Does anyone remember the infuriating 1970 Bob Dylan album, “Self Portrait”?

From “Ten Times Bob Dylan Was The Most Insufferable Man in Rock”, a 1.9.25 Telegraph article by James Hall:

From “Self Portrait” Wiki page:

Lionelnation.com is about the love of Lionel trains…really. But the site’s founder, obviously a cranky conservative, digresses here for an examination of a 2019 clip by LAFD deputy chief Kristine Larson, a 33-year, LGBTQ-identifying veteran (Equity on Fire) who is subordinate to LAFD chief Kristin Crowley (also LGBTQ). The offending clip is six years old, mind. I’m sorry but the Lionel guy is kinda funny in an irked, tempestuous, exasperated way.

Thanks to the gracious, good-humored Stephen Holt for conducting this Toronto Film Festival interview in 2012. It’s oddly comforting to consider a 12-years-younger version of one’s self. I had darker sideburns — otherwise I haven’t aged at all. Well, I have but…

For the last two or three years I’ve only been able to attend the Telluride Film Festival through the grace and charity of Sasha Stone, who’s been renting a large, centrally located three-bedroom condo. I’ve been on the couch, and gratefully so.

Alas, Sasha has decided against attending Telluride next September (she’s miffed about not being invited last year to the Patron’s Brunch) and so I’m out also. Even if I was bringing in a reasonable income the off-the-charts Telluride greed factor would make it impossible to rent on my lonesome.

And so after 14 years of attending glorious, soul-nourishing Telluride (my debut visit was in 2010) I’m planning on attending the Venice Film Festival for the very first time — 7 and 1/2 months hence. 

I’m also half-persuaded that I can’t do Cannes this year. We’ve lost our Old Town, Napoleonic-era, rue Jean Mero apartment and the local greedheads are just as bad as their Telluride counterparts.

I don’t think that early-bird viewings of Paul Thomas Anderson and Terrence Malick’s latest will be worth the pain. I’d still like to attend, of course, but I have no choice but to accept, etc.

Venice won’t be cheap either, of course. I’ll be once again passing the GoFundMe hat. As HE is entirely Patreon-free and wide open now, I’m hoping that the same generous followers who pitched in last year for Cannes ‘24 will repeat the favor. Excepting those whom I wished cancer upon, of course. I understand their reticence.

It appears as if it might make more financial sense to stay in Dorsoduro (my favorite Venice district) and each morning take the vaporetto to the Lido, and the return to Dorsoduro in the mid evening. 

Does anyone know anyone who plays it this way? A freelancer who pays his/her own way and has stayed in the city? I’ve been to Venice six or seven times over the last quarter-century but I’d like to ask them some questions. 

I’m not against staying on the Lido, mind, but it seems a lot pricier.

Can one of you MAGAs explain how tf can firefighters stop this? pic.twitter.com/54z8AG5LPW

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) January 12, 2025

The Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki-like obliteration in Pacific Palisades over the last five-plus days has been so severe and traumatizing that people are probably emotionally incapable of accepting rational-sounding explanations for the fire-hydrant failures of last Tuesday and Wednesday.

Average Joes (especially the MAGA variety) don’t want to know from calm, plain–spoken assessments. They want to see heads lopped off and bouncing down the courthouse steps, and particularly those belonging to Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. It ain’t fair and they don’t care.

Meteorologist Jodi Kodesh, however, has offered a simple tutorial that explains what went wrong. It’s not complex rocket science. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have reported the same observations and conclusions.

What went wrong in the higher Pacific Palisades regions, Kodesh, WaPo and the WSJ say, was the sudden, massive drainage of the lower altitude trunk water line on Tuesday during the daylight hours, which in turn quickly lost pressure and couldn’t re-fill the three higher-elevation reservoirs.

The system simply couldn’t stand up to a maelstrom of this size and strength…the largely unprecedented wind-blown ferocity of the Palisades firestorm.

Even if the upper reservoirs hadn’t been drained the wildfire would have still overwhelmed.

The structure and system in place simply couldn’t stand up, to re-phrase, to the enormity of the fire…to the perfect storm of eight months of remote, bone-dry hill growth that should have been cleared…an overgrown tinderbox environment consumed by a massive inferno that tore through PP last Tuesday, starting in the mid-morning.

It’s also being claimed that there was a crucial six-and-a-half-hour delay last Tuesday on the part of Mayor Bass (who was then in Ghana) and acting mayor Marqueece Harris-Dawson in requesting federal assistance. The request allegedly wasn’t made until Tuesday at 5 pm. I’m not certain how sturdy or reliable this analysis of an alleged dereliction may be.

Then there’s the fire department budget cuts that were approved by Bass, coupled with an apparent administrative dispute between Bass and Fire Dept. chief Kristin Crowley.