4.30.13

I guess a little housekeeping is in order. I am back from my latest journey, a bad show on the heels of a bad show. A few more of these and you might see me on the corner with a cup of number two pencils. I don't think that I will do any April shows next year, the month is much too flat in our brave new world, I obviously have to apply a few tweaks to my business model.

Perhaps decorative arts are moribund in a world where a permanent underclass now serves a few scattered apex predators. I don't know. It does seem like all of my peers are reporting similar results, and the young do not as yet have much appreciation or resonation for anything beyond the mid century danish teak that they have been served up on Madmen.

To cap the show off, at the very end I had an expensive painting, which was unfortunately consigned. fall over on another painting, putting a neat little cross 'tween cloud and sky, obviously a sign from god warning me of my perfidy and the coming apocalypse.

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The view above is from Skyline Drive in Woodside, looking at the hills above the fogbank. One of the most beautiful views around, I arrived a bit late to take pictures. I was headed up the hill with Cam to take our semi regular supper at the Bella Vista, the 30's roadhouse nestled in the redwoods up top the hill. Six of us made the trip up the hill, reservations a bit late at 8:30 but what the hell?

I have written about the place before, a traditional linen and tuxedo joint where we were waited on by the venerable septuagenarian server Walter, an excellent and stalwart emigré from Crete.

Bella Vista is always good, charming in its outdatedness, a place where they still light the meals up table side and where one can get fresh abalone and sand dabs.

I had a lamb shank that could have turned over Fred Flintstone's car, nestled on a dual purée of potato and sweet potato and green beans. The shank could not have been better.

I wish that I could say the same regarding the caesar salad,  which was once famous and now sort of lame and not resembling a traditional caesar in any way, shape or form. We all got sorbet along the way and finished the meal off sharing luxuriant soufflés of chocolate and raspberry.

Would have been nice to celebrate a victory but one still has to eat.

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I drove back yesterday, first stopping in Fresno to see my father at the alzheimer's group home. My stepmother is a godsend. Dad looked good and is very sweet. Didn't know me but knew me, if that makes any sense?

Shela is worrying that he isn't getting enough to eat and brought him a bag of his favorite Barnum and Bailey animal crackers. If you are of a theological persuasion, please join me in a short prayer that he does not outlive his longterm health coverage because I don't know what we will do if he does.

I went through my mnemonic checklist, all of my brother and sister's names. No go. I tried to speak to him in his first language, ivrit or hebrew, but didn't get more than a possible flicker of cognition. It doesn't really matter. He's not in a bad place, in any sense of the phrase.