Robert Duvall has died at 95. He played Tom Hagen in The Godfather, Part II, and famously pointed out that “A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns” (worth remembering before considering marriage; no lawyer can sue you for divorce if you aren’t dumb enough to agree to a marriage!)
And, of course, every Robinson R44 pilot who ever thought about applying a “Death From Above” sticker to the nose of the four-seater will remember Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel William “Bill” Kilgore in Apocalypse Now.
I’ll remember Duvall in the lesser-known The Apostle (1997), which he also directed (don’t miss the soundtrack!). 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Robert Duvall, who drew from a seemingly bottomless reservoir of acting craftsmanship to transform himself into a business-focused Mafia lawyer, a faded country singer, a cynical police detective, a bullying Marine pilot, a surfing-obsessed Vietnam commander, a mysterious Southern recluse and scores of other film, stage and television characters, died on Sunday. He was 95.
Throughout his career, Mr. Duvall tried to keep Hollywood at arm’s length. He preferred living elsewhere — for many years on the Northern Virginia ranch with his fourth wife, the former Luciana Pedraza, an Argentine woman 41 years his junior. They met in the 1990s in Buenos Aires, which he visited often after developing a passion for the tango.
He was a Hollywood outlier on another front: politics. He was an ardent conservative, strongly supporting Republican presidential candidates, in a film world dominated by political liberals.
From early on, Mr. Duvall enjoyed the life of a supporting actor. “Somebody once said that the best life in the world is the life of a second leading man,” Mr. Duvall told The Times. “You travel, you get a per diem, and you’ve probably got a better part anyway. And you don’t have the weight of the entire movie on your shoulders.”
Bad Bunny is articulating the surreal and sad feeling of seeing his homeland transformed by internet-supercharged globalization. The U.S. territory’s economy has long relied on tourism, but in recent years, a wave of laptop-toting mainlanders lured by the balmy climate and notoriously loose tax laws has driven rent increases and threatened to wash out the local identity. Bad Bunny’s new album, Bonilla wrote, is a “lament for a Puerto Rico slipping through our fingers: betrayed by its leaders; its neighborhoods displaced for luxury developments; its land sold to outsiders, subdivided by Airbnb and crypto schemes and repackaged as paradise for others.”
(The gringos at The Atlantic characterize Puerto Rico as having “notoriously loose tax laws”, but “How Puerto Rico Became the Newest Tax Haven for the Super Rich” (GQ 2018) and other sources make it clear that Act 20 and Act 22 are, in fact, tightly specified.)
Separately, if you want to enjoy Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance, but don’t understand el idioma de los conquistadores (or the way that Bad Bunny pronounces this language), here’s a recital in the English language:
I have converted the SUPER BOWL song to English for the @nflcommish and the parents
The “We Accept EBT” sign on the set was a nice touch. It wasn’t inclusive, however, for viewers in Minnesota. Why not an additional “Waxaan aqbalnaa EBT” or “Halkan EBT waa laga aqbalaa” sign? (the majority of Somali-headed households are on SNAP)
In other NFL news, our home town of Jupiter, Florida was indirectly featured recently by Bill Belichick’s young associate:
Bill Belichick’s 24 year old girlfriend Jordon Hudson taunts Robert Kraft with ‘Orchids of Asia’ massage shirt. pic.twitter.com/JIU5FxDDmr
As our young football fans clean up the house for tomorrow’s guests and prepare the chip bowls, I wonder if Bad Bunny will sing his big hit “Monaco” tomorrow at the Super Bowl. That should start some conversations at American elementary schools. Sample lyrics:
You don’t know what it’s like to be out at high sea with two hundred hoes To have the flight attendant suck you off in the sky What it’s like to throw five hundred thousand at the strip club That’s why I don’t care about your opinion That’s why you’re 101 in the top 100, and I’m first You’re not rappers anymore, now you’re podcasters My barber charges more than you Fucking and traveling around the world
When I die, I’m gonna leave a hundred plots of land to my grandchildren To all my ladies, the butts and the breast And an F-40 for my haters but without brakes Why? So they crash He, so they kill themselves Red or white, matt black, what you want? Rest in peace, I’m still on the yacht
I light a phillie, the family is in Monaco
ChatGPT:
It’s not meant to be taken literally; he’s not claiming there are exactly 200 women on the yacht. Instead, it’s an exaggerated fantasy of abundance — so rich, so famous, so untouchable that he could fill a boat with models just for fun.
The phrase “I light a Phillie” (sometimes written “light up a Phillie”) comes from slang referring to lighting a Phillie Blunt, which is a cigar brand (“Phillies”) that’s often used to roll and smoke marijuana.
[Regarding the flight attendant line] That lyric describes conduct that would violate multiple aviation rules and laws. Interference with flight crew (14 CFR §91.11): Anything that distracts or interferes with a crewmember’s duties is prohibited. Engaging a flight attendant in sexual activity would clearly qualify. … Consent & power dynamics: Any sexual activity involving a working crewmember raises serious legal issues, including coercion and workplace sexual misconduct. … Sexual acts in public conveyances: Aircraft are considered public spaces under U.S. law. Sexual activity onboard can constitute indecent exposure or lewd conduct, which is prosecutable.
[The AI seems to be confused regarding the fact that a private jet can have, and in some cases require, flight attendant, e.g., when certified for more than 19 passenger seats.]
Why isn’t the Super Bowl always in a tax-free state? (this year it will be the opposite and maybe Bad Bunny will get hit with California taxes? Separately, why does the San Francisco Bay Area want to host a Covid superspreader event such as the Super Bowl? Perhaps 200,000 people will gather for this event if we include hotels, restaurants, bars, etc. See New York Times article, below.)
You’ve read in this space about Art Basel Miami (officially “Art Basel Miami Beach”), which isn’t in Miami. There’s also Art Miami, which is in Miami and, having started in 1991, predates Art Basel Miami (2002). Art Miami happens in a huge waterfront tent and is connected to CONTEXT Miami, which features less-established artists. Art Basel and Art Miami are connected by the Venetian Causeway and also by an every-10-minutes water taxi service organized by the cities (if a city doesn’t spend all of its tax dollars on migrants, those who choose to refrain from work, and migrants who refrain from work, there is plenty left over for public services!).
My companion and I had a late lunch at Motek Miami Beach and then took the water taxi over:
We quickly learned that it is okay to cover your Ferrari in fur, but don’t leave it unattended!
Art Miami seems to have art by bigger names than Art Basel, with less emphasis on what’s newest. Here’s a Yayoi Kusama to go in your $200 million house:
If you’re Christmas shopping for an elderly photographer/engineer, how about this Rolleiflex 35mm camera embedded in Lucite from François Bel?
On the CONTEXT side, a vaguely similar idea (no acrylic, though) from John Peralta ($28,500; unlike at Art Basel most of the pieces at Art Miami and CONTEXT had price tags):
A view from the smoking terrace:
An Israeli gallery showed up with some huge glass works and a few original Yaacov Agams (remarkably, still alive at 97):
Speaking of Israel, here’s a photorealistic work by Yigal Ozeri that would be perfect for the redecoration of Gracie Mansion for incoming Mayor Mamdani. The intifada could easily be globalized if Israeli women loved Ayatollah Mamdani as much as progressive white American women!
Here’s some more work from Israel for Mayor Mamdani, all from Natan Elkanovich (he says that he uses “kitchen and sewing utensils to drizzle and sculpt plastic materials on canvas”):
If you are a peasant with a house worth less than $200 million, Art Miami is probably a better place to shop than Art Basel. If you want to find out what’s exciting to art nerds, Art Basel is perhaps better. But if you’re doing Miami Art Week, both are well worth visiting.
Here’s my report from this year’s Art Basel. All photos from the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Because paying $1,000 per night for a basic hotel room is just a rounding error for me… I stayed across the bay at the Marriott Biscayne Bay. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it was right next to Art Miami, which I hadn’t heard about and which I’ll cover in a later post, and also because it’s right next to a former Episcopal Church that has converted to Rainbow Flagism, consistent with Santiago de Compostela and End Stage Christianity.
If you don’t want to get stuck in traffic, the Miami Citibike system isn’t a bad way to get around. The bikes don’t seem to be in great shape and they don’t fit a 6′ rider that well, but the terrain isn’t hilly.
In Art Basel Miami Beach (2018) and Art Basel Miami 2021, UBS featured female victimhood and celebrated the handful of women who’d manage to overcome the “imbalance” and “make a difference”. The commitment to social justice seems to have evaporated and now UBS promotes getting richer:
Speaking of rich, the most talked-about installation echoed the UBS theme of rich-meets-art. Busts of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg on robot legs interacted with Andy Warhol, Picasso, and the creator of this work (Mike Winkelmann; a.k.a., “Beeple”). (Given Picasso’s fondness for teenage females, could he have survived today’s moral rectitude?)
Here’s Andy Warhol (the most famous gay person not famous for being gay?):
The Wall Street Journal says that $200 million is the new minimum for a decent house and there were quite a few pieces for sale that would have required a spare thousand square feet or two. Here’s an example from Anne Samat titled “The Unbreakable Love… Family Portrait.” It includes plastic swords, keys, wine corks, etc.
A work by Yinka Shonibare that inspired me to stop complaining for a few minutes:
I looked him up on Wikipedia: “At the age of 18, he contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord, which resulted in a long-term physical disability where one side of his body is paralysed.” If someone who is half-paralyzed can make it to Art Basel, what’s wrong with the rest of us?
Feel better about your middle-school dioramas (by Mondongo, a husband-and-wife team in Argentina):
Here’s a technique that I enjoyed, hand cut paper by Ariamna Contino (or maybe by her assistants?):
At the opposite end of the effort spectrum, Erika Rothenberg’s 2018 work America, A Shining Beacon to the World:
Only the Weinstein Gallery (they haven’t changed their name?) was crass enough to put prices on labels. Here’s a modest-sized $3.5 million Leonor Fini work from 1936 (imagine what it would cost to get an original oil painting by an artist that people have actually heard of!):
Some practical advice… pay a little extra for the 11 am entry tickets and go in right at 11 rather than at noon. The venue gets crowded by 1 or 2 pm. A 2:15 pm Friday image:
From 1:22 pm:
You don’t have to spend a lot to bring a souvenir home from the event. For only $5,500, for example, you can get a nice Taschen book of David Hockney pictures (printed in Italy):
Don’t worry about charging for your electric Rolls-Royce:
There are quite a few additional art events in Miami Beach and, covered in a later blog post, across the bay in Miami proper.
One American fencer is highlighted as important. Her achievement was fencing while wearing hijab as a positive example to counter the horribleness of Donald Trump:
Trump apparently wrongly questioned the value of importing millions of Muslims as U.S. residents/citizens shortly before Omar Mateen, child of immigrants from Afghanistan, killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub (June 2016). (Note that children of Muslim immigrants are statistically more likely to be interested in waging jihad than their parents were (Harvard report on Danish study).)
A TV actor is highlighted for identifying as 2SLGBTQQIA+:
Anthony Fauci is featured as the most notable physician in our nation’s history (note the modeling of a cloth mask rather than an ineffective N95 mask):
(I am desperate to see a Fauciland theme park on the campus of NIH Bethesda!)
Speaking of coronapanic, a separate part of the museum reminds us to “fight the virus, not the people”:
Science fiction has been important to the extent that it has been about women:
Clips of some of America’s greatest television moments are available. There is a Sesame Street show in which kids are exhorted to wear masks and also one in which kids are told that immigrants, especially Muslims in hijab, always make America a better place for everyone:
In a separate section of the museum, visitors are reminded that today’s immigrants have “much in common with those who came before” (i.e., a no-skill Islamic asylum-seeker immigrant from Somalia has a ton in common with Heinrich Engelhard Steinway, who built pianos in Germany prior to building pianos in New York):
The entertainment section has a “micro-gallery” about racism and comedians of color:
Those who appreciate engineering will be pleased to learn that the museum displays a portrait of Elon Musk:
The World War II exhibit reminds visitors that the U.S. and U.K. defeated Germany without significant assistance from the Soviet Union.
Likely unrelated to Trump and his war on wokeness, the museum falsely states that German-Jewish immigrant Ralph H. Baer invented “the first video game” circa 1966. Baer was perhaps the first to try to make a consumer-priced device that could attach to a TV, but Wokipedia correctedly credits earlier efforts on mainframe computers.
The currency exhibit reminds us that most of the world’s important societies for most of human history have been governed by females:
A $100,000 bill is displayed as well. Although intended for transferring funds from one Federal Reserve Bank to another in 1934, if Congress continues its deficit spending program this could be useful to feed into Coke machines:
The 10-year-old and I found ourselves in the “American Enterprise” exhibit in front of a wall of business pioneers all of whom just happened to be female. I said to the kid “standing here and looking at this wall you can learn that the success of American business was entirely due to women.” This generated some righteous indignation among a couple of 40ish people nearby (presumably furloughed government workers). They proceeded to lecture us to “open your eyes” and look at other walls within the same exhibit. We actually did as they suggested and found Eli Whitney displayed as having equal importance to American enterprise as “Jemmy”, an “enslaved entrepreneur” who made baskets (this pairing makes a certain amount of sense because Whitney’s cotton gin kept slavery going longer than it otherwise might have).
The de-woked attacked-by-Trump gift shop offers this classic American candy, invented by Johannes “Hans” Riegel Sr.:
Some of the apparel in the gift shop celebrates 2SLGBTQQIA+, but most of it celebrates those who identify as “women”. Women are voting, doing science, building WWII weapons, being legends rather than ladies:
Maybe the books would feature some victimhood category other than “female”? Well, a few did:
But mostly the books ignored Blacks and the Latinx in favor of victims whose victimhood was a consequence of female gender ID, just as most of the jobs and government contracts set aside for descendants of American slavery have been scooped up by white women:
Ironically, for a museum that features certain Americans because of their gender or race ID, the gift shop sells a book celebrating the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection:
We are informed that Donald Trump has attacked America’s museums in general and the Smithsonian in particular. “Will Museums Fight Back Against Trump?” (New York Times, August 22, 2025):
The president’s attacks on the Smithsonian Institution and other museums have become an effort to redefine why such places exist.
President Trump has sought to govern with an iron grip the federal bureaucracy, the economy and even the finer details of White House architecture.
He wants to put his stamp on the culture of the nation, too.
The president, once a fixture of tabloids and reality television, is waging a war on the rarefied cultural spaces he says have become too “woke.”
We took our boys (10 and 12) to the de-woked Smithsonian National Museum of American History on October 4, 2025. Just inside the front door, the boys learned that they “belong” in girls’ sports just as soon as they raise their hands and say “we identify as girls”. It’s not a matter up for debate, but simply “fair play” when “transgender, nonbinary, and cisgender female athletes demand equality”. The Smithsonian certainly doesn’t mention that there are any dissenters (“haters”) from this dogma, though, as we would find throughout the museum every sign is translated into Spanish (but not Arabic, Chinese, Somali, Swahili, Dari, Pashto, Urdu, or any of the other languages of migrants who make America great).
There’s a lot of explanation for the womanly skateboarder at right:
Our primary objective was to see the lowrider show (see also Lowriders in Fort Worth for these machines in their native increasingly-Islamic element). Spanish 101: the word for “lowriding” is “El lowriding”.
The de-woked curators remind us that American Hispanics claim victimhood going back at least 75 years:
If I can get our Honda Odyssey’s batteries to stop failing (the most recent 4-year AGM battery survived for about 1.5 years) it would be awesome to find the paint shop that did this one:
The depth of color isn’t achievable with a wrap, I don’t think.
Father of the Year Daniel Tovar made a lowrider for his daughter:
One hundred percent of the people described and depicted in the exhibit as actually building lowriders of significance had traditional male names and appeared to identify as men (moustaches, male attire, etc.):
(the dapper gentlemen is Sonny Madrid, who founded Lowrider magazine in 1977)
The gift shop, on the other hand, explains that it is actually Latinas who are responsible for lowriders:
Marjorie Merriweather Post famously built Mar-a-Lago, but lived in that modest $18 million (value used by New York judge) shack only during “the Palm Beach season”. She lived in Northwest Washington, D.C. during the spring and fall and in the Adirondacks during the summer. Her DC place, cozy by Mar-a-Lago standards, opened as a museum in 1977 and somehow I missed it while growing up in Bethesda, Maryland. My excuses: I started working full-time at NASA (on Pioneer Venus in 1978); I was too young to drive; the museum is nowhere near the Metro; despite high crime rates, Jimmy Carter wouldn’t send the National Guard into the city (he was too busy appeasing the Ayatollahs).
Ms. Post loved dogs, decorative art, orchids, Japanese gardens, and aviation (her private four-engine turboprop Vickers Viscount ferried everything but the gardens with her among the three estates).
The Museum costs $20/adult, but it is free for federal government workers suffering the trauma of receiving 100 percent pay for 0 percent work:
… offering free admission to those receiving SNAP benefits. Present your EBT card upon check in at the visitor center. and receive complimentary entry for 4 guests.
Ms, Post was apparently prescient regarding the kind of society that the U.S. would one day become. A sculpture on the outside of her mansion shows a youth with a swan:
ABC (“Three of four suspects were apprehended” but, as far as I can tell from searching, our noble media never updated us regarding the names or backgrounds of any of the suspects):
The “mansion” itself is unremarkable compared to Mar-a-Lago and, but the contents and gardens are spectacular. A hillside Japanese garden is small, but awesome, and contains some of the stone lanterns that are virtually impossible for consumers to buy today (cheap cast concrete versions are available):
Ms. Post loved her dogs and built a cemetery for them, as well as for the departed canines belonging to family and staff members, on the estate grounds:
Ms. Post built a greenhouse for her orchids (note the modest Islamic dress; in any group of people in Washington, D.C. in October 2025 there was typically at least one person wearing hijab or abaya and at least one person wearing a COVID-19 mask (both indoors and out)):
Some fake iOS background blurring:
The interior is jammed with interesting objects so it is impossible to do justice to them. There are a couple of Fabergé eggs (maybe Optimus can make replicas of these for all of us?):
Here’s an idea of how much there is to see in the “icon room”:
Ms. Post collected a ton of figurines that included dogs. A few examples:
Homage to the highest tech devices of the day:
A couple of personal favorites:
Let’s exist through the COVID-19-safe gift shop:
As far as I can tell, 100 percent of the objects in the museum and estate were made either by East Asians or white Europeans. Ms. Post’s prime years coincided with an almost complete shutdown of immigration to the U.S. Nonetheless, the gift shop reminds us that we should celebration immigration/diversity:
We are informed by Science that there are at least 74 gender IDs, but most of the books for sale celebrate the achievements of people who identified with 1 out of 74:
I wonder if today’s insanely rich people, who are far richer than Marjorie Merriweather Post ever was, will one day leave us beautiful estates in which to wander. It doesn’t seem as though we’re going to get this, though. When Bill Gates sends $200 billion to Africa, for example, it doesn’t even leave a lasting mark on Africa (there are more needy Africans today than ever before, I think). So let’s raise a plastic glass before we eat our Costco ramen to the woman who left Americans this evidence of what the dining experience used to be:
In June we learned that undocumented migrants were big customers for the Metropolitan Opera (AP):
Metropolitan Opera season attendance dropped slightly following the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that coincided with a decrease in tourists to New York.
The Metropolitan Opera, one of the world’s most renowned performing arts companies, is turning to Saudi Arabia to help it solve some of the most severe financial problems in its 142-year history.
The company has reached a lucrative agreement with the kingdom that calls for it to perform there for three weeks each winter. While neither the Met nor the Saudis disclosed financial terms when they announced a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday, the deal is expected to bring the Met more than $100 million.
The Met hopes the agreement will help it emerge from a period of acute financial woes. Since the coronavirus pandemic, the company has withdrawn more than a third of the money in its endowment fund to help it cover operating costs — about $120 million overall, including $50 million to help pay for the season that ended in June. The withdrawals have raised questions about the viability of staging live opera on a grand scale in the 21st century.
As we prepare for Bisexual Awareness Week (Sept 16-23) and LGBT History Month (October) and Trans Awareness Month (November), it will be interesting to think about how the Met’s LGBTQ+-themed lighting will be used in Saudi Arabia:
Here’s what the new opera house in suburban Riyadh will look like when it opens in 2028, but before the Met’s rainbow lighting scheme is applied:
The Met began spending in a whole new direction in 2021 (NYT):
Mr. Nézet-Séguin — who has been openly gay for his entire professional career and nonchalant enough about it to post a smiling partners’ beach selfie on Instagram — is impossible to miss.
“The fact that he’s so comfortable with who he is is part of what makes him a powerful, effective artistic leader,” Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in an interview. “Because he is proud of who he is, and that’s very important.”
ChatGPT:
In Saudi Arabia, engaging in same-sex sexual activity—whether between two men or two women—is illegal under the country’s interpretation of Islamic (Sharia) law. The legal consequences are extremely severe and can vary depending on the specifics of the case and judicial discretion. Same-sex acts are considered sodomy or illicit sexual intercourse (zina) and are punishable by death under traditional Wahhabi interpretations of Sharia law. Even when the death penalty is not applied, those convicted may face indefinite prison sentences, flogging, financial penalties, or deportation in the case of foreign nationals. … Saudi Arabia enforces some of the strictest laws against same-sex relations in the world. Punishments include—but are not limited to—execution, flogging, prolonged imprisonment, hefty fines, and deportation.
The Murakami show at the Cleveland Museum of Art includes some murals that would be awesome to have in a kid’s room if only a humanoid robot could be adapted to do the work of either applying wallpaper or directly painting.
Another area where the robot could work… recreating Sol LeWitt murals in the home. Different color schemes for every holiday.
For my friends in health care, the artist’s conception of what a nurse looks like:
Circling back to the principal theme for today… if you had nearly-free high-skill labor from a robot would you use some of it to have wall murals in your house? Or would it make more sense to cover a wall in large tiles of flat-screen TVs and do this electronically?
