In 2014, a major milestone in music and art history was reached when a music student named Amelia Hamrick attending Oklahoma Christian University took precious time out of her study schedule to transcribe the musical notation written across the butt of one of Hieronymus Bosch's hell-dwellers in his Medieval triptych and master work, "The Garden of Earthly Delights." Hamrick plinked out the tune on piano—written in a book in the painting and finishing across the posterior of the sinner in question in a section of the painting that historians call "The Musicians' Hell"—and posted to her Tumblr, for all the world to celebrate.
Here's a section of the painting known as Musicians' Hell that Bosch enjoyed putting together (do you see the bunny?)
This guy's having an okay time in Club Hell with his jazz hands.
But not so much this guy, his butt exposed, a demon writing notation with its weirdly dotted tongue across this sufferer's cheeks.
Now we can all listen to this 500-year-old butt song from hell, as featured on Anderson Cooper 360. Enjoy!
Hamrick's review is that it's a "really bad" Gregorian chant. But that didn't dissuade Will Ascenzo from posting his chant version on his Tumblr.
Ascenzo's inspiring lyrics:
Butt song from hell This is the butt song from hell We sing from our asses while burning in purgatory The butt song from hell The butt song from hell Butts
But hold the phone! We're not done yet because Jim Spalink has posted his version of "Hieronymus Bosch Butt Music" on lute, harp, and hurdy-gurdy. Let's listen:
These butt-music composers are legion, but not to be outdone, guitarist Buckethead has recorded and animated his take on Bosch, "Spokes for the Wheel of Torment." If ever there was a band in hell, this is it.
When your muse is 500 years old, that's old-school.
I pitched my crime-spree home-tour idea to HGTV and they never got back to me, so I'll just post it here. Having finished reading Jeffrey Toobin's American Heiress - The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst, I was struck by how many Bay Area neighborhoods the self-proclaimed Symbionese Liberation Army took residence in during their year-and-a-half odyssey after kidnapping publishing mogul Randolph Hearst's granddaughter, Patricia (only her dad called her "Patty," but the name stuck from the seemingly endless media stories about her ordeal).
I was not quite ten years old on February 4, 1974, when 19-year-old Hearst was carried, kicking and screaming from the Berkeley apartment she shared with her fiancé Steven Weed (who she dated when he was her high school teacher — gross — that was the 70s, people). I thought the entire situation was shocking, like most of the country, and even more so when approximately a month later, Hearst in one of her taped communiques, denounced the "Pig Hearsts" and the "Pigs" in general, joining her comrades in fighting the "fascist insects that prey upon the life of the people," The SLA was committed to one thing: plotting (and more often than not bungling) ultra-violence while spouting meaningless jargon.
"Waaaah?!" I countered, along with the rest of the world, watching her rob banks in surveillance photos in a saucy beret while brandishing an assault rifle. Hearst and her gang became the most wanted criminals in the U.S. For all their ineptitude and confusion (and Toobin documents plenty of it), they managed, with the help of sympathetic cohorts, to avoid detection from the entire FBI, as well as local law-enforcement agencies for more than a year. This was a saga of the far-far-far-left, as well as a sort of overview of life on the lam in the downtrodden economic-times of the 70s, when inflation rose in absurd disproportion to salaries, and landlords were happy to fill their substandard housing with no questions asked.
Thanks to Toobin's impeccable research, I can now make sense of the SLA path to oblivion and jail-time as they traversed the country, renting safe-houses, apartments, farm-homes, roadside motel rooms, even living for a time in Manhatten. Let's take a virtual tour of the SLA's road to nowhere. Toobin supplied most of their actual addresses, which I called up on Google Maps, but I'll leave the house numbers off here, out of respect of the homes' current occupants. If you want to find them, read the book—it's a page-turner and offers a true slice of 70s living, horror, dark humor and all.
The kidnapping itself occurred in Berkeley, Calif. on Benvenue Avenue. Hearst and her older boyfriend/former teacher Weed were hanging out for a quiet night of TV and dull conversation when a tiny band of operatives calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, led by their leader Donald DeFreeze ("Cinque"), burst into the apartment, pummeling Weed and a curious neighbor before hauling off Hearst into the trunk of their car. The apartment hasn't changed much in all these years.
The SLA had partially met at this communal house on Chabot Road in Oakland, after Cinque had escaped jail and was hiding out there with a bunch of lefty roommates. Cinque, who was black, gathered his troops, consisting of nine people, including two girlfriends, all of whom were white and involved in prison reform and pontificating. Wanting to make a splash in leftist underground circles and start a nationwide revolution, he and his girlfriends, Patricia ("Mizmoon") Soltysik and Nancy Ling, brutally assassinated Marcus Foster, the first black superintendent in Oakland, for the unfounded belief that Foster had catered to some idea of the "The Man's" concept of black and white relations. The murder was unanimously decried across all political and activist spectrums, and the SLA scrambled to form another plot based on South American guerrilla groups to get their muddled points across. Hence, kidnapping.
Two of the SLA (Joe Remiro and Russ Little) were soon picked up by local police while the collective was living in this suburban ranch house on Sutherland Court in the East-Bay suburb of Concord, California (where I grew up, amidst the cow-dotted Mt. Diablo foothills). The group was hiding out here after the Foster murder when Remiro and Little were stopped by an officer while driving a suspicious-looking van around the neighborhood.
What I especially like about this aspect of their saga, was that the men had gotten lost in a tangle of cul de sacs, trying to escape the police. So you could say that Concord's lack of city planning helped law enforcement nab their prey. Unfortunately for Remiro and Little, they would be found guilty for Foster's murder, while their comrades and actual murderers got away. But a much worse scenario awaited that core group.
In their haste to pack up their news clippings, political books and a growing stash of weaponry, the SLA attempted to burn the Concord safe-house to the ground to cover any remaining evidence of their tenancy. But like so many of their crimes, they botched the job and the house merely smoldered. And there it stands to this day, with drought-tolerant landscaping.
Onward, they drove in the dark of night to Daly City, the southern suburb of San Francisco, where the fog wafts thick the majority of the year. They first rented a house on Winchester Street, which Google Maps refuses to pinpoint with any accuracy, but no matter because they soon moved to another Daly City location, throwing a dirty foam mattress into a bedroom closet in anticipation of their next victim.
Here at the modest digs on Northridge Drive is where they pulled Patty Hearst from the trunk of their car, placing here in the closet for the next month while teaching her about their vision of overthrowing the conservative-pig government. They weren't clear about what to demand while they held her, although they hoped to spring Remiro and Little from the hoosegow. They settled on a food give-away program that Hearst's father paid for and brought to fruition in San Francisco and Oakland. It was poorly managed in the short span of time it was thrown together. Rioting and chaos in the streets ensued as crowds tried to get their allotment of goods as decreed by the SLA. And Hearst by that time had befriended one of her kidnappers, Angela Atwood, and taken up with another one, Willy Wolfe, who became her boyfriend.
They next moved to a dumpy apartment in San Francisco, on Golden Gate Avenue, to try and "blend in" a bit more, now that the kidnapping had been internationally reported, Hearst by this time was calling herself Tania and spouting "Death to the insects" rhetoric herself. Desperate for cash, the operative planned another attention-grabbing action, robbing the Hibernia Bank in the Sunset District on Noriega and 22nd Avenue. Tania would make headlines as a gun-toting urban guerrilla (which was the occupation she chose for her arrest form, but that comes later in the story).
The SLA was amused to learn that the city's FBI headquarters was only a mile away at 450 Golden Gate Avenue. In trying to locate Hearst, the FBI was fully inept, which gives me hope that Quentin Tarantino will someday sign on to direct a movie about this strange odyssey, so impenetrable in motive and indicative of a lost time and place.
An ill-conceived move to hide out in a small hovel on Oakdale Avenue in Hunter's Point, where the majority-white members, including the now-infamous Tania, stuck out in a black neighborhood. The house was barely habitable, and where it once stood is now the site of a new City College building.
Tiring of their downwardly mobile housing trajectory, the operative packed up their bloated arsenal once more, this time for the long drive to Los Angeles, where Cinque had grown up. They rented this place on West 84th Street in South Central, with no running water or working electricity. Once again, the nearly all-white household could rarely leave the house in the all-black neighborhood without drawing attention.
And one day, when Bill and Emily Harris drove the collective van to do errands with Hearst in the back, the SLA blew up, literally, not far from the West 84th Street house. That day the Harrises ended up in an absurd melee in front of a sporting-goods store when Bill tried to shoplift a small item and was accosted by a zealous store employee. Fisticuffs ensued and Hearst, waiting in the van, saw the commotion and decided to shoot up the front of the store from across the street with her semi-automatic rifle.
Miraculously no one was killed and the Harrises made their escape into the van. Zipping through the streets of L.A., they ditched their ride, carjacked a couple of vehicles, and wound up briefly kidnapping a high school kid who had agreed to sell them his vehicle. They all passed the night in a drive-in, watching movies, waiting for their cohorts to meet up with them, but their friends were no-shows.
Because after the sporting-goods shoot-out made the news, the remaining SLA members, numbering six—four women, two men—ditched their ride and hid out at this location on East 54th Street. Several people were living in what Toobin calls a flop-house, including some children. When the SLA came knocking at 4 A.M., offering the gift of stolen bank cash, the inhabitants no doubt marveled at their new house guests as they hauled in a tremendous amount of guns, bullets (filled with cyanide—a Cinque calling card) and bomb-making equipment.
Meanwhile the police found a traffic ticket in the abandoned Harris van, with a nearby address, and soon zeroed in on this location, bringing the newly formed SWAT team to surround the tiny house.
Not the actual house, which burned to the ground, along with two other homes
Here's the story of the ensuing shootout, the largest in U.S. history, which the nation watched unfold in our country's first unplanned live news broadcast.
The amount of automatic fire-power blasting into and out of the little house for two hours turned the neighborhood into a war zone. The ensuing house fire could have started from the multiple rounds of tear gas thrown by the P.D. or a punctured gas can inside the house. Everyone in the house, hiding in the crawl space, firing away, was eventually shot or burned to death, which is nightmarish in the extreme. They would not surrender. It would be an era of inexplicable death-wish behavior, including the Jonestown Massacre and the assassinations of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone by disgruntled former co-worker Dan White.
The Harrises and Hearst, holed up in an Anaheim motel across the street from Disneyland, watched the news, just like the rest of us. Their tiny homemade army was now down to three members. No doubt in shock, they headed north the next day, staying in another hotel in Costa Mesa, then hiding in a former coal bin on Oak Street in their friend's San Francisco apartment. After the friend kicked them out, they settled into a run-down apartment on Walnut Street in Oakland. Toobin doesn't give an address, but I looked up Walnut Street and it's located by my son's former preschool. There's something about this story that hits home with me.
A guy named Jack Scott who wanted to write a book about the SLA, managed to track them down at this point and offered them his apartment in New York City on West 90th Street. They drove cross-country and stayed awhile (meeting up and living with sympathizer and partial babysitter Wendy Yoshimura) before Scott whisked them to a remote farmhouse he rented in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, where he hoped to interview them at length. Another farmhouse in Jefferson, New York, served as a hideout as the relationship between Hearst, Scott and the Harrises withered under the stress of being long-term fugitives and freeloaders.
Hearst would end up in Las Vegas briefly with Scott after he brought her back to California (she also traveled with his parents, who urged her to turn herself in, but no dice). Eventually the last of the SLA reconvened in Sacramento, on W Street, where they met up with some like-minded bombers (literally—the group was wanted for bombing various empty-building targets), which included brother and sister Steve and Kathy Soliah, plus Michael Bortin and James Kilgore.
Everyone worked on their bomb-making skills and planned a new bank robbery to take place at the Crocker National Bank in nearby Carmichael. This went catastrophically wrong when bank customer and mother of four, Myrna Lee Opsahl, was shot and killed by Emily Harris when her gun discharged as she ordered Opsahl to lie down on the floor. A teller later miscarried after Kathy Soliah kicked her on the way out of the bank, taking $15,000. Hearst drove a getaway car. Soliah would later face a day of reckoning for not only this bank job, but also for planting a bomb in a police car in Los Angeles that failed to detonate but would have killed many bystanders, including children, had it gone off.
Some miserable times were had in Sacramento after the botched robbery. The gang made their way back to San Francisco where they moved into two houses, this one on Morse Street in the outer Mission, where everyone but Hearst worked as house painters, building bombs in their spare time.
And this house, on Precita, not too far from where my Grandma lived for 40 years, off of Geneva, in the godforsaken San Francisco neighborhood we called "The border of Daly City." Here, Hearst lived a quiet, isolated existence with her new boyfriend Steve Soliah.
By this time, the world had figured out that the SLA was a bunch of fucking idiots. And dangerous too, so finding and convicting them was paramount. The FBI doubled down and followed some tips that led to the site of Steve Soliah's house-painting job. This led to some old-fashioned surveillance and stake-outs, and finally everyone was captured. Hearst was in the Precita house when the police came bursting in. As she was driven away in the patrol car, she famously raised her fist in defiance.
But it didn't take much jail time and time with her family before Hearst turned on her former comrades, including her boyfriend, Soliah. The former revolutionary soldier claimed she had been tortured, raped and brainwashed and believed that if she didn't join the SLA, they would kill her. Which didn't take into account all the times she could have easily escaped. Either in Los Angeles, or in Sacramento, where she was left alone for hours at a time. It also doesn't explain why she felt compelled to shoot up innocent bystanders in Los Angeles, or continue on with the SLA even after their crimes escalated, resulting in more death and destruction.
Whatever her reasoning and state of mind, the kidnapping was no doubt a nightmarish and terrifying ordeal, and Patricia Hearst is a survivor. She was found guilty of bank robbery and served some time before being pardoned by Presidents Carter and Clinton. She married her bodyguard, appeared in some John Waters films, raised two daughters, and is known for her prize-winning pedigreed dogs. That is about as bourgeois as it gets.
The Harrises were convicted of kidnapping and bank robbery. The rest of the group spread out and went underground for more than twenty years before finally being caught and pleading guilty for the robbery that led to the murder of Myrna Opsahl. That is a story unto itself, but doesn't involve much real estate, unless you count the nice St. Paul Minnesota home Kathy Soliah settled down in, going by the name of Sara Jane Olson while living an upstanding suburban life as a wife, mother and community-theater player before she was identified on "America's Most Wanted." Wendy Yoshimura got a plea deal and now paints watercolors in Oakland. She paints vivid still-lives of fruit, which would look fine in any home environment.
As most of you know, our current president-for-now and his administration SUUUUUUUUUUCKS so MUUUUUUUUCH. There's no subtly, wit, finesse or even basic competence with this GOP Trump cult straight out of our worst nightmares. Seriously fucked-up shit. But complaining, however warranted, will only take you so far. What to do?
Send postcards! Actually it's much better to call, fax, or best yet, show up in person to political offices and town halls and VOICE YOUR OPINIONS. But postcards are so cathartic and inexpensive and once mailed, become official responses that are logged into the record of our hallowed governmental databases that are reported to our representatives, so say it with postcards.
Currently postcard stamps are 34 cents and some feature coastal birds, so you're already spreading the love with those right there. What kind of postcards will you send? Here are some homemades I sent out for the Ides of Trump postcard event on March 15th. They will give you ideas. Or not. Make your own. Or send some of your old favorites from your postcard collection. Everyone has a postcard collection, yes? I do. They come in handy when you want to try and unseat a demented despot.
The rules of postcards - make sure yours are:
Rectangular
At least 3-1/2 inches high x 5 inches long x 0.007 inch thick
No more than 4-1/4 inches high x 6 inches long x 0.016 inches thick
Sorry--my printer broke at this point, hence my bad handwriting
What will your postcards SAY? Important messages! Be direct, heartfelt, soulful, funny, brave, true. I'm not sure swear words are as effective here as during other discourse. I did tell Ryan his healthcare bill was a turd, but I was just being honest. It's up to you. I signed all mine. Some people want to be anonymous, but the First Amendment is your postcard friend, so don't be afraid to tell congress people who you are and where you come from.
Here's a sample:
Dear _______. What in the actual fuck?! Who died and made you KING?! We are a freedom-loving bunch of louts who will not be corralled into your paranoid, rich, white, narcissist dystopia! We are Americans and we hate your guts! Sincerely, ______________
OK, I don't think you should use the above sample. Use your own words.
Key concepts to keep in mind:
Our fundamental human rights will not be pushed backwards into the dark ages
Healthcare is a right, not a privilege for the wealthy few
You work for us
We are the majority
Release your taxes
You sold us out to the murderous tyrant Putin
You are a liar x1000
No racist ban / no racist wall
Resign
Get ready for #Impeachment
And just as importantly send some "thank you" cards to those who are doing a good job. There's so many! I sent a lot of thank you's and I enjoyed the process so much, I'm planning on sending more. Our representatives are working over-time (all except Mr. Stupid, flying to Florida at tax-payer expense on the regular). Saying thank you on the phone and through twitter, Facebook and emails are all nice gestures too. Just think of the good vibes. Good vibes are the answer.
Hi everyone in the USA. It's time to get political. I know modern living is not easy. Wages have not kept up with inflation and cost-of-living expenses, including housing, utilities, food and education. We have a generation of college grads mired in horrible debt. We have a huge population and not enough industry to keep us gainfully employed. Our coastal cities are slowly going underwater as ocean levels rise. And I haven't even mentioned the lunatic that was stupidly and probably illegally voted into office as our leader.
I will get to him in a moment.
Meanwhile, it's time to call your elected officials and tell them how our laws and regulations affect you and your loved ones and communities. I know, it's kind of a pain to squeeze this into your schedule, but it only takes a few moments and it's so satisfying. Sometimes calls can't get through on hot-button issues; voicemail boxes get full, people go out to lunch. Keep trying. Phone calls will be tallied by office staffers and those tallies go directly to our elected officials. They are counted. They do count. Your experiences and opinions will be counted.
Handwritten letters are also tallied. Get out your favorite pen and lovely stationery and write your missive. It's good penmanship practice for when the apocalypse comes and we're living in a dystopia where communications consist of string tied to two tin cans. Emails tend to get lost, but are better than nothing. I also use twitter and Facebook for messages of a personal nature. But phone calls to political offices are golden.
Are you out and about? This Medium article tells you how to use nonpartisan POPVOX's simple phone app to contact your Senators during the Senate confirmation hearings for Trump's proposed cabinet. Hearings started this week, with Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's pick for Attorney General. Here is my nonpartisan response to that: *GAG* It's not political—it's just a reflex I'm having.
Stay informed:
C-SPAN - Live broadcasts of Federal-government dealings, no commercials!
BBC News - Answers the journalistic questions: Who? What? Where? Why? with nice accents
Subscribe to these fine news outlets - a free press is a crucial part of oversight and checks and balances. On a budget? Try a digital subscription: Washington Post
Médecins Sans Frontières - Doctors Without Borders cares for people in the most desperate need throughout the world; this is holy work
(Thank you to my friend Audrey Ng and to Bust Magazine for this list of good organizations)
You can do it! Don't bey shy. Use your voice - you're democracy in action!
On another note, I noticed whenever I post about Trump I seem to receive hundreds of views from Russia. Coincidence? Perhaps. But whenever I don't post about Trump, I receive zero views from Russia. That's a difference of hundreds vs. zero. So here's an experiment. Let's see what happens when I type this:
The majority of American voters do not want Trump as President, spawning the title #NotMyPresident. Some people won't even say his name with the title of "President" attached. What if we call him by his own self-described criteria? Some sample titles, based on his own words: "Pussy Grabber Trump," "Higher IQ Than You Trump," "Potential Shooter Trump," "Groveler Not Mocker Trump."
Any more? Russia, do you want to weigh in on this one?
I'll explain: thanks to the "campus carry" gun policy backed and enforced by Texas governor Greg Abbott, it's legal to bring a licensed gun onto any Texas campus and right into the classroom. Yet the University of Texas at Austin's student handbook bans the "distributing" and "brandishing" sex toys.
Noting the absurd discrepancy, One Pulse for America student activists Jessica Jin and Ana Lopez staged a clever Cocks Not Glocks demonstration this week. They handed out hundreds of dildos to their fellow students, who brandished them in their classrooms and throughout the campus with impunity. Just like their open-carry gun-toting brethren.
This of course got mass-media attention and will probably lead to one of two results—either campus officials will take this open-carry battle to the highest federal court because their state insists they allow guns in their classrooms, whether they want them there or not (and if I know most college professors, the answer to that is probably not), or the college will shrug its collective shoulders and say, "Okay, okay, you made your point—you can go ahead and carry dildos around campus too. Enjoy, kids."
Anyway, the .Mic news site made a great little video about the photo-op-rich rally and I commented to the UT activists a positive little message of support, because you can imagine the backlash they're getting from gun-toters who find sex toys "obscene." I got some brush-back for my effort. And I'm amused. So I saved it here, because let's face it, campus carry laws are not the best policy, and also Facebook is so rarely amusing.
See for yourself. My original comment, "Hilarious and insightful. Keep up the good work," is at the top, followed by the following exchange:
Mark Davidson thinks that if he writes "you failed to make a point or a joke," it is so, when the reality is very different. His deep denial aside, he set the pointed joke up with his own argument and it is PERFECTION.
Here's a screen shot of some of the video points from the .Mic video. The original is here.
Now these activists have made their point and it's funny and true. Keep up the good work, ladies.
I really don't know what I'm doing. That's art. I've never had any supreme confidence in my art abilities. I only know it's been a constant state of pleasure (and sometimes frustration) since I was able to hold a pencil upright. I'm taking an online class with Carla Sonheim to get some structure to my artwork and so far simply drawing or painting (or sanding or basically making a mess) every day has been an education in seeing objects with clarity and focus. I hope brain synapses are occurring!
Perhaps art is the ultimate god-like move: creating something from nothing. And like the star-nosed mole, it doesn't always have to be pretty or even make a lot of sense.
Some strange combinations of materials produced these images.
This little bear lives on my desk - drawn with my non-dominant (left) hand
Capybara drawn with left hand - try drawing with your "wrong" hand - it's fun and isn't supposed to look "right"
Minimalist frogs
Minimalist dodo - I love dodos - who doesn't?
A newt with jazz hands that I drew from memory with my eyes closed
An anteater drawn with eyes closed - a real day-brightener
A puffin birthday card - screw you, Hallmark
Drawn blind while looking at Velvet Underground photos (blind contour) - really captures a time and place, don't you think?
A flightless and wingless moa, extinct around 1600 - wish moas were still around
This is Claude the alligator from the SF Academy of Science
This is based on a drawing Jackson made of his bike at age 5
This is my first house in San Francisco - it's supposed to be childlike, and yeah, it is
This is another Moa - it's goofy because...art
Who doesn't respect a fish on stilts? Edward Lear drew this Fizzgiggious Fish more than a century ago
These are beginning exercises to get the class drawing without a lot of technical anxiety or perfectionism (good thing). Like when you're a kid with a box of crayons and some scrap paper. That mindset is a good starting place for all artistic play, which will hopefully lead to more thought-out ideas and a substantial body of work. Why is that important? Maybe it isn't important, but what are we supposed to do—watch reality TV until we drop dead? Probably art is a better use of our time and resources. I suspect.
What's scarier than Donald Trump and his Hate-mongering Blowhard platform? His followers, of course. Let's hone in on Trump supporters via the magic of screen-shots. I don't usually freeze people in mid-support of a narcissistic lunatic, but I think in this case, it's warranted. What kind of person rallies to support Donald Trump? Let's find out.
Trump just made a doozy of a stump speech. Two hours of rambling nonsense, which I call "The Belt-buckle Rebuttal," for his mock reenactment of fellow candidate Ben Carson's telling of a would-be stabbing of a friend, or a bully, or someone—thwarted by a belt buckle (if you don't know what this refers to, count yourself lucky).
As you can see, the crowd ATE IT UP.
And watta crowd! Who's with Trump? These people:
Guy on the left is studying Trump's Ben Carson stabbing reenactment like it's an episode of CSI.
My son asked me who would want Trump for President. Without thinking, I blurted out, "The mentally ill!" I don't have data to back this up—it's just a guess. My theory is that a sizable amount of narrow-minded paranoiacs can't get enough of Trump. Also, the very stupid. And mixed within this group—bigots. Trump's early surge in the polls was the result of his early-campaign demonization of Mexican immigrants.
But if he's any kind of business man, he very well knows that much of our local economy would wither, collapse and die without cheap labor from Mexico. He's scapegoating and using hate-speech as propaganda to get the bigot votes. He's not going to build a "great wall" with a "very big, very beautiful door," as he's promised. On this, as with so many topics, he's full of shit. But does he truly hate Mexican immigrants? From what I know, coming from a Mexican-American family, I'd say yes. And so do his fans.
