Pink Floyd

Hitler Quotes

The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.

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The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.

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The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.

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Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.

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Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized.

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The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.

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The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.

Dire Straits - Wild West End

Joshua Tree

 

Wayne Raney - Why don't you haul off and love me?

First 2026 Roadie in the books...

I got back from the cool little Cowboy and Indian show in Prescott, Arizona the day before yesterday. 

Stopped off and spent the first night in Palm Springs to pick up a big red yei blanket and a rare wild west poster.

Well, actually little isn't the right word, there were over 250 dealers there. 

The right word was inexpensive, even spartan. 

But warm and cozy too and filled with good friends and comrades.

While I have done several shows in the past that have cost me upwards of 14k for a booth plus expenses, this one cost one hundred sixty dollars a table. 

I took two and they were at a premium. 

Stayed with great friends in a beautiful home up on the rocks for free.

The event was held at the Findley Toyota Center.

I split my space with my pal Barry so we could pal around, set up and shop. 

My goal was to sell a couple things and buy baskets, which I did. 

Really exceeded all expectations.

This was old school. No walls, no cases. Throw it out there and have a good time.

I put my better baskets behind me on the bleachers so that nobody could get their mitts on them.

For some reason, a few people think it is okay to grab baskets and handle them without permission and it makes me rather nervous. 

They can be very easily hurt if you happen to be an idiot.

I was fortunate to have a really good space. 

A woman had obligations and couldn't make it so I was able to get the second table, would have been tight with just one.

The people in the hallway bombed, as usual. With the absence of Mesa and the Las Vegas Show turning so many dealers and clients off, dealers need shows like this to survive.

I didn't take many pictures but should have. 

Some real characters walking around.

An aging dealer base of course. 

Blackburn walked up to me and said, "In ten years every person in this room will be dead," a quite cheery thought.

Might not be that far off.

There were excellent dealers there, Compton, Mackley, Munns, Vandenberg, Selser, Terry de Wald, Bob Nelson and more.

Cream of the crop.

My fellow Fallbrookian Tony Zimmerman had a  great show.

Mark and Linda Winter and Terry Schurmeier stopped by en route to Las Vegas.

Terry bought a nice bracelet from me. Thank you!

My booth was between Voracek and Randy Rodriguez.

Everybody I talked to had a good show. 

I sold baskets, jewelry, all sorts of stuff.

I bought four nice apaches, a washoe and this sweet yokuts double rattlesnake bottleneck that had once sold at the Heard Museum for three grand.

Ate well, had a lot of laughs with Bob, Sandi, Ron and Ronnie Guy as well as the Voracek crew.

Prescott is a gorgeous town. 

I think I saw the most beautiful sunrise I have ever witnessed from my perch up top on the mountain.

Epic. 

It was cold but no snow but there was some still on the ground.

Easy pack in, easy load out, couldn't ask for more.

I left Thursday morning and was engrossed in conversation with Barry when I turned off on the freeway.

About an hour in I started noticing plant forms I have never seen before. Then a rock spire on my left that resembled something from Monument Valley. Just where in the hell was I?

I looked down at my screen and saw that I was actually headed to Las Vegas. Wrong road. I took about ten more miles before I could find a place to u-turn on the mountain grade.

Bob called and asked where I was?

Quartzite.

It took five hours?

Don't ask...

Having righted my ship I made my way through the desert. And then the yellow oil light came on. I stopped and checked and I was real low but was in bumfrick egypt and no where to stop. Nursed it to a oil change place in Temecula. They said no oil whatsoever which is weird because I am on a 4k schedule. No leak either but the plug smelled burnt. 

Not sure what is up, going to change the plugs but the engine might be burning oil at 90 k which should not be happening.  Will keep a better eye on things. Can't afford a new car right now.

Anyway, life is what it is. Good to be home with my sweetheart, going to rotisserie a duck tomorrow on the Weber, with an apricot glaze on my half of it.

Take care, all.

Al Di Meola - Uncle John’s Band

Queen Bitch

Sinema Scope

I regularly thrashed Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema on this blog when she was in office. 

The blonde bimbo from Arizona and her cohort in West Virginia did more to deepsix the Democratic party than anybody, every chance they got. 

She was featherbedding her future at every opportunity, thought nothing of her constituency, only sucking up and aggrandizing herself to big money interests. 

Here we catch her smelling a fat payday ahead in her tasteless Elton John meets the munchkins ensemble.

She is in the news twice this week. Elizabeth Warren called her out on the carpet for her corporate butt sniffing the other day.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Monday ripped her old colleague, former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), for “cashing in” by representing crypto, artificial intelligence (AI) and other wealthy corporate interests since leaving the Senate at the beginning of 2025.

Warren accused Sinema of protecting wealthy industries during her final years in the Senate before “cashing in” and cited a recent Wall Street Journal article that, according to Warren, “marveled at the sheer number of projects Sinema has taken on from crypto, AI and other wealthy corporate clients.”

“Meanwhile, millions of working Americans who have not seen a minimum wage increase in almost two decades are still waiting for Democrats to deliver on one of our most basic promises,” Warren said Monday at a speech at the National Press Club on the “future of the Democratic Party.”

The Massachusetts senator took aim at Sinema, in particular, or her vote in March of 2021 to raise the federal wage to $15 an hour and then spending the rest of her Senate term opposing Democratic efforts to raise taxes on wealthy corporations and hedge fund managers.

Now the self avowed bisexual ecstasy user is apparently trying to milk corporate psychedelia as well.

The Wall Street Journal reported in August that Sinema “has launched an array of projects and new jobs focused on cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and psychedelic research.

Nothing against psychedelic research but she gives me the willies, definitely a bad trip.

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In other news, Sinema is getting sued by her bodyguard's ex wife for seducing her husband and ruining their marriage.

Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) has been sued by the ex-wife of a former congressional aide who is accusing the onetime Arizona senator of breaking up her 14-year marriage through “intentional and malicious interference,” according to a lawsuit filed in Moore County, N.C.

The plaintiff, Heather Ammel, is accusing Sinema of seducing her ex-husband, who served as a member of her security detail beginning in April 2022 and then as a salaried member of her Senate staff as a defense and national security fellow, according to the complaint.

The complaint is full of bombshell claims, including that Sinema asked her security employee, Matthew Ammel, to bring MDMA on a work trip so that she could guide him through a psychedelic experience and that she messaged him about sexual positions in certain scenarios. Heather Ammel is seeking to hold Sinema liable for “alienation of affection,” a legal claim that allows a spouse to hold a third party liable for interfering in a marriage in such a way that causes loss of love or companionship.

This useless woman is and will always be bad news.

Shadows and Light

Robin and Dave with the Ormidale Chorale - Argyll, Scotland

The Beach Boys - Vegetables

Downtown

A friend sent a mysterious text Sunday with a tic tok video attached, Beware! I don't do tic tok so I called him Monday morning and asked him what was up and if there was anything in particular that I should be concerned with.

He said not to worry, he just wanted me to know that a noted Fallbrook street person (rhymes with Meth) was seen fishing mail out of the mail slot at the Mission Theater with another urchin.

He followed them behind another business and watched them sort through it. He called the cops, told them that he had video and they did nothing, Went into an alley and laughed. No arrest, no nothing.

I thought mail theft was a federal offense?

Not in Fallbrook, apparently, where the cops don't like to make waves. Unless they are prosecuting my wife for defending herself against a crazed Maga-ite who punched her in the face. Because "it is her word against yours and we are going to side with the conservative." That one cost us some money. Good thing a scared witness who saw the whole thing finally stepped forward.

Anyhow I don't usually bother talking to the deputies about the homeless who seem to run roughshod on Main St. The ones who crap near my back door and who I continuously have to pick up after. I filled a garbage bag yesterday. I have seen them charging their phones in one of my utility outlets that is practically on the roof. But nothing ever changes, I think somebody is bussing more and more derelicts in.

Not sure why they are my responsibility to clean up after but at least they have mostly stopped screaming foul epithets at customers and shopkeepers and scratching their names on my window. I just pick up trash and power wash poop,

My friend told me that one of these losers had a gun and tried to carjack him a few months ago. But law enforcement won't do anything. Pretty useless.

What a shame.

I used to have a lot more sympathy for the downtrodden but I have used up my quota. All they seem to do is take. And the rest of us are on our own. 

Neighborly

 

Black throated wind

Love you, Bob.

So saddened to hear about the passing of Bob Weir. 

Dave alerted me that the end was near a few weeks ago. 

I didn't want to believe it. 

During my long tenure as a fan and member of the dead community I managed to meet, hang out and talk with every member of the dead but Kreutzmann for some reason.

But Bob is the only member of the dead I ever drank with. It was at Griffin's funeral. 

We drank a bottle of tequila, right out of the bottle. 

Jerry was drinking whiskey in the bar but Bob and I were swigging right from the bottle outside.

This was way back in 1991. We talked about a lot of things that I don't totally remember at the moment but I do recall talking to him about Griffin's Imperial Message mural that Gordon and Griffin erected behind the dead back at the infamous Swing show in San Bernardino in 1977. 

Bob had no clue it was ever up, apparently until I told him, he didn't have any idea. They were looking the other way. Tried to tell him how powerful that night was for many if us, not sure it got through. Anyhow he was a genuine guy and I was and still am quite grateful that he took the time to reminisce and share a bottle of spirits with me mourning our late friend.

Beautiful man, will be sorely missed.

Weather Report Suite

The Ol' Cardiff Days

After forty three years of chemical sobriety, I have to figure all the criminal statutes have expired by now and I can safely expound on my misbegotten youth. So a confession; I was not always such a squeaky clean boy scout as I am today.

College was quite the experience. I had two roommates, Dave and Jeff. Rick Griffin called us the original Furry Freak Brothers. Never went to class much, interfered with our partying. Dave recently sent pictures.

We had quite the bachelor spot, right on the bluffs of Cardiff. Pretty legendary, industrial sized nitrous tank, glass tabletops, Motown parties, we were like pioneers of our craft.

We all have our roles to play. I was sort of the mature adult chaperone in this household. "Have a glass of milk, have you done your homework?" Somehow we managed to fit in quite a few Grateful Dead concerts in between our scholastic efforts.

Me to the right, my first year issue red BMW. Not sure about the white pants. Dave had a green BMW CS coupe, one of the early ones. We set the bar for high or low, depending on your pov. Lots of fun times, many girlfriends.

An older milf type woman named Francine would open her door and scream loudly so everyone on the block could hear, "Robert, do you want to f-ck..." I tried not to ever let the old gal down.

blotter tongue

easing congestion

Tempe airplane ride

Dave says he has a lot more shots, some even more disturbing than these. These pics actually scare me now. We were definitely out of control. But we sure had fun. These whippersnapping kids these days...

Brick in the wall...

What sad times we live in when a communist lesbian agitator is allowed to run over a masked ICE officer with her car. Wait, what do you mean that never happened?

String Cheese Incident

Bully Power

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Stephen Miller

Our application and newfound love for the Monroe doctrine in places like Venezuela and Greenland will have one immediate result; it will be an invitation to Russia to take over Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Poland and bring them back into the puppet state fold. 

Look for China to greenlight their takeover of Taiwan as well.

We have set a stunning example with our rhetoric, threats and bullying actions. We have forsaken and alienated our longtime allies and given strength to ruthless adversaries.

Europe and the west will be the new enemy for Trump and his new allies in Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang, who share his love for unbridled power and autocracy.

It is frankly a shameful time to be an American, both internationally and domestically.

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Having said that, kudos to several Republicans for finally standing up to Trump. Thank you Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, Roger Wicker, Dan Sullivan and Don Bacon, a retired Brigadier General. We need more people of every political stripe and tribe to speak out against the insanity.

Jesse Ed Davis

Note from Big Dave

I thought that this was an interesting screed and probably quite accurate.

Remember January the 6th

 

Cowboy Collectors Gathering

For the first time ever, I will be exhibiting at the Cowboy Collectors Gathering in Prescott, Arizona later this month. 

It looks like a fun little show to do and a great opportunity to buy. Lots of top notch dealers.

If you are in the area, stop by and say howdy!

note from Thailand

 

Allman Brothers Band

3/12/71 Fillmore East - Alternate take

Justice Ketanji Brown warned us about this...

In his recent state of the SCOTUS address, Chief Justice Roberts pointedly said that justice would be equally dispensed to the rich and the poor.

“Those of us in the third branch must continue to decide the cases before us according to our oath,” he wrote, “doing equal right to the poor and to the rich, and performing all of our duties faithfully and impartially under the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

A new study shows that that is plainly balderdash. 

The study, published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, investigated whether the Supreme Court has contributed to rising income inequality by ruling in favor of policies that favor wealthy parties.

It is called Ruling for the rich; The Supreme Court over time.

Its authors—two academics from Columbia University in New York and one from Yale University—found that in cases pitting the rich against the poor, Republican appointees were far more likely than their Democratic colleagues to side with the wealthier party.

Back in 1953, Democratic and Republican appointees were statistically indistinguishable on the issue, with justices appointed by members of both parties favoring the rich in 45 percent of cases on average.

By 2022, the average Republican-appointed justice was voting in favor of the rich a whopping 70 percent of the time.

The average Democratic justice cast a “pro-rich” vote—which was defined as a vote that would directly shift resources to the party that was more likely to be wealthy, including votes that supported businesses over consumers or workers—just 35 percent of the time.

“The results reveal a steady increase in polarization, mostly due to Republican appointees whose decisions rise from about 50 percent pro-rich share to a 70 percent pro-rich share over the course of 70 years,” the study’s authors, Andrea Prat, a Columbia economics professor, Jacob Spitz, a Columbia PhD student, Fiona Scott Morton, a Yale economics professor, and wrote.

No wonder Roberts brought it up.

Mona

Psyched

I took a puff or three this afternoon, to no or little effect. It had been a year and I thought I should check in. Oh well, maybe try again.

Big Dave sent me a picture of Hippie Robert on an infamous plane charter we took over forty five years ago.

We were hanging out with the Dead and Warren Zevon's band back then, getting into all sorts of mischief at the hotel. I am quite skinny, I believe I was on a special Peruvian diet.

Sweet girl's name was Sue. We engaged in some serious fun a mile up in the air, pilot threatened to abort the trip. It was not destined to be a long relationship, she insisted on talking to me while I had my morning coffee and was dutifully engaged in reading the paper, a serious breach. Great while it lasted.

Here are a couple more pics of me during my psychonaut days, thought the fun and hijinx would go on forever, it didn't.

Living large

Being a good husband, or doing my best anyway, I made scones this afternoon. It has been raining off and on all day and I started the day driving back and forth to Mission Viejo, helping out a friend who is moving back to China with his wife.

Leslie has been asking me for "her" scones and it was her turn. Dried cherry, dark chocolate, walnut, pecan. I added a bit of maple to the vanilla in the wet mix.

She found a screaming deal on whipped honey with cocoa and we drizzled a few, just because we could.

Leslie says Delicious.

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Speaking of deals, Steve Wagman told me that he found fresh swordfish yesterday for half off at Major Market, $7.50 a lb.

Leslie drove down this afternoon, brought back swordfish and wild caught fresh Alaskan cod.

I made a compound butter with garlic, paprika, lemon zest, lemon juice and parsley. 

Got my Le Crueset griddle screaming hot in the oven, did a three minute sear with olive oil on the stovetop, flipped it and stuck it back in the 400 degree oven for about six minutes, a bit longer on the cod.

We slathered it in the compound butter. Leslie made a beautiful grilled artichoke lemon fettuccine that could not have been better. Tomorrow we are back to salad.

Killer meal. Life is good.

Take the A train

Falling Down Blues

Bully Pulpit

First stop Venezuela, is Mexico next? Canada, Greenland, Denmark, does it ever stop?

Trump says we will run Venezuela now, to the consternation of many of our allies. Take the oil.

Now I am not sure if this is the good old Monroe doctrine or the divine right of kings but I don't think this bullying attitude and disrespect for other countries' sovereignty is going to end well.

Not that Maduro was a prince but I thought the GOP said it was now time to mind our own business and go non-interventionist?

The indiscriminate murder of the people on the boats, who may or may not have been trafficking drugs that may or maybe not headed to the United States makes a little bit more sick sense now, a prelude to his real intended takeover plan the entire time.

I am sure that our newfound allies in Russia, Hungary and North Korea will heartily applaud the strategy.

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We never hear much from Russia hawk Lindsey Graham on the subject of Ukraine any more. Why the crickets, Senator? Somebody get access to the Grindr account?

Of course, there are lots of GOP members too afraid to open their mouths right now.

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All of the polls are pretty clear, a gigantic majority of Americans support extending ACA credits.

78% of the total populace and 59% of Republicans. 57 % of the people who identify as MAGA, which makes sense since they will bear the brunt of not having health insurance.

The Republican leadership will have a lot of heavy lifting to do in order to convince Americans that destroying the health care system in this country is a good thing. 

It's not like they have not had fifteen years to come up with a suitable alternative.

But instead we have nothing.

Button your seatbelts. 

We are in for a very bumpy ride the next three years. 

Anything can happen. 

But at least we will have a lot of new gold and marble fixtures in Washington D.C..

Arc de Trump. It was a natural!