SEX, LIES & NETWORK TAPES In The 21st Century Artistic World

The poster boy of "The Casting Couch" with revelations
of sexual harassment of over 60 women over decades.

The early 21st Century seems to be a time for brutal honesty, a form of housecleaning of things long known but never talked about, or at least in polite company. I was a very naive boy regarding anything sexual and remained that way until my early 20's, maybe even later. However, even I knew about the casting couch and we would all snicker at rumors and then question how a particularly pretty but terrible actress made it big. Of course the answer was, "The Casting Couch." 

   As kids we were particularly attuned to tone of voice (if you have young children, listen up), when the adults started to whisper, like vampire bats to blood, our ears became ultra sensitive and we heard things we shouldn't have. The saving grace was we didn't understand what they were talking about at the time. There are moments, even now, for me.

   The recent revelations of the antics of producer Harvey Weinstein seemed, to me at least, the confirmation of all those snickers us boys had as we found and ogled my Dad's collection of the first Playboy Magazines. As an artist the revelations of so many men and women behaving badly who are in the arts calls to question many of the artworks I've seen over the years and dismissed. Now, in light of all this, the "MeToo" movement suddenly explains artists anger, particularly works of women, bringing their anger into focus.

   Last year the Palm Springs Art Museum had an exhibition of women Expressionists from mostly the 50's though some were earlier or later. The group I toured the exhibit with were mostly women, many Lesbians and they admired the strength and boldness of the art. Staring at it I was struck not at the boldness, but the anger. Jackson Pollack's wife, Lee Krasner's paintings started the show but there were many others and none were motherly or Mary Cassatt styles of art. There was emotion, great emotion that I was not prepared to handle.

   Sex seems to be a great modifier. My whole life I've been told that men have two heads and one of them though smaller is greater in its actions.

   First there was the scandal of priests in the Catholic Church. Revelations started in the United States and then spread around the world. Parishioners are paying the bail out from that still.

America's Father abused his celebrity

   When the Bill Crosby scandal hit the news in what seems eons ago now, I think it was still considered an isolated incident of a powerful, even important actor who abused his celebrity. It appears he was saying one thing and practicing anther. While he still denies many of the accusations, where's smoke there is usually fire. You have to admire the courage of his wife. This cannot have been easy to endure.

Kevin Spacey caught diddling.

   The LGBT community became enraged and the fallout has yet to end over allegations that Kevin Spacey, one of our greatest actors, was or is at some point in his life a Gay pedophile. When the accusation hit the airwaves, he pleaded that he didn't remember that event and then, as an aside, a distraction, finally came out saying,  by the way, I'm Gay. I hate to tell Spacey this but this was hardly a well kept secret. I was told this years ago but I didn't care. He was an amazing actor. Several other actors, Neil Patrick Harris and Jim Parsons, both wonderful actors were openly Gay and appeared with their husbands in public. What made Spacey so vile was that he paired his sexual impropriety with being Gay. Excuses from the Old Vic Theatre in London, where Spacey served as artistic director for many years sound hollow. Ignorance is not bliss. They knew yet said nothing for years. Can it be that an artist will do anything to achieve success? As Edmund Burke stated in 1795, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." In hindsight it appears that good men and women have done nothing not for days, or months or even years but for centuries.

   Daily the airwaves are replete with new revelations. Charlie Rose, a host of Fox Channel hosts, Billie Bush, Senator Al Franken, the paradigm of respect for women. When does it end? Roy Moore in Alabama, a state that would rather elect a Republican sexual harasser than elect a Democrat. Then there's John Conyers another Democrat that Nancy Pelosi holds up as an icon of the party! Really? We've already endured a president that couldn't keep his pants zipped in the Oval Office and another that brazenly says that women "want it."

Ugh, hello boss! Can I help you?

To be fair, any kind   of harassment comes in many forms. Men harass women in what appears to be a rather regular basis. 

   However, there was an amazing Mike Douglas movie where his female boss harassed him in a style all too common to women. It is said men are ashamed and won't talk about it. Thinking about it, the women had good teachers; they just turned the tables is all. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Women are not alone. Men can
face the same kind of harassment

 The same can be said for men on men sexual harassment. As Spacey and others have shown, no one is immune. Not all the "MeToo's" on Facebook were women. 

   The question remains, how do we deal with this? Is it the way children are raised? Have the abused been silent too long? I know from friends abused as children that the memory is always there. A woman raped carries the memory the rest of her life. It would be much easier if harassers were like Marley from THE CHRISTMAS CAROL, dragging their sins in chains as they walked the streets, a clear sign that they needed to be avoided. 

   All we can hope is that this, ALL this, serves as a notice to men and women that such behavior will not be tolerated. That artists ... actors, artists, writers, musicians, broadcasters do not and SHOULD not have to sleep their way to success. NO ONE SHOULD! We founded a country where every man and woman was given a certain amount of freedom to become the best person they could. A lesson that many in this country seem to have yet to learn is that your Constitutional Rights end when they step on mine. In the eyes of our laws we are all to be regarded as equal, no one, and I mean NO ONE, is special. We should not live as the final sign over the barn in ANIMAL FARM that states, "Some animals are more equal than others." To that I saw BS! Yet ... we see that this is also sadly true.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!

100 Million Americans Have Hypertension AND I Know Why

 

Watching the news Monday night, first ABC News with David Muir and then CBS News with Anthony Mason, one of the headlines they both had and even featured was the latest medical report stating that over 100 million Americans suffer from hypertension. Now it should be noted that the definition of hypertension has been changed from 130 / 90 to 120 / 80 sweeping in a great many citizens who until Monday night thought they were safe.

   The "expert" doctors on both shows noted that before people start taking more medicines that lifestyle changes could also make a tremendous difference. Diet, exercise ... the same mantra that is used for just about every condition.

   However, after events that Monday, I think I know another factor that increases our blood pressure and does so each and every day in our modern world.

   I am taking a holiday trip later this year. While I ordered the tickets in early October I never received a confirmation that everything was confirmed. The sheet of paper I had even said this was not a confirmation, one would be sent shortly. It wasn't.

   Since I have had several pulmonary embolisms, one that could have been caused by a long plane flight, and have suffered other blood clots I have to prepare what I wear on the plane and "should" get up and walk about every hour. Since my flight will be about 15 hours I need an aisle seat. 

I'm not so sure about the "happiness." Efficiency is better.

   So a call to Hotwire finally got me to a human that I explained my predicament to. He looked up the itinerary number and sure enough there was my flight information. When I told him I never received the confirmation he said one was sent. I replied that I had nothing. He sent one and I received it while we were talking. (A month ago would have been better.)

   When I told him that I needed to pick my seats he said, "Oh, we don't do that. You will need to contact the carrier and pick your seats." Odd, you can do that on Expedia. I thanked him, hung up and went to the United Airlines web site.

    Dante wasn't kidding about the 7 circles of hell. United Airlines has that down to a science. After a bunch of questions that led me around and around their web site without getting anywhere, I finally found my flight information and the four flights there and back. Since I am flying from Palm Springs to San Francisco, a flight that is 90 minutes, I wasn't concerned where I sat on that flight. On the 15 hour flight I was. 

   After picking seats on the going flights the site went wonky and it throw me back to the home page. No amount of trying could get me back so finally, I found a number (trust me, a phone number is NOT stressed anymore. They don't want to talk to you.) The recordings say over and over you can do everything online, only, as you find out, you can't.

   I finally got a human after about 10  minutes of number punching and explained my plight. She was nice and offered to walk me through the process though I could tell she thought I was lame. We went through the same steps and picked seats on all my flights. Then, when she went to save my selections it wouldn't save. Her response was that they knew there was a problem and they were working on it. I should call back in an hour and it might work. Her inference was that I should stick around the house and call every now and then. I asked for the seat numbers noting them on each of my flights and then asked to speak to her supervisor. I wasn't going to sit around all day and hope that the site might work. I can say it didn't work the other three times either. Who was it? United? Delta whose flights stopped worldwide for a few days because of such computer nonsense?

   Finally her supervisor came on the line and sounded about 10. While the first person said she explained our plight, with the supervisor we started all over again. This time I knew which seats and finally he was able to pick them and confirm them while I was on the phone. Later, I did receive confirmation of this conversation. I think from the time I started and I hung up I had spent 2 hours on the phone. Just about 100 minutes too long. Do you think I was a bit stressed after this? You bet!

   Unless I am cursed and a black cloud follows me around, just about everything we do today is like this. I already recounted the experience with my iPhone X, which has taken a week and some tricks to put all the data from an older phone onto it. Hours and hours over a week to do what once took maybe an hour or two.

You don't need to go to hell. The Feds have created
the perfect preparation right here on earth!

   I have a friend that has been fighting the Feds over his Green card, already two years beyond its expiration. When we checked in September of this year, he was told that they were still only up to July for applications or renewals  from July of 2016. You can bet he is excited! He is stuck here and can't leave without a current Green card.

   When I was a kid and even a young adult you called a company, a human answered and you were transferred to the person you needed to talk to. Today a quick question turns into a 45 minute experience of punching numbers and numbing waiting all the while being told you call is sooo important to us and they will be with you shortly between bursts of staticky music. Heard that one? Or how about this one ... please hold, we are experiencing an unusually high caller volume. I called at 3 am one time and got the same message but was so pissed I held on for 45 minutes and when the guy finally answered admitted, when grilled, that they only had one person ... pretty much for the whole day. I have witnessed phone calls at desks where the employee let their answer phone pick up. And not just once either. For all we know, it could have been your call. The newest wrinkle is, "We can't come to the phone right now so please leave your name and number and we will call back as soon as possible." That's a lie too. They never call back.

   So yes, experiencing this kind of behavior all day, every day is certain to raise your blood pressure. When I worked at a manufacturer of furniture I felt that I had two jobs ... the one that paid me and the other constantly following up on orders hounding people who hadn't gotten around to it yet. The excuses I heard would fill a book. In fact, I often wondered if there was such a book of excuses because everyone seemed to know them but me.

   The other side of this same coin is, well, coins or dollars. Companies are constantly looking for ways to cut costs and human interaction is expensive. Just like big box stores, how many sales do they lose because they don't have enough employees to stock the shelves or help you?

   Our lives are also getting stressed because you never know when some nut with a gun will begin shooting at you or drive a car into you or, as we learned on 9 / 11 hijack a plane and crash it into skyscrapers. While you may not consciously think about it, be honest here ... when you're at the airport, stadium, crowded mall, concert, movie theater and now church, aren't you a bit nervous? I

Remember how carefully you packed? The TSA didn't.

remember how the underwear bomber during Christmas in 2009 changed airport check-in. Our flight to Egypt was relatively calm. However, coming home after the underwear bomber nearly brought a flight down over Detroit, a security guard at the Charles De Gaulle departure gate put his hands inside my pants and my underpants looking for a bomb. And to be honest, there were some pretty dicey looking characters on that flight. I took comfort that they too were "completely" checked.

   So yes, our lives ARE stressful and as any doctor will tell you unrelieved stress causes hypertension. We live in a world where quiet and calm are now an anomaly. The most sought after vacations are those that are those beyond the range of cell towers, Facebook and often people.

   The other option is to pursue art. Once you begin painting the world, and all it worries, fade away and you live in a world of imagination and hopefully quiet and beauty! It gives your body a break from the stress that surrounds us each and every day. Now, where IS that paintbrush ....

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!

LOVING VINCENT - A Must See Movie For "Every" Artist

Last night I went to the opening of Palm Springs 1st Animation Festival because it was featuring the movie LOVING VINCENT, a film I had read about months ago that featured one of the first films ever made where all the frames were painted ... not like the Disney cells but painted with oil on canvas in the style of Van Gogh.

   Every painter knows about Van Gogh and either they admire him or not but at the end of the film, that was warmly received, it was noted that most art historians consider him the father of what we consider Modern Art. And personally I have thought that too and considered his suicide? as his being unable to continue after such stunning and nearly abstract works as "Wheat Fields With Crows." I thought he possibly didn't know what his next step would be. His final works were but a step away from the increasing abstraction famously pioneered by Cezanne and even more by Duchamp, the German Expressionists and then Picasso.

   My love affair with Van Gogh began in the 5th grade. My father worked in a Schick Electric Shaver Shop in downtown Portland, OR and being artistic himself discovered the Portland Museum of Art had classes for kids. So, for several years before opening his store, he would drop me off at the museum for classes.

Starting in the evening STARRY NIGHT begins "Loving Vincent." This
is the world's second most famous painting behind the Mona Lisa

   Portland for some reason got the traveling Van Gogh Exhibit from Amsterdam as they were building their first Van Gogh Museum to exhibit their collection. For weeks (it seemed) I would walk past these shimmering paintings for classes and gaze at them as I waited for Dad to pick me up when he closed the shop at noon. There is no way to describe the fascination these paintings held for me over the years. When finally, we landed again in Amsterdam I made it a point to see the Van Gogh Museum literally across the park from the Rijksmuseum which had only reopened a few months before after being closed for years to be restored.

   We stupidly lined up with hordes of tourists in the rain to enter but as I expected it was like going to some secret inner sanctum. Even though I had read and owned many books about him, saw every exhibit that come to Los Angeles, I learned much about him ... things I noticed that were shown in the movie, to my surprise. More than 180 paintings are shown each more vibrant than the last including one that was finally authenticated after years hidden in a Norwegian attic.

  I had read about this movie but never really gave it much thought. In the hinterlands of Palm Springs I never thought I would see it but, as I have discovered since moving here, the world seems to beat a path to our valley. During the Gay Pride weekend I met the organizer of the upcoming animation festival and we struck up a conversation where I admitted I loved Van Gogh. He encouraged me to come and with the card in hand came home, looked up the site but it didn't work well so I called and ordered a ticket. I am SO glad I did.

   LOVING VINCENT in its creation is quite a feat. Ten years in the making and at a cost of $5 million, cheap in an era of $200 million blockbusters, it took 10 years to complete. A joint project between Polish, Dorotea Kobula, and English, Hugh Welshman, directors, it used 125 artists painting upwards of 100,000 original, hand painted canvases. Each second, of the 91 minute movie used 1200 canvases! 

The faces of "Loving Vincent" each one taken from his actual paintings
and woven into a story about his death.

   However, it is the art ... seeing paintings we all know move and talk to us that is in itself a stunning achievement. The story begins a year after Van Gogh's death as the friend of Vincent, the Postman Joseph asks his drunken and feisty son Armand to deliver Vincent's last letter to his brother Theo. 

   We follow Armand and enter a mystery about what happened to Van Gogh, yet to be truly answered.

  Over the years there have been many theories about his death and they are explored here too. The most recent book felt that he was shot by some youngsters by accident and rather than blaming them shielded them at the cost of his life. A boy that tormented Vincent as he painted in Auvers-sur-Oise said near his death that he loaned Vincent a gun but never said whether he had accidentally shot Vincent or not. The boy was known to carry it and wave it around. 

Madeline and Armand discussing Vincent as she takes her daily flowers to Vincent's grave. Was there a romance?

Ryan Chapman at work on a canvas

   While I knew many of the theories it was the details that drew me in. In Amsterdam I saw a frame he created with strings to help him with perspective. In a moment of seeing him using it as he painted I instantly knew how he had used it. It was such details that made you realize the amount of time researching him was painstaking.        

  The paintings though are luscious ... Vincent's paint strokes come to life over and over again as the story is told and processes from the present in color to the black and white past. To see Armand and Madeline talking in the wheat fields as the crows fly around is to enter a movie like one of Woody Allen's where the actor steps out of the screen into our reality. It is simply that stunning! And remember, each motion as shown above required a painting so many were made as they discussed Vincent shown in one of his last paintings.   

   Each canvas such as this had to be painted up to 76 times. Can you image doing the same painting

A finished canvas. Note the change in head position from above!

over and over again? And to make it worse it had to be extremely close to the others so the movement was left to changing positions in each canvas to show motion. So as you sit and watch the paintings move and shimmer, the bold strokes of paint are shown clearly in wonderful detail.

   The irony, as it is discussed, is that while he thought that he was a failure in life, and in truth he had failed in just about everything else in his short life, his paintings show a vision that was simply unlike anything ever painted before. As his doctor, Dr. Gachet, notes, he was a genius and was pushing paintings into realms never seen before. A failed painter himself Gachet spent many hours secretly copying Vincent's work. Later historians had to sort out his copies from the actual works he removed from Vincent's room after his death. To be fair, at his death he donated his Van Gogh paintings to the Louvre where by then the genius of Van Gogh was recognized, at long last.

   The creators studied his paintings for four years then spent 2 years creating each frame. They referred to his over 800 letters to Theo and had help from the Van Gogh Museum for accuracy and telling his story. 

   It is one of his final letters to Theo that sums up Vincent's story, written shortly before his death:

      

  "We cannot speak other than by our paintings."

   For an artist there can be no other way! If you get the chance please go see this film. I think that story aside, though I enjoyed the artistry of it,  the life of these paintings will move you in ways you may not expect. He may have felt his life had little meaning but his art has certainly enriched ours!

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!

   

I Just Got My iPhone X and I Hate It (Amended Third times)

Yup, about two weeks early, I was surprised to receive today the world's creme de la creme phone, the now scarce and yes, IMPOSSIBLE to use, iPhone X.

   Now granted, I am 72 years old, however, I walked into MacWorld in January of 2007 just as Steve Jobs was finishing his keynote speech announcing the new iPhone. I can remember all of us standing around slack jawed and frankly thinking everyone at Apple had smoked something a little too much. While I hated my Motorola Razr it just didn't seem possible you could get a phone to do all that besides call and talk to someone. I mean, carrying around a computer in your pocket? A trip to Europe a month later proved that it could.

   I was number 222 at the Glendale Galleria June 29, 2007 and got my first, the first iPhone with 8 GB of memory. So, I am not a neophyte here. I have been enamored of the iPhone's since they first came out. I spent the next day hitting every button and finding out what it could and could not do. A friend and I attended an iPhone class the following Sunday so I, the old fart of 61, could learn to use it. I knew about as much as the Apple guy as he only had his phone about the same time as me. In fact I knew a few things he didn't! It was wickedly easy to use. I loved it. I did note, however,  that each new phone and iOS got harder to use but today .... I am now defeated. I can't call on either my iPhone 7+ or my iPhone X. Nothing is syncing and the things that were on my older phone can't seem to transfer, via  my iMac to the new phone. 

   So ... today, right now I can't do anything because when I connected the "X" it disconnected me from AT&T. So I guess that means a trip to the Apple Store with both phones and see what I can do. 

   And to make it worse, the backup that has been spinning for over an hour is useless. None of the information backed up from the 7+ has made it ... no music, no photos, no movies and not one single one of the Apps I have accumulated over the past 10 years. All the mailboxes are gone and to make it worse there seems to be no way to get them back either without hours of research and work. Frankly, what was Apple thinking of? I have read that some of the new features take awhile to get used to but I hadn't read anyone saying it was impossible to back-up and restore your information on the new phone. Simply put the only phone is what Apple gives you, a brand new virgin phone. What you had before is lost and it seems gone forever. 

   This is my last iPhone ... I am sure they will get it to work, maybe not at the level of my iPhone 7+ that I loved and used on trips to take stunning photos. It was a very simple process to go from an iPhone 6 to the 7+. Evidently Apple has chosen the Microsoft way of doing business. You need to be a geek to get it right. The rest of us either stand 10 deep at the Genius bar or wait. The trip to the Apple store is 40 minutes there ... God knows the hours of waiting and 40 minutes home. But, if this is the way Apple is going to make the migration of information work from one phone to another, I am done. I hope the build quality is good because it is going to have to last a looooooong time meaning it will be a loooooong time before I get another.

This is Apple's version of the Blue Screen of death. It spins and spins and spins!

   Its been hours now and I don't know what to do. My inclination is to take the new phone back and just live with what I have. It worked. My iMac is totally frozen, I can't go or do anything and I am terrified of forcing it to shut down. I am hoping that they can get the 7+ to work again and unless they can convince me, have their new toy back.

Later Monday Evening...

   After one last attempt to back up my iPhone 7+, I packed up both phones and made the trek to the Palm Desert Apple Store to return the "X" and have them help me establish an AT&T connection to my old phone so that I would have a phone, a cell phone being the only phone I use now. (Sorry Millennials, I beat you to that concept years ago). The guy that met me at the door said that he would get someone to help me but I had to wait abit. So ....
   They had me wait at one of the tables and soon Eric came over to help. I told him about my experience and that I had had an iPhone from the day they came out but today, well, I was defeated and had given up. He looked at them both and said that he would first like to try a few things before I surrendered the new phone. He tried several things and had to admit the normal ways didn't work as he tried to backup the old phone to a laptop and then restore the data to the new phone. Finally, he suggested we try to buy some more space on iCloud, 50 GB for $1 and sure enough the phone started to work. However, what if one, like I'm sure most seniors, don't have iCloud nor even know what it is, how would you ever know? I resent that you need to add yet another layer to make a phone work. It took us over an hour and once we were sure everything was coming back he said that I could finish up at home without a problem. Shut the phone off, turn on and follow the prompts to keep restoring the phone. They were closing and I had a phone that partially worked anyway. Everything did resume once I got home.
   In the limited time I have used it, I find that the facial recognition works even in the dark outside walking my dog. Without a protective case it is the perfect size. Smaller than the 7+ but bigger than my old iPhone 6, the whole front is glass and you soon adapt to not pushing or even looking for the home button. It just opens. Other than shutting down, I can't seem to close Apps but it is fast.
   Settings and passwords are not there so you will enter a lot of passwords. Before I could open any of my emails I had to enter the passwords for each mailbox. So, if you haven't, start writing those down. Pairing Bluetooth items is easy though I haven't tried my Mazda yet. The sound is much improved and videos are amazing. I haven't used the camera much yet so will give a rundown on that in another blog. I was more than happy with my 7+ and used it often as my only camera. I have two printed books that show how amazing the camera is. Is this better? Only time will tell.
   If you, like me, have a difficult time going from one phone to another, do exactly what Eric at the store told me, "If you fail the first time or two head over to the Apple Store (if you can) and let them help you." Trust me ... I lost an entire afternoon and a good part of an evening. If you make an investment such as this, seniors  may need to get some help. Life is too short for such frustrations!

Monday November 13, 2017, One Week Later ... 

   My phone does most things now, and quite well. However, the back-up of data from your phone or data (read images, music videos, books) is very iffy. It took three tries and hours to put data from my iMac into my iPhone X. It "still" isn't all there. Only abut half of the music that still resides on my iPhone 7+ and on my computer has made the transfer. Clearly there is SOMETHING wrong. All I can ask and wonder is what happened to the elegance and simplicity of the original iPhone? The expression, "You can't go home again," takes on new meaning with this 10th anniversary phone. An yes, to find out how things work that you knew from before, expect a lot of Googling. I have already searched online about three times for actions I used to know.

Friday, December 8, 2017

Finally, after nearly a month I was able to get the last of music and photos on my new phone. While the phone is elegant and I don't have many problems with photo recognition, despite new eyeglasses, there are still things in the iOS that need work.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!