"We decided to erase him."

"Young women are constantly warned of the dangers of the manosphere.... The cult of 'toxic masculinity' is now so overcooked as to be limp..."

"... and meaningless, and, crucially, it entirely misses one key thing: feminine men can be just as 'toxic' as bodybuilders. It is Gen Z’s shallow sexual politics, which privilege 'looking' progressive over deeply felt values, that have landed us here. If the feminisation of culture has succeeded, it is because posing as effete gains men access to the women they want to sleep with. Cultural capital has deserted roided-up meatheads and landed in the lap of the moustachioed, mulletted lothario who professes to be a harmless feminist and who wields just enough knowledge about Judith Butler to talk a blushing sociology major into bed.... When visibly masculine men are maligned as potential abusers, women choose the wolf in vintage clothing. But this is all based on false assumptions: performative matcha is one more way that ill-intentioned loverboys can game our sexual politics’ daft stereotypes, joining tried-and-tested tactics like professing to be left-wing, painting one’s nails and listening to Phoebe Bridgers. You are just as likely to be shagged and bagged by a matcha drinker as a craft beer enthusiast, or indeed, a plain old lager fan...."

Writes Poppy Sowerby, quoted in "Ladies, if you see a man with a matcha latte — run/Male poseurs have abandoned macho and embraced matcha. Is it just another ploy to seduce women?" (London Times).

I haven't used my "performative (the word)" tag in a while. Here's the post where I created it, back in 2022 about a NYT piece titled, "Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise." I said:

"I learnt to paint looking at my own photographs; I used to love looking at a photograph with a magnifying glass and getting ideas about how to put paint on."

"I just simplify and use the shapes. I would never paint a whole house, for instance; I would paint part of one, something that tells a little story but not the whole story."

From "Gretchen Dow Simpson obituary: Artist for The New Yorker/Creator known for the rigid geometry of her depictions of staircases, beaches and exteriors of New England houses, dies aged 85" (London Times).

You can view her work at her website, here.

And check out her mural in Rhode Island:

"This is America showing itself because it was never in you in the first place. So why am I upset that you're upending something..."

"... that was never in you in the first place? I'm not saying that we shouldn't be upset. We definitely should be upset. But why are we-- we can't be upset at people that it was never in them in the first place to even care about somebody else."

Said a black woman, heard in episode 857 of "This American Life," "Museum of Now."

She is commenting on the removal of the 2-block-long, 50-foot-tall words, "Black Lives Matter," that had been set in concrete in a street near the White House.

Prompted by the question, "Is this more honest, actually, that they actually are ripping this up?," we hear her struggling in real time to understand why the de-installation of the motto wasn't upsetting her or wasn't upsetting her that much.

One might say the original installation was propaganda and pandering. Jackhammering it out of there said something accidental and authentic.

"Bowser caving immediately to the faintest hint of pressure on the name of the plaza is somehow even more cynical than the move to name it Black Lives Matter Plaza in the first place."

Said Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, a Georgetown philosophy professor (who, we're told, is black).

He's quoted in "Black Lives Matter Plaza Is Gone. Its Erasure Feels Symbolic. The movement that prompted 'Black Lives Matter' to be painted in bold yellow near the White House is in retreat. Its leaders are asking what comes next for social justice" (NYT). From the article:

"She makes us smile. She loves everybody. And how could the message possibly be any simpler than just that?"

I can't remember the last time we had a good nonhuman political animal in the spotlight. But this was Jim Justice, an oversized governor on the GOP convention stage with his overweight dog Babydog, summarizing the GOP message as vast unconditional love.

It really is a welcome relief to look at a fat dog and think about love, simplicity, and smiling. Here's a WaPo article about it:

"He’d been to Rome and seen the Sistine Chapel, and that was his inspiration for the 9,000-square-foot shrine he built..."

"... which he covered with 84 murals, along with bronze panels and stained-glass windows. It took four years to build; Mr. Butcher often worked, as Michelangelo had, flat on his back, suspended on scaffolding, painting the stories of the Bible from the creation to the resurrection. But unlike Michelangelo, who was known for his muscular figures, Mr. Butcher peopled his chapel with his signature sprites. And he allowed himself some creative leeway. For his depiction of the first day of creation, from the Book of Genesis — the part where God said, 'Let there be light' — Mr. Butcher painted three angels armed with flashlights. For Day Four, when God made the heavens, Mr. Butcher painted an angelic basketball team he called the Shooting Stars...."

From "Sam Butcher, Who Gave the World Precious Moments, Dies at 85/His childlike porcelain characters thrilled and inspired generations of collectors. They also made him a millionaire" (NYT).

We experienced the longest darkness in Indiana...

... in Vincennes, Indiana (a place named after François-Marie Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes, who was burned at the stake in 1736, "during the French war with the Chickasaw nation").

His name glows on a vibrant mural:

I don't know if this is the town's official motto, but we talked a lot about it: "Where everyone fulfills their God-given purpose!"

It seemed to be a grandiose claim, but I said maybe the people interpret God's requirements narrowly, so that it's not understood to be terribly difficult. My son Chris, texting, said, maybe God does not give them any particularly challenging purpose. I contemplated whether Chris was saying something different from what I'd just said and decided he certainly was. My idea was that people are self-serving, and his idea was that God was easy-going and pretty darned nice. Hearing that, Meade noted that "fulfills" could mean that citizens are simply wherever they are in a process of fulfilling.

We walked through the festival atmosphere on historic Main Street, by the Wabash River, but given the hubbub and live, loud rock music, we kept moving until we arrived at the memorial for the men who died in the War of the Union....

We set up on the lush grass by the county courthouse, which looked like this at 3:01:51 — 3 minutes before the beginning of the total eclipse:

And here it is, at the very beginning of the totality:

Thanks to Vincennes for hosting us and many others. The show was free and the number of dollars we spent was equal to the number of minutes of the totality of the eclipse. Meade bought a pulled pork sandwich at a food truck:

The text at the pig silhouette in the lower right corner of the truck deserves contemplative comparison to the aforementioned "Where everyone fulfills their God-given purpose!" It says: "Every butt loves a rub."

"A lot of pro-Palestine stuff in Barcelona."

Chris texts me from Spain, with 4 photographs:

In an alley next to the Palace Güell in Barcelona, Spain...

... my son Chris photographs that mural and this poster....

A closer look:

None of this matters....

It ain't over 'til it's over....

One day you're here...

And the next day you're gone...

Austin faces.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

At Tomorrow's Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

Traipsing around Austin.

At the Austin Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

Views of Austin.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"[A] bank will cover the costs of restoring the mural. However... some in the art world feel... that Banksy’s murals should be allowed to decay naturally over time."

From "How Do You Restore a Banksy Mural? Venice Is Working on It. Also up for debate: whether they should restore it at all" (Inside Hook).

"By what calculus would a company choose to furnish their quarters with a poster of a guy modeling a windbreaker rather than a museum-quality painting by Lichtenstein?"

"Granted, companies need to promote their brands. But a generation ago, corporations turned to art to burnish their reputations and acquire a patina of class.... Branding seeks to deliver a product to the widest possible audience, while art is about one person alone in a room, trying to give physical form to the invisible matter of their inner lives — or in Lichtenstein’s case, wondering if he had an interior life in the first place. As he once said, 'I don’t have any big anxieties. I wish I did. I‘d be much more interesting.'"

From "Heading Upstairs With Roy Lichtenstein/'Bauhaus Stairway Mural: The Large Version,' created by the artist for a Beverly Hills building, was rejected by its new tenant...." (NYT).

The painting — which isn't really a mural, because it's on canvas and was easily removed — is  26 feet tall and 18 feet wide and "painted in situ over a period of five weeks" back in 1989 in a building designed by I.M. Pei.

The new tenant is Alo Yoga, "a company specializing in leggings, cropped tops and other clothing designed for what it calls 'mindful movement.'" Alo refused to talk to the NYT about its anti-art decision.

"Imagine losing your job, at a hospital of all places - or absolutely any argument - over astrology. ..."

"I lost a debate with my friends over whether or not my wife can walk through walls. This was all long before Greta Thunberg got a mural in San Francisco, but Tom Foremsky - an English friend I admired - gave me a book, called 'Ishmael,' featuring a gorilla who talked about 'saving the planet,' to explain what I was getting wrong...."

Writes The Crack Emcee in "First Man Canceled™️" (The Macho Response).

"I know it’s a quaint wee village and this is a strong mural, but I did my own research into the women who were killed there, and I wanted to get people talking.

Said street artist Bobby McNamara, quoted in "'Rather insensitive': Fife council to remove menacing witch mural/Mural by Rogue One found to be not in keeping with historic area, after complaints about portrayal of women accused of witchcraft" (The Guardian).

[T]he row comes as the drive for posthumous justice for the thousands of people persecuted as witches in post-Reformation Scotland is growing, with campaigners pushing for an official pardon after the former first minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a formal apology last International Women’s Day to those tortured and often executed under the Witchcraft Act 1563.... The charity Remembering the Accused Witches of Scotland (RAWS) estimates that during the great witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries there were approximately 350 known accused witches in Fife, with up to 28 accused in Pittenweem itself, most famously Janet Cornfoot, who escaped from the local tollbooth but was caught and returned to Pittenweem, where she was lynched by a mob....

RAWS wants "respectful and dignified" "memorialisation" of the women who were unjustly accused and punished, but the mural shows a Halloween-style stereotype of a witch. Supporters of the mural are calling its critics "snowflakes" and emphasizing economics: "I think the mural is fantastic and I absolutely endorse it. It’s about time somebody was milking the place for the tourism it deserves." 

McNamara accepts the death penalty imposed on his mural: "As a street artist, you’re used to murals coming and going. I’m surprised it’s lasted this long and everyone’s got something out of it, whether that’s publicity for me, the pub, the village or for the women."