Nice, quiet day at home yesterday. Built a fire in my studio stove.
Read the paper, fed the chickens, started a couple paintings (all clouds). Went down the hill to Tom Augherton's house to deliver the paper (we share). Tom was outside stacking wood:
Tom fed my chickens while we were in LA for Thanksgiving. He bought a cord of wood from a local guy who has been delivering wood to the neighborhood for at least three decades. In the beginning I think he would deliver and stack a cord for $120. Today it's $340 and he doesn't stack it. There's a metaphor for the times we live in, eh?
Speaking of the times we live in, I noticed two things on our trip to LA: in the security check-in line only two people in the entire line of hundreds of holiday travelers were wearing traditional clothing. By traditonal I mean business attire, jacket, slacks and dress shirt. Me and another old guy were the only ones. We were wearing jackets and dress shirts. Everyone else was grubby to the point of slobby. Everyone is Balkanized in black tattered off-shoot stuff.
The other trend that is beyond the tipping point: 85% of the people you see in the airport are looking at hand-held devices. Kids on the floor holding them and frantically thumbing them. People walking and texting, in line everyone checks their phones incessantly. it's somewhere beyond epidemic. Even homeless people are doing it! We're all connected to the cloud. it's got a kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe, only scarier.
In my studio yesterday I hit on a couple very cool cloud patterns, somewhat by accident. Working wet into wet and on a whim, I loaded up my brush with purple and laid it into a bank of gray. Left to watch a movie on cable with Kathy, "Tower Heist" and when I came back the purple had dried into a nice blend, which created a subtle reflection off the earth into the underbelly of the cloud. This is one of those Happy Accidents where I'm not entirely sure how I got it, but it's quite impressive.
Studied this cloud painting this morning while I ate huevos rancheros and read the Sunday New York Times:
By the way, really enjoyed "Tower Heist" which we blundered onto by accident, while setting up the TV for the DVD player. I remember the movie did so-so and everyone kind of ripped Eddie Murphy for it (a quick Google search resulted in an overview from Wikepedia that it was an Eddie Murphy project, got changed, he came back, did so so at the box office), but we laughed and laughed and thought it was quite good.
Reminds me of Jim Gaffagin's funny bit where he says adamantly, "I wanna talk about Heat!" But Jim, that movie is five years old. "Just saw it. Wanna talk about Heat!"
"You brought a stolen car to a robbery?"
—One of the incredulous anglo robbers to Eddie Murphy in Tower Heist
