“Trump’s A-hole Conclave”

The Narcissist-in-Chief “jokes” his way to infamy . Dante has a special place for him on the 9th Circle where he can perform the Sisyphean task of cleaning gilt-gold toilets, continuously caked with the effluvia from Circles 1-8, with his forked tongue.

Since Trump offhandedly endorsed the notion of him becoming pope, I wanted to offer a few papal names that he might deserve:

Pope Decadent X

Pope Doucheus Amoralis III

Pope Un-Innocent IV

Pope Anus Equinus IX

Pope Idiot Maximus

Pope Irredeemable V

Pope Judas Democratis II

Pope Fuckface I

Gimme a fucking break… the only things he worships are himself and money… although I will endorse the homoerotic underpinning!

I want to talk for a moment about these “artworks” of Jon McNaughton. I have come to appreciate them as perhaps the most succinct embodiment of the projection and hypocrisy of the MAGA movement. It is, in short, an unapologetic trolling exercise. I think the overarching theme of the modern Republican movement is pure FANTASY, much of it of the sinister kind. Power and policy based on lies and half-truths. For McNaughton these visions come conveniently in both bright, aspirational and also dark, apocalyptic colors. He’s Bob Ross for the paranoid, conspiratorial, gun-toting, white nationalist, homophobic, incel coalition. It’s all so fucking sad and ridiculous.

The political problem of triangulating with an opposition force ran Clinton into trouble as he tacked to the center and signed the ill-advised criminal justice bill while balancing the budget; yet they still gutted him over the Lewinsky affair (Blowgazi). The chief inquisitor, Newt Gingrich, at the time cheating on his wife, showed them the way and now, true to form, they herald Trump — the serial groping, philandering and porn-star paying dirtbag — as their holy deliverer. That asymmetrical dynamic has only increased since the 1990’s in the “post-truth” and “alternative facts” era. The GOP has turned itself into what Paul Newman’s character in “The Sting” called “the big con.” You can’t win a game if one side keeps changing the rules and, even then, won’t abide by them. It’s an administration run, literally, by members of FOX News, which itself creates a dizzying stream of propaganda, fearmongering and counterfactual stupidity. They succeed daily at Steve Bannon’s exhortation to “flood the zone with shit.” In fact, that would be an apt tag-line — “FOX News: Flooding the Zone With Shit Since 1996!”. Obama faced the same headwinds, as evidenced by the absurd faux outrage over his TAN SUIT (to ponder: how many tan suits equals an attempted stolen election?).

Notice the tan shorts and comment about his excessive golfing, as if to prove my point. The GOP machine has perfected the “art” of projection. At least Obama didn’t cheat at golf. And the conflagration presumably refers to the radical left’s “War on Christmas.”

It is well known that there are a great many more words in the English language for negative attributes than positive. I think the wordsmiths were preparing us for the extreme buggery and skullduggery from the likes of McCarthy-Nixon-Trump, the axis of weasels. Psychologists have a term that well applies here, the “dark triad,” which includes the following pathological charcteristics (all fully max’d out by Trump himself):

Narcissism

Machiavellianism

Sociopathy

What differs in Trump 2.0 is that so many more of his administration, and in the Republican Congress, share some or all of these negative characteristics. It’s a gigantic morass filled with mis/disinformation, conflicts of interest, illegality, non-transparency, and an utter lack of expertise. A menacing-clown-car driving wildly around the country with “dirty” fissile material in the trunk that contaminates anything within a hundred mile radius, while also playing really shitty music. The White House is now a gilded Porta-Potty for all the “waste, fraud and abuse” that comes out of Trump’s mouth. Yup, it’s a Dark Fantasyland that McNaughton and FOX and QAnon have created and continue to prop up. To the upside, you could teach kids a panoply of negative vocabulary terms based in DJT alone. But first, a little music theory. As some will know, a musical cord is made up of three notes (a triad), often the root, the third and the fifth of a given scale in Western music. A particular chord is called “tritonic” if it contains a “tritone,” which is a dissonant interval of three whole tones between two notes. In the Middle Ages, it was sometimes referred to as “the Devil’s interval” for its spooky evocations and is frequently employed in horror films like “Halloween.”

“Mucho-Macho-MAGA-Man… I want to be a MAGA-Man!”

So I began thinking in “triads” or chords, vis-a-vis Trump/Musk, Inc. Here are a few tritonic chords sketched out as examples. Feel free to build your own chord library at home!

Destructive

Divisive

Duplicitous

That works pretty well. Let’s try another:

Sadistic

Sycophantic

Sleazy

Fun, right?! And also damn accurate!

Heedless

Hypocritical

Huckstering

There are so many possibilities. It’s hard to stop!

Mean

Manipulative

Maniacal

Would you like more….???

Disruptive

Destructive

Defiling

It just never ends…..

Bombastic

Bullying

Buffoonish

… sadly for us…

Un-Constitutional (Authoritarian)

Un-Christian (Assholes)

Un-Scientific (Asinine)

But to veer away from the alliterative, I offer these last few:

Incompetent

Vengeful

Corrupt

With their typical actions characterized as…

Fabrication

Projection

Bluster

Then finally we have the home triad…. and this should be their new slogan (but, then again, why stop at three??):

FANTASY…!!

VENALITY…!!

CRUELTY…!!

BIGOTRY…!!

HYPOCRISY…!!

MENDACITY…!!

Absurdity is, quite obviously, the whole point. TrumpWorld is more like the fantasy inherent to a video game or theme park or secular cult than any unified and coherent political philosophy. And McNaughton’s art certainly captures the essential unevolved fakery and delusion that so characterize Trumpism. He nails it. I must give him that.

“Late Innings”

There was a certain comfort in getting DVD’s delivered by mail. A rhythm was established that I find hard to replicate in the era of pure streaming. Netflix, beyond a certain date, wasn’t accepting returns and allowed you to keep one or two. This capture is from early in 2023, and their disc service finally shuttered in Sept of that year. “Red Beard” is my memento mori to that bygone era (still haven’t watched it). I also miss shuffling my movie queue to include a recent big release or an obscure title from some arty film festival. But it was a good run while it lasted.

“Life Lesson #6: Amuse Yourself”

As you can see, I’m a massive fan of Moleskine notebooks and have used them over the years for various purposes like journaling, poetry, capturing random ideas, sketching, etc. Their first page has a space to record your name and offer a reward in case of loss. I immediately saw this as an opportunity for an inside joke with myself; an opening salvo to set the tone that silly was, as ever, in season. Yet, looking back, I recognize that it took me a long time to harness my inner audience (I’m consciously avoiding the term critic as too formal and judgmental), those various selves who collectively decide the things deemed interesting and worthy of investigation. The jokes that I find funny. The art that moves something inside me. My favorite films. The music that is soundtrack of my life. And I like the idea that when amassed, this forms a unique fingerprint of my specific tastes (albeit at a given place and time). In my younger days, I was a bit of a people-pleaser and too often swayed by the opinion of others. I now see that it’s a major milestone when you grant yourself the power to be the final arbiter of your own tastes. I remember being in my 30’s and dating a woman who was self-confident and discerning and also fairly critical. Her opinions mattered more than they should have. Anyway, the song “My Love” by Paul McCartney came on and she quite dismissively expressed her disdain. But without even thinking about it, I responded, “Oh, I love this song!” And it was at that very moment that I realized I had turned an invisible corner. That I was at the helm and there was no looking back. But don’t be misled, this is a long toil in figuring out. But it’s the very opposite of drudgery that pays handsomely in dividends of joy. And it is one of the most worthy efforts we can make in revealing our true selves.

Yet it’s not as if the input of others doesn’t matter. It matters greatly, in fact, in the accumulation of one’s preferences. How could it not? The lion’s share of my curated aesthetic has been facilitated by other people. Family, friends, girlfriends, acquaintances, classmates, writers, musicians in interviews, etc. In many instances, they turn you on to the things that ultimately shape and define your personal style. Many recommendations, of course, are set aside, but it is this very churn that helps you solidify your trove of cultural influences and artifacts. Would I have discovered the Beatles even if my older sister hadn’t put me onto them when I was eight? Yes. But it matters to me that it came through her. She is forever ensconced in my Beatles experience, as an embossed salutation and signature. As for Kenny G, he’s more a running joke (the hair alone!) with an old friend, to whom I recently had the absolute joy of sending his memoir via Amazon. That’s the essence of it, really. Amuse yourself first and then, hopefully, others…

My humor, obviously enough, skews towards irony and irreverence. And I think that in discovering yourself, you don’t so much adopt the humor of others; instead you connect with the people who share your overall sense and sensibility (or maybe in my case, nonsense and insensibility). As a lapsed Catholic, there’s little I enjoy more than skewering the inane hypocrisy of that flailing patriarchy. And this forms a sort of litmus test for my “trust circle” — meaning the more ardent your beliefs, the further out your orbit. Not be design, per se. It just happens to work out that way. And so, in the end, the Jesuits did actually teach me something worthwhile.

What post in these trying times would be complete without some disparagement of the World’s Biggest Asshole?? What an utterly shameless dickhead. A black hole of malignant narcissism. A Möbius buzz-stripper. The gods must be fucking crazy…

One of my favorite George Carlin lines: “Home is where you keep your stuff while you’re out getting more stuff.”

Under the influence of “The Twilight Zone” (episode “To Serve Man”). As Bosse-de-Nage from Dr. Faustroll would say, and only say, “Ha-ha!”

Billy Idol performed one of the loudest concerts I ever attended. He had an album called Cyberpunk (1993) that, for the record, I did not purchase. But I did see an interview in which he was asked to define the term, and he rather awkwardly squirmed while drawing a complete blank. Ironically, we could all intuitively define it today as some form of internet hacker-troll, an electronic tag-artist, a virtual vigilante. “White Wedding” was also one of the best from the “Literal Music Videos” series, if you can find it. His real name, BTW, is William Michael Albert Broad.

I just finished the book “Remarkably Bright Creatures” that I found mostly unremarkable, light and cloying (but please form your own opinion!). My favorite line though was this insult: “Why are you dressed like an extra from Caddyshack?”

I think we’ll end it here.

“The Trump Hole”

Here’s another exclusive song release from Tommy Treacle, the journeyman folk singer whose tunes range widely in subject matter, including horror films, pirate sea shanties, jingles for maid services, murder ballads, sporting legends, volcanoes, soup, space lasers, polyester leisure wear, Bigfoot, continental drift, sharks, unicycles, Egyptian mummies, and more recently politics. In this song called “The Trump Hole,” he subtly hints at his leanings as regards the current administration. Please have a listen and see if you can spot his position.

“Art Peeps”

How we look when we look at art…
We come and go. The art, mostly, remains.
Art itself has a unilateral, almost autistic quality. We gawk while it simply ignores.
Have you ever considered all the times you’ve been in the background of a stranger’s photograph? An “extra” on someone’s Facebook page or Instagram? We aren’t wired to see ourselves as just another face in the crowd…
“Lick Me To Find Out”
“What strange creatures these are… in our jungle with their winter coats. ”
In this painting by Gustave Moreau, Hercules challenges the Lernaean Hydra. From another myth, Perseus used a mirrored shield, gifted by Athena, to safely approach Medusa. In the modern era, the safest way to view her is through an iPhone camera. Also, do you ever go back and look at your art photos?
I like how she, perhaps unconsciously, mimics the pose.
It’s fun to go where art seems bigger than life.
Art requires flexibility. Here a museum guard’s knee bends mimic the angle of Claes Oldenburg’s “Light Switches — Hard Version” (1969) at AIC in Chicago.
I like the idea of art history as a team sport!
Caught him cold, capturing Caillebotte!
Feet firmly planted in the Ed Ruscha exhibit at MoMA.
Just her (and me) in a field from Anselm Kiefer (by way of Vincent van Gogh).
Other times it’s just you, all alone with the art (but with nowhere to sit).
Does art mirror life or vice-versa?
A man turns his back on Andy Warhol and Marilyn Monroe at the Tate Modern.
You won’t find me in that damned “Mona Lisa” crowd (since I took the photo).

“Anyone But DUKE!!”

In a depressing week of market selloffs and ever-escalating malfeasance from Trump/Musk, Inc., there was one bright spot. Duke University’s men’s basketball team, loaded with the best college talent (and most annoyingly entitled student body and alums) that money can buy, lost to Houston in the NCAA tournament semi-finals. There is hope!

“A loss for Duke is a win for America.” — Harry S. Truman