the Prez a lecture on Nam.

Ray Coniff apologized after the concert, and I'm guessing he didn't suspect this from his group. 

Hey Carole, you knew  the gig was square but you made it all about you.

June 7, 2025

“Some folks want their luck buttered.” Thomas Hardy, wrote in The Mayor of Casterbridge

June 15, 2025

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? " excerpt from Hemingway

Tragically Hip lyric: " Like boots or hearts, oh, when they start ,they really fall apart

July 1, 2025

I was about  ten-years old when I first heard Don’t Step on the Grass, Sam by John Kay &

Steppenwolf. Gradually, I figured out it was about pot, not a lawn.

July 10, 2025

Just a reminder from Kerouac on the Beats: 

"Oh the Beat generation was just a phrase I used in the 1951 written manuscript of On the Road to describe guys like Moriarty who run around the country in cars looking for odd jobs, girlfriends, kicks. It was thereafter picked up by West Coast Leftist groups and turned into a meaning like “Beat mutiny” and “Beat insurrection” and all that nonsense;"

July 19, 2025

In the late 1930s Neville Chamberlain, UK PM,  referred to Czechoslovakia as “a far-away country of which we know nothing.” 🙄

July 25, 2025

 John Kay lyrics for Tighten up your wig: "I'd like to mention Junior Wells, we stole his thing from him, and he from someone else"

July 28, 2025

 Rachel Tucker , a star on West End ,credits her success to  “came out of her mum’s belly singing”.🤔

She is playing Myrtle Wilson in The Great Gatsby musical at the London Coliseum.

August 23, 2025

“I saw a sign that said 'Drink Canada Dry'. So I did.” Brendan Behan

Dec 14, 2025

“Death is like an old whore in a bar--I'll buy her a drink but I won't go upstairs with her”-Ernest Hemingway, To Have and Have Not 

Jan 4, 2026

Are the Tibilis nightspots like Bassiani and Mtkvarze in Georgia's capital city  going to make the Beasties Boys song , fight for your right to party, it's anthem? , 

Apparently, clubgoers need the freedom to party to techno beats in order to support, LGBTQ+ rights and EU integration. 

Jan 9, 2026

Germany named the accordion, the instrument of the year for 2026. 🤔

Jan 15, 2026

Chuck Berry wanted to to jam with Nat King Cole a few times, stating, “The Big Band Era is my era." Too bad it didn't occur.

April 20, 2026

Emmanuel Macron emphasizies the imporantance of diversity of opinion in the publishing world when it comes  to 170 authors leaving the publisher Grasset, owned by Victor Pollore, who leans to the right and states a small caste inside the company felt it was in charge and triggered the protest/exit. 

Those upset feel Pollore is an an extreme, right wing authoritarian

Funny that Macron is interested in diversity of opinion at Grasset but wants limits at X.

June 5, 2026

 Bank of England  announced a short list of wildlife images that could replace wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, author Jane Austin , etc on new banknotes. Austen is referred to as a cult author which apparently means she has a strong following that may resemble a cult.

In college I took a class  on Brit Lit in the 1800s and when it came to female writers, I preferred George Eliot to Jane Austen. Eliot used a male name to get published and was not a tranny.

Aug 2, 2026

Richard Wagner's "Rienzi" opened the Bayreuth festival's 150th anniversary. a few days ago. The close relationship between Wagner's descendants and Adolf Hitler who liked "Rienzi" affects how it's viewed. Sounds goofy years after Wagner died 

"It's a piece that's highly contaminated," Alexandra Szemerédy, stage director  for the opera

2022 quote blog

Jump starting my pen

Xmas at drug store

stocking suffers

on the floor

while the huffers

break  the door

Wheres Carol

Harks Herald

Swinging Noel

Scared, me ?

wrong door key

right house

lie on the lawn

sleep until dawn

dew me

Knits and knots

Tramp stamps and I love gramps

Needles & pins, losses and wins

Broke again, got the cramps
Strut outs, tuck-ins

On a walk

Turning in

Getting out

Aromas , branches

skip over a crack

 a girl I fucked,

a car I wrecked

no girls here

Warehouse bar

 Queens and  beers

Strips and cheers

Talk of tights

 bitchslaps

 flab

Rubber eraser, wow the lights

 drag  Donna Summer

 gave a hummer

To the slummer

Belfasting duties

Old Dublin towers

Paddy or Powers

Not on my person

Minister Jameson

Father Bushmills

Neither is swill

A Molotov cocktail

What the feck

Hit the deck

Paging Mel Gibson

Jesus had a brew
with Netanyahu
Pope spoke
in Aramaic
not Hebrew
spilled wine
over Palestine
no one could see
Mel from Galilee

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/26/uk-pope-holyland-jesus-idUKKBN0E618X20140526


Halloween daily(updated9/26/15)

bloody vampires
stiff zombies
films , drinks
sunken cheeks

alien nation
no elation
Hilary for
prison 2016


charlotte, you white harlot
shattered rear views
blocked white mews

crayon black
crayon white
on attack
in a fright

crayon red
crayon blue
need more hue
no thank you

F U Fidel

commie red
you're dead
it's swell
bye fidel

Masking tape 
you toss shit
at stupid sheets
to clean up the streets


Dead at door
Need milk after midnight
cookies, too
young man got the door
bullets, two

Bigot blues
slight or smelts
snow angel melts
that's not fair
prove you care
make it  re-shape
privileged jape

random flashback while wringing the words out: "Western Auto sold tennis balls in the late 70’s when tennis became popular in the blue collar neighborhoods."

Going Green
Green Tax flames
Macron plays games
ignites France
into violent dance

5/7/19: Need to find a way to work this into a ditty- it gave me a morning chuckle :  Swalwell, a Dem Prez candidate, stops short of calling for impeachment, calls Trump "a really bad kid.
6/11/19: another one worthy of a ditty:  June 10, 1845: Andrew Jackson’s African Grey parrot was removed from  the 7th American President's funeral for swearing.

3/14/20: I arrived at this line while trying to arrange some sketches in a short ramble called Western Carr on the 1950's art and Politics.
"McCarthy finding reds under the linoleum while Coen pretends he’s Goliath protecting his david."

7/17/20: This headline today, "Italian police intercept coffee beans stuffed with cocaine," takes me back to the old 1940s tune "who put the benzedrine in Mrs Murphy's ovaltine" by the Harry "The Hipster" Gibson.

3/2/21

backs up, backs turned

home jail for Sarkozy

French courts get dizzy

Loreal unblemished

march 12, 2022

 hopscotch between ice slivers

emotion quivers

not a day 

to play 

Grace Jones intones

walk in the rain

oct 8, 2022

 Last thing Tom needs is the cops knowing that he uses Joe to collect the bigger gambling debts. He fades into a dream about all the trouble he stirred up as an 18yr old when he pursued Nancy Trabiski, a longshoreman’s wife for a month, before he returned to girls his own age. Hetty doesn’t know that story. He wakes up thinking if Hetty inherits her aunt’s money, I can drop the betting book and exit this crumbling area

oct 15, 2022

In my 20s I made some brief some brief ventures into the local Baltimore music scene reciting my lyrics. The first day I could get the Lancettes together, the bassist played surf music while the guitarist ventured into Led Zep, and the drummer Lance thought he was playing behind Captain Beefheart. That brief session felt like an eternity, but a few days later we did fun free gig on a Sunday afternoon bill in a room in the UMBC Fine Arts building, and I recall Adolf K and Aziza finding me in the men's room to tell me we had the "look" to be an MTV band.

oct 29, 2022

Hockery cradles two bottles of clear liquor and is singing Country Death Song by the Violent Femmes while Santa gives him a dirty look.

Nov 26, 2022

 Sometimes, I'll stroll down to the BU Cafe and check out the waitress from Turkey, who does fascinating things with a toothpick and her tongue, but her Turk boys keep me at a distance. Interesting side shows in a joint that sells Greek food.

March 4, 2023

 Some jackass was swinging his elbows imitating a basketball player clearing space after grabbing a rebound. I avoided full contact but he busted my lips. Do you have any mouthwash?

Dec 2, 2023

Hey man, I noticed Harry sleeping in his truck with the engine running in your neighbor’s driveway.

Oh Christ one of the guests will be thrilled to bust a window. Let’s go rouse him..

working on short story: Burtons

Dec 19, 2024

France's Court of Cassation  rejected former President Sarkozy's appeal of an order which requires him to wear an ankle monitor at home while serving a one-year jail sentence for corruption.

Cassation courts interprets the law in a case, rather than re-examining the facts.

Sept 25, 2025

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been found guilty of criminal conspiracy in a case related to taking millions of euros of illicit funds from Gaddafi, but the Paris criminal court acquitted him of all other charges.

Oct 23 2025

Scroll back to 3/2/21 for the ditty.

Sarkozy is the first  ex-French president to be imprisoned since Pétain, who was jailed for treason in 1945 based on his collaboration with Nazi Germany

Jan 31, 2026

While reading a book on Eastern Europe, I was reminded of the Parthian Empire, controllers of most of the Silk Road.  They eventually settled in a region in what is now northeastern Iran.

Their mounted archers gave the Romans difficulty on the battlefieldsfrom about 247 BC to 224 AD.

June 18, 2026

Reading a book on the French Revolution and  am reminded of how quickly Robespierre turned on his allies, particularly Danton.

Unsure why i'm so tuned into France these days.

Aug 5, 2026

High Germanre-education continues Vertraust du wist = Do you trust?

Infinitives and participals, damn

Aug 7, 2026

I told Nina of Germany I'd work on  poems

Frau, blond hairs graze

How, blue eyes dance

When,  soft music groove

Then,  slow cheeks  raise

August 9, 2026

Compound nouns in German: John Kay of Steppenwolf toyed with the spelling of Eargesplitten Loudenboomer,  an experimental high-velocity rifle cartridge. He forned it into a huge one word noun for the song title Earschplittenloudenboomer for in 1970. It is not one of the bands loudest songs.

Kay was born inTilsit, East Prussia, Germany which is now Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia