Breeding Sheep

Gregor Mendel

Gregor Mendel should have bred ideologies. Adherents to opposing doctrines come out like roses. DEI culture places itself firmly against the same syllabus of white male humanistic philosophy that has created the liberal order as does the Trump administration which is attempting to crush universities under the guise of fighting anti-semitism. Universities are a threat for many reasons, but primarily in the way they uphold constitutionalism with its emphasis on due process and inalienable right. Revolution in most cases favors the ends over the means and hence often finds itself sharing a similar dismissal of the democratic order as the very despots it seeks to overthrow. One cannot but remark that the Ice agents and those they arrest have one thing in common--they both wear masks.

read "Never Brush Again" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

It's Raining Cats and Dogs

The subject of emotion in animals is as difficult to parse as consciousness itself. The philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote “What’s It Like To Be Bat.” Bats sleep are like teenagers who sleep all day. If you go into a cave during daylight hours you will barely make them out hunkered up stealthily against the ceiling and walls. Can it be said that most of the emotion humans espy in pets is the result of projection? Of course by definition you cannot confirm or deny that. Give Ruggles a polygraph? Or by monitoring perspiration, can you tell whether dogs are really man’s best friend. Maybe it’s “thinking” that’s the issue. Ruggles may be sad but does he or she possess self-reflexive consciousness that would spill forth if only barks were filtered through a language cortex? Will it ever be known what goes through a fly’s mind as it furiously tries to avoid being swatted to death. Or take the water bug you creep up on, who doggedly eludes the stamp of your foot. Yes it looks like those insects are experiencing fear.

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

and listen to "Twenty-Five Miles From Home" by Edwin Starr

The Faceless Man

 

Do you ever have the desire to simply say to yourself person x who I am trying get the attention of will never give it so why not simply tell them what you really think of them? The problem with this kind of conviction lies in the fact that what you think you think may not be what you really think of them. The monster you have created in your mind is a confabulation, a mysterious mutant born between the amygdala and pre-frontal cortex. In fact the individual onto whom you have projected all your ire is the one who should be angry. Not once have you asked yourself who they are and what their particular existence is about. Their sole function in your life is to provide the validation you crave. You are like the homeless person who takes money then moves onto their next mark. Have you, for instance, ever been confronted by someone who asks you for money on the street and has forgotten you just gave them a nickel? To them you are faceless. Similarly all those unforthcoming people who are the subjects of your obsessions are faceless maggots to you.

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

and listen to "Twenty-Five Miles From Home" by Edwin Starr

Secret Mall Apartment Q&A

Do you go to art houses and see people you don’t know--and think you would know and not like? The opening night screening of Jeremy Workman's documentary, Secret Mall Apartment--about an artist, Michael Townsend, creating a hidden living space in a Providence mall, that had become an eyesore, elicited earnest questions at The Sag Harbor Cinema Friday night. It’s never clear if people who speak up on these occasions are looking for answers or simply enjoying the sounds of their own voices. If it’s been thought it’s been said is as true of opining as it is of porn. Speaking of porn, Marco Bellocchio's Devil in the Flesh (1986) which played at the "old" Sag Harbor cinema, included scenes with Maruschka Detmers, which memorably succeeded in silencing the audience. There was little discussion in the theater as the audience filed out.  But getting back to the subject of recognition. When you think someone looks familiar, there’s invariably an iota of truth in it, particularly when you occupy the kind of zip code where many residents are all under the delusion they're equally unique.

listen to "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb

Cosmically Yawning

Non-existence, no sentience are hard notions to absorb and conditions from which no one, not Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, Victor Orban nor any of their predecessors, Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin or Pinochet are exempt. It’s “Alas, Poor Yorick” territory. Very hard to imagine desire and volition absent a la Jaques' “Seven Stages of Man” which ends “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Yes the universe is cosmically indifferent, but it can’t snub you, if you’re no longer there.

listen to "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb

My Dinner With Adolf

Larry David satirized Bill Maher’s bright words about Trump ("My Dinner With Adolf," NYT, 4/21/25). Mahr’s equanimity (following a White House visit) sounds a little like Chamberlain's “I just had another conversation with Chancellor Herr Hitler…” speech before the invasion of the Sudetenland. Smerconish took exception to the humor. Trump isn’t Hitler was Smerconish’s argument. It diminishes the horror of The Holocaust to make such comparisons. But Trump is Hitler, in fact he is worse since he portrays himself as the jolly green giant while he summarily destroys everything in his path. Didn’t Trump once say he could walk down Fifth Avenue and kill? Isn’t that exactly what he is doing?

8½

 

Is it an understatement to call Fellini's 8½ (1963) phallocentric? One might emerge from the current revival at Film Forum feeling the movie a parody of itself. There's lots of satire. All the aspirational actresses including the ravishing Claudia Cardinale are parodic figures. But life is a circus, with the director, as the ring leader. So the answer is no. 8½ is not making fun of its central figure. As its title indicates it is the film between La Dolce Vita (1960) and Juliet of the Spirits (1965) and it reveals the workings of Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) and by proxy Fellini's imagination. Does 8½ hold up? The answer is yes and no and that ambiguity may account for the sublime enjoyment that lies in seeing it after all these years, in all its black and white glory.