Six oil paintings by Mac (that's me)

For your amusement:

I have been trying, at one mile an hour, to learn how to paint - it is frustrating, made worse by my general laziness which prevents me from practicing enough -- practice being the critical element to improvement in painting just as it is in, say, playing musical instruments.

This is what I've done this year (and a couple of previous years). 

First is a watercolor of a flower in a glass - did this a few years ago at a class; I'm quite proud of it.

Next up is a small landscape in oils; the photo is very bad but i can't get a good photo of this no matter what I do. But that's ok because it's not that good of a paint

ing....

I like the little tree on the left, and the rise of land it sits on, and the hills in the background. The tree itself is awful. This view is from Alameda island looking out over the San Francisco Bay.

Here is a watercolor of an 

orange tree, which I also did in class a couple of years ago. I like the roundness and sense of depth and brushwork on the oranges.... 

I like this recent oil painting, taken from a photo in a magazine, of a bench against a garish red wall....

And here is a recent oil landscape, also from a photo.

I have a few other paintings, mainly from a recent Art Camp I went to in ther Sierras, but I haven't framed them yet. I discover that canvas panels come in sizes that do not match frame sizes at art/frame shops like Aaron Brothers -- whose frames are almost all sized for photographs, not paintings. Sigh....!

Definition of Anti-Hero by Raymond Chandler

Apparently Raymond Chandler wrote an essay in 1950, "The Simple Art of Murder," about the detective story. Part of it is a criticism of typical early-20th-century British detective stories, which Chandler despised.

In his conclusion, however, Chandler goes off on a riff about the essential nature of the classic hard-boiled-dick detective character which he perfected in his novels such as The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye, and which at their best modern detective-story novelists like Lee Child continue to express to perfection. Here is Chandler's description of the character and appeal of the tough-guy private eye, a description so tough and hardboiled, yet so sentimental and hopeful, that you will find yourself compelled to read it aloud to get the full effect. "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean...." Irresistable!
--mac mccarthy

----

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.

If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in.

Pleine Air Class - Alameda

Took a two-day plein-aire class from Julia Seelos at a park in Alameda last week; I was sick so only got the second day. Here's Julia (right) and my two fellow students. Nice day, learned a lot! Got a LOT to learn still!

What does "I will DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!" mean, in the movie There Will Be Blood?

The phrase was used again, this time on the second page of the local newspaper a couple of days after the Oscar. In a short piece about the Oscars not getting much audience this year, the first sentence is: "No one drank the Oscars' milkshake."

I finally got a link to an explanation of this meme.

The lead character is referring to taking oil from neighboring fields by leakage or sideways drilling -- he's negotiating with a threat. He says he's already drained their field, next door, because when his field drains, their field flows down into his, and he takes that too. It's like, he says, he has an extra-long straw and is drinking the other guy's milkshake, even though he's across the room.

This snippet from the movie was played incessently in local radio ads for a couple of weeks before the Oscars. It would be totally mystifying to those who would not yet have seen the movie --
such as the audience for the ads. WHAT are the advertising pros THINKING?

"Controlling Hurricanes" ...is hard....

After simulating a hurricane that occurred in the past, we can then change one or more of its characteristics at any given time and examine the effects of these perturbations. It turns out that most such alterations simple die out. Only interventions with special characteristics--a particular pattern or structure that induces self-reinforcement--will develop sufficiently to have a major effect on a storm.
--Scientific American: Controlling Hurricanes, August 2005

END OF EDISON ERA??? (Not yet!)

John C. Dvorak - PC Mag Sept 20 05:

Someone commented on TV that once the movie projector is gone (converted to DLP and similar chip projectors), and LEDs replace the incandescent light bulb, we'll be at the end of the Thomas Edison era, as we will no longer be using ANY of his many inventions. [!!!!]

The irony, though, is that this won't be true for a very long time. Edison, working with Henry Ford, perfected manufacturing of the modern charcoal briquette, as in those bags sold by Kingston. (The Edison-Ford methodology may have been based on--or perhaps managed to circumvent--a patent briquette process developed in 1897 by inventor Ellsworth B.A. Zwoyer.) Whatever the case, they sell them at Safeway. Edison lives!

What a world we've become, when the only thing left from Thomas Edison's prolific portfolio is--the charcoal briquette!

Kate, Awesome in Her Red Chair...

Kate McCarthy--Awesome in her Red Chair 

Men Like Empowered Women Too!

"...A more empowered female audience wants to watch empowered women ([in movies]. Interestingly, men do, too.'These are strong, powerful, edgy, opinionated women,' says produver Beau Flynn. 'Guys find that sexy.' Adds [screenwriter Patrick Marber, who adapted 'Notes on a Scandal' for the big screen]: 'Men enjoy watching the active, protagonist women more than the passive weepers.' "

--WSJ Feb 23, 2007: "Women Acting Badly," Melissa Mar on why 'mature, flawed, and powerful women are at the center of this year's Oscsr race and next year's movies."

My observation: This is absolutely true. Not all men, or even most men; but many men find competence in women an attractive trait.

Pub-Crawling with Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I met Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., once, in 1970. I had stayed in Frankfurt, Germany, when I got out of the US Army, and gotten a job as a reporter for The Overseas Weekly, a GI paper. One day I went with a fellow reporter, Burr Sneider to see Vonnegut, who was on tour and giving a speech at the America Haus; Burr intended to interview him for the newspaper -- Vonnegut was in mid-career and well known to young people like myself.

So we went up after the speech and introduced ourselves, but Vonnegut didn't want to just do an interview -- he wanted to go to a bar or something and have a drink. We were delighted to oblige him. We took him across the river to Sachsenhausen, the Old Town, where there were lots of beer bars and apple-wine bars.

He was accompanied by a young woman named Jill Krementz, whom he introduced as his photographer, but it seemed clear she was his girlfriend; I see from the obits that she later became his second wife.

The evening was more interesting notionally than for anything that actually happened. Vonnegut, who was in his late 40s at the time, the age at which most of his publicity photos were taken, had little to say; he mostly just sat and drank. He did remark at one point that, having just had his play Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon, produced on Broadway, that writing plays was much easier than writing books, and he recommended it. That was about it; his girlfriend, as it happens, did most of the talking, keeping the conversation flowing as we went from bar to bar.

Still, I was delighted; I had gone pub-crawling with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. He may not have said much, but it was still a brush with greatness that I could tell my children. Who haven't read any Vonnegut, unfortunately, and so aren't quite as dumbstruck as I'd like.

Did I tell you about the time I had dinner with Tina Turner? Or drinks with The Who? One of these days....

Mac McCarthy

[This post got these three comments before I moved it over to this blog location.]

3 Comments -
Blogger NoVA Dad said...
I ran across this entry today while doing a Google search; since posting my own encounter with Vonnegut on my blog, I’ve sought out the memories and opinions of others and have found some great stories. I really enjoyed reading of your experiences with Vonnegut’s writing and of your encounter with him, and just wanted to pass that along to you. I’m in the process of reading (and in some instances, re-reading) many of his books now and hoping that my daughters enjoy them when they get older as much as I do.

Blogger Mac said...
Thanks, NovaDad. YOu know, I haven't read a Vonnegut book in a long time; I should follow your lead and pull out one of the old favs.... mac

Sibylle said...
Hey Mac, what an excellent story! I for one am dumbstruck. :-) And yep, time to re-read the old favourites.

Mom's Mar 2007 Visit to California!

Mom at the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco - she painted a picture of this cafe a few years ago -- in fact, the pictures she used as her inspiration hangs on the wall, as you will see in one of this series.

Mom

Mom at the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco - she painted a picture of this cafe a few years ago -- in fact, the pictures she used as her inspiration hangs on the wall, as you will see in one of this series.

More of Mom's visit to California!

Having a drink at the San Francisco Garden Show Mar07.

Poker night at the California McCarthy Household--Mom raking in her winnings, as usual!

Funny Faces

Mom and her Grandkids Mar07 SF

Michael and Florence at the Buena Vista Cafe, San Francisco, March 2007.

This is the original of the picture Mom painted from -- or is it HER PICTURE hung right there in the Buena Vista Cafe itself?!

Photo album 2 -- GERMANY!

Here;s the second album, the Germany section of our April 2007 tour of Europe here in Shutterfly.

It was great fun and we enthusiastically recommend the Rick Steves Tours - great job!

--mac

8 glasses of water a day? Says who?

SIDEBAR - June 21, 2007
Strange but True: Drinking Too Much Water Can Kill
In a hydration-obsessed culture, people can and do drink themselves to death.
By Coco Ballantyne

In the current issue of Scientific American:

....'Where did people get the idea that guzzling enormous quantities of water is healthful? A few years ago Heinz Valtin, a kidney specialist from Dartmouth Medical School, decided to determine if the common advice to drink eight, eight-ounce glasses of water per day could hold up to scientific scrutiny. After scouring the peer-reviewed literature, Valtin concluded that no scientific studies support the "eight x eight" dictum (for healthy adults living in temperate climates and doing mild exercise). In fact, drinking this much or more "could be harmful, both in precipitating potentially dangerous hyponatremia and exposure to pollutants, and also in making many people feel guilty for not drinking enough," he wrote in his 2002 review for the American Journal of Physiology—Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. And since he published his findings, Valtin says, "not a single scientific report published in a peer-reviewed publication has proven the contrary." ....'

...'While exercising, "you should balance what you're drinking with what you're sweating," and that includes sports drinks, which can also cause hyponatremia when consumed in excess, Verbalis advises. "If you're sweating 500 milliliters per hour, that is what you should be drinking."

But measuring sweat output is not easy. How can a marathon runner, or any person, determine how much water to consume? As long as you are healthy and equipped with a thirst barometer unimpaired by old age or mind-altering drugs, follow Verbalis's advice, "drink to your thirst. It's the best indicator." '

Two email scams to beware of: "Ticket Confirmation"

In the past week I've gotten TWO clever new scams by email, so here's a warning in case you haven't gotten yours yet.

1. "Southwest Airlines e=Ticket Confirmation"

That's the subject line.

The email, a beautiful picture stolen from a Southwest Airlines site, which my email security system won't let me paste into this email, said:

Dear (my email address),

Thank you for flying Southwest Airlines! Your e-tickets are confirmed.

Please confirm you tickets below (participation required). Please refer to the Travel Checklist for helpful before-you-go reminders.

Confirm Your e-Tickets Here
______________________________________________________________________

The "confirm" was in a colorful button you were supposed to click.

The actual site you would go to is NOT southwest airlines, but to a site that would inject a virus into your browser and do various things, ranging from screw up your browser to copy a virus to your computer.

And of course the "to unsubscribe, click here!" link would do the same thing.

I fly Southwest, so I was startled and almost clicked. But my good sense kicked in and I examined the URLs to discover the fraud.

This is a common tactic of fraudsters: Send you an email so provocative or odd that you click on something to find out more -- and you're immediately screwed.

TO PROTECT YOURSELF, DO THIS:

1. Have, or get, virus protection software -- I recommend ZoneAlarm.com

2. In your virus protection program, look for the "email protection" area dn turn it on.

3. In your BROWSER (IE, Internet Explorer, Foxfire, Safari, whatever) there is something called a PHISHINIG FILTER. In IE it's in the Tools dropdown. TURN IT ON! What this does is check every time your browser opens a window to see if that site happens to be listed on a current list of scam sites. In which case it will block the site so you don't accidentally open it and down load viruses before you can blink.

4. When you get an unexpected email with something amazing like this, STOP AND THINK before reflexively clicking on links to find explanations. One thing you can do is HOVER your MOUSE POINTER over the link and pause. Down at the bottom of the browser window the address that link is pointing to will be displayed. Look at it. If the email is supposed to be from southwest airlines, the link will probably be to a site that has "http://www.southwest.com?..." in it. If instead it has some gobbledegook address like the one above, "http://droilunstained.com/t/ln3r_vcmbn/25676", then it's probably a fraud. Especially if there's a bunch of nonsense characters in it.

. WHEN IN DOUBT, DELETE. The worst that can happen is that your friend has to re-send the email, or hte Irish Lottery will keep teh money you won even though you don't remember entering the Irish lottery....

Another virus/scam: "You've received a postcard from a family member!"

We all get e-cards from friends. Click on the link provided, get the card. Or sometimes sign in or create an account and get the card (and on a spam list).

The latest virus scam is to pretend to send a postcard. If you click on the link provided, however, you go to a Web page that injects a virus through your Web browser--depending on which browser you have and whether you've patched it and/or secured it lately against "phishing" sites.

How to tell it's a scam? First, it's not addressed to anyone. Second, it just says "your family member." Regular ones don't say that--and there's no personal message, as you usually get, and no identification of who the family member might be, which is also very odd.

Third, notice the URL they want you to click on. URLs can be very revealing. The are often nonsense letters and numbers. IN this case, the URL they wanted me to click on said "http://notme.hk/?" followed by a string of numbers and letters. HK is Hong Kong, I believe - I don't get ecards from card companies in Hong Kong. And the domain says "notme" - the other one I got was from "catcher.hk" -catcher - I'll bet!

Again, if you have Phishing turned on in your Internet Explorer Version 7, it will flag this when you try to click it. In general, though, be suspicious a lot.

I'VE ALSO BEEN GETTING emails claiming to be confirmations of discounts or free coupons from major vendors. These are frauds too. Look carefully at who it's sent to, and what the URL looks like. If it's Macy's, it will probably say "www.macys.com/coupon25432" or something. If it's a phish from Russia, it will say something like "www.macy.org/?sdf244a543243gk662f999g"

You want a coupon, use your junk mail from the Post Office like everybody else....

Funny: "The Author is Not To Blame...."

This is funny: In Harlan Cobin's book "One False Move"
'A Myron Bolitar Novel,' (which I recommend, as a good read) published Dell Fiction 1998

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wrote this book alone. Nobody helped me. But if mistakes were made, I wish to keep in the long-standing American tradition of passing the buck. So with that in mind, the author would like to thank the following wonderful people:...

[There follows a list of such people.]

Again, I repeat: Any errors--factual or otherwise--are totally the fault of these people. The author is not to blame.

"Momsense" is funny skit on Mom-hood!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlY8STkhopc

Comic Anita Renfroe on stage singing -- or rather, speeding through! -- her "Momsense" song -- everything your Mom says to you during the day, jammed into two minutes to the tune of The William Tell Overture. Funny -- charming -- even touching, be sure to show it to your Mom!

"Things I Don't Understand"

Things I Don't Understand #1: Office Copier Warmup Time
*Why do office copiers take several loooong minutes to power up each morning? Or to switch on from power-saving mode? *Computer* laser and inkjet printers take no time at all to warm up, and they are on the same technology! And a fraction of the price!

Things I Don't Understand #2: 'BART Bathroom Terrorism'
*Why does BART lock the bathrooms in underground BART stations, specifically, "because of terrorism," they claim on their signs? What have bathrooms in BART to do with security/terrorism? Why just the ones in underground BART stations? Or is this just a way to reduce the cost of cleaning?

Think about it: What scenario do you imagine causes the BART (San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit--our subway system) bathrooms to be especially a risk? What do we imagine the terrorists will do? Assemble their bombs in the bathrooms? Why would they do that? Blow *up* the bathrooms? But that wouldn't kill anybody--they'll blow up the trains, like they have elsewhere. Blow up the BART station infrastructure? You mean, by blowing up the bathroom? In the underground stations, the bathroom is surrounded by dirt and concrete--that would be the worst place to put a bomb if you want to do damage!

And why not the above-ground stations? What will terrorists do in an underground bathroom that they wouldn't do in an above-ground one?

I don't understand. My *suspicion* is that they figured out this is a good excuse for saving money since it halves the number of bathrooms they have to clean and stock!

Another thing I don't understand: How come the SF Chronicle isn't asking this question, instead of me??

Things I Don't Understand #3: Doors
*Why do doors, like public bathroom doors, that have automatic door closers *also* have doorknobs with catches? What good does the catch do? It costs extra for the extra hardware - to what end? It doesn't hold the door closed -- the pneumatic closer does that. It requires extra work for you to rotate the door handle to release the catch. It prevents one from exiting from one side just by pushing on the door. It makes no sense.

*When there are double-door entry doors into a commercial building, why is *one* always unlocked and the other *always* locked? When they unlock one of a pair of double doors, why don't they unlock both of them? How are you supposed to know which one is unlocked? You have to guess. And you always guess wrong, of course!

My suspicion is that the building staff are hiding nearby and laughing like loons watching the poor slob customers bang into the locked door!
When I ask a doorman or security guard why the don't just unlock both doors so people don't have to guess which one is unlocked, I always get a blank look.


Things I Don't Understand #4: Airports
*When I go to the Oakland Airport to take Southwest Airlines, in its own Terminal 2, the gate I am leaving from is ALWAYS in Terminal 1 -- and at the END of the terminal, too!

*Why is your gate at the airport always the very LAST gate at the END of the longest corridor? Who is it gets to leave out of Gate 1 or Gate 5? My gate is always Gate 36! You know what I think? I think those are DUMMY gates -- they hire actors to sit there and pretend to be waiting for planes!

*When you go to pick up your luggage at Baggage Claim at the airport, you wait there and the machine starts up and rumbles, then two or three bags come up and plog on the ramp --and go around and around and around and NOBODY CLAIMS THEM! It's never MY bag that's first! And it's never the bag of anybody who's actually waiting there, either! 30 minutes later, my bag finally arrives and I pull it off the belt and those first three bags are STILL THERE! Whose bags are they? Are they real bags, or pretend bags, test bags to make sure the delivery belt is working? Or are they BAGGAGE CHUM, to lure the other bags down the beltway??

Coming finally: SHOETUBE (Dec 07)

A friend of mine, Nicholas Petreley, wrote:
> I stumbled upon this while searching jobs at mediabistro. Maybe I just
> don’t understand women, but I’m speechless.
> http://www.shoetube.tv/shoetube_coming_soon.html

No, you really don’t understand women.

And the irony, but perhaps not, is that for the most part, with specific exceptional situations, men don’t even notice the shoes women have on.

Our local newspaper columnist wrote a hilarious piece the other day about the considerable discrepency between men and women in how they react to the prospect of attending a wedding. The men groan; the women grin. That’s certainly true of my wife and I.

mac

Mac and Bernice McCarthy On The Road

Bernice and I retired at the beginning of 2007. This blog is where we post tidbits about what's going on in our lives, and bits of travel pix (with links to our photos elsewhere online).

This blog is intended mainly for family & friends. Welcome!

mac