The apartment that I rented in Amsterdam at the turn of the 2000’s was a perfect location for me to work from at that point in time. I had become friends with local businesswoman, Danny Linden who owned a fetish shop on the famous Oudezijds Achterburgwal in the Red Light district. Danny and I became friends and worked on a number of shoots together for her shop. She realized that I was going back and forth to the states on a regular basis between 1999 and 2005 so she offered me to stay at an apartment that she managed just around the corner from her shop on a tiny little street that looked on to rows and rows of prostitute windows. I was such a frequent visitor that they always said hello to me as if I was their neighbor or something. Yes. There was the something too.
In this part of the apartment where I made the photographs of Mel there was natural light entering the living area windows. The warm red walls bathed my models in beautiful afternoon light as we worked through a series of test pictures for the latest body of work.
Mel was one those visitors on a go see. I remember her most as a makeup artist. However, when I saw how exotic she looked I asked to photograph her right there on the spot. No conversation before , it was very spontaneous. I never saw or had the opportunity to work with Mel as a makeup artist this occasion but I do cherish the brief time that we met. It was fun to have bathed her in such beautiful light.
KVaughn called and said he was on his way to New York to select fabrics for his Winter collection of custom made scarves to be released on December 2, 2022. Every time we talk about his trips to New York you can tell his energy easily matches that of the city that never sleeps. On that note, Kevin sent me a few voice notes for this article in an attempt for the reader to gather insight on how his creative process works. They are posted here as a linear series of voice messages. This season he focused on purchasing silks, cashmere and wool for his one of kind custom made scarves. He also hung out with this seasons muse:
VM 1: Friday, November 11, 2022, Magdim Towers, Philadelphia .
VM 2: Arrives in NYC, journey begins.
VM 3: Arrives at Chic Fabrics, 247 West 38th Street, NYC.
Chic Fabrics NYC
VM4: Has lunch at Lazzara’s Pizza Cafe & Restaurant at 221 West 38th st. NYC.
Lazzara’s Pizza 221 West 38th st. NYC.Lazzara’s Pizza NYC
VM5: Muse Adira love arrives for photos and shopping in NYC.
President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine. Illustration by Thomcat23 Copyright 2022
“Tick Tock (Knockin’ On Reckon’s Door – Second Knock)”
By
A.H. Scott
“I’m really rich!!” – Donald J. Trump[1]
Those who are just that need not shout it from the rooftops. Only those who fall short must adhere to a sense of elongation of their own shrunken ego.
A lineage of lies from three generations of the Trump family; first, Grandpa Fred, then daddy Donald, and his trio of offspring have known the art of the spiel. Deals are one thing with negotiations and such. Yet, what Donald and the three adults who assist in the family business have done is to perfect the art of the spiel.
Not just a few crumbs or flakes of mistaken assets or decimals on balance sheets this situation is, as it is a cake of corruption. Or, more succinctly on point, a cow-pie of corruption.
Talk faster, talk smoother and lay the manure thick and wide. That’s the Trump way of being too cute by half with regulations, regulators and judicial entities both state and federal. With a perfected smile and a good spiel for any takers, their run of not being held accountable might be coming to an unceremonious halt.
“We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia” – Donald Trump, Jr.[2]
Tick tock. Knock, knock.
Ivanka Trump, are you there?
Tick tock.
Oh, no, I’m Mrs. Kushner. Ivanka Kushner is my name. I don’t know of that name Trump anymore. I’ve moved on with my husband, Jared Kushner and I am his wife only. No longer daughter of that person who used to be somebody. I am just Ivanka.
Tick tock. Knock, knock.
Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump, are you there?
Yes, we remain, for we have the stain of the family name that can never be laundered or forgotten. I’m Don, Jr. and I’m Eric. We are Trump through and through. And, even if we wanted to run, race and do a Chuck Yeager away from that last name, we could never marry out of that financially, fractured lane.
“We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” – Eric Trump[3]
Tick tock. Knock, knock.
A spare daughter from the second wife is somewhere in the Trump kingdom of rusting ruins.
For Tiffany Trump, nobody sees her as part of this crude cocktail. Oh yes, she may have Trump as her last name, but she isn’t in the mix of misery which is the legacy of her father’s administration and its’ sphere.
Tick tock.
Third son is now a father’s last refuge for him to hide behind. Yet, nobody is in the category of believing the last child of Donald J. Trump is a mastermind of machinations and inclinations of illegalities which flowed for decades long before that young man was glint of a droplet of his father’s prowess.
Yet, now it is the former President who wants to twist a legally sanctioned FBI search of Mar-A-Lago into an affront on Donald’s baby boy. I have little doubt that if Barron Trump wasn’t a teenager and just a baby of a few months that his father would have lined and stuffed the crib with some of those classified documents in hopes that the FBI would not do a thorough search of all areas of the property. Oh no, Donald, when the FBI comes to your dwelling with a search warrant they will look everywhere and anywhere they need to in search of those documents. And, if they have to go through your missus’ closets and your teenagers’ domicile inside of that gaudy palace you call home – then they will. Stop your whining, Donald Trump.
Tick tock! Tick tock!
Now, it seems to be Melania Trump’s time to peep up and whine about having someone’s hands on her drawers during the warranted Mar-a-Lago search.
Married to a man of 76, a brooding, smoky eye on the future of self-preservation[4] for a woman who has many more a decade of living knows that time’s a ticking.
Hourglass is being shaken up to a Bossa nova beat for the 52 year old former First Lady, as her melody of keep on, keeping on after the old horse is gone is played.
Tick tock. Melania is gonna’ get her own groove back on in the future.
Donald Trump is acting as if he’s still in his glory days of the 1980’s when the media’s fascination was palpable for him. Here, there, and every-freaking where is the tale of Trump. Yet, as the 1990’s came rolling in, so did the dents and dimmed ash of the reality of this man’s kingdom crumbling from his own actions.
First wife, discarded for a Georgia peach in 1992. By the end of that decade, the bloom was off the orchard and it was time to move on. So, like a game of mirrored illusions, the presentation of the glitz and glamour would precede to entice the public with a spectacle of perceived wealth and stability. Yet, everything which Donald J. Trump does is for the sake of performance.
Third wife, well…it might just be the lady’s choice to move on this time. Either that can occur or she can just wait it out as the seconds tick away.
Then, there is the first Mrs. Trump, the recently deceased Ivana.
Every state has its’ own tax code, which can allow certain exemptions. In New Jersey, any land that is used as a cemetery can make taxes, assessments and rates go poof. With a first spouse buried on the grounds of his golf club, Donald Trump suddenly has the elimination of those pesky pennies he’d have to pay in taxes. After all, a man who professes his wealth to blatantly can’t lose a penny to poverty.
A golden lady who Ivana Trump was will forever now be on the green; or should I say in a shabby plot beneath the earth near the first hole[5] at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey.
By the way, the dearly departed Ivana was 73. Donald is 76.
Tick tock.
Donald, you are not a nubile and naïve ingénue betwixt 19 and 29; but, a weathered, rapscallion of many a decade long in the tooth.
Time waits for no man, Mr. Trump. And, even with you trying to beat off the sands of the hourglass and legal reckoning; the grains keep on falling with a possible indictment tossed in for good measure.
If a human being can live to 100 years, then the tick of the hourglass keeps draining down to that final grain.
Tick tock.
Donald Trump, a man who thinks all which his grubby hands have ever touched, or whose beady eyes have ever glanced upon, thinks every scrap of paper that ever passed his purview in his former position as President of the United States is now his possession for eternity.
Oh, this man is sorely mistaken in his own miserable mind. The top-secret[6], classified, confidential files are NOT YOURS! They belong to the government and the American people.
Since that is a fact, I might as well go down to the National Archives and put in my FOIA to see those files for myself. They do not belong to Donald Trump. They do not belong to any former President.
When a President leaves office, and oh yes, you had to GET OUT of that White House on January 20th, 2021; you leave the documents right where you found them and not pack them up and transport them to whereabouts that would seem unknown.
Donald Trump is a creature of bankruptcy and bloviating; both of which he is well marinated in. He is a man who never met a corner he couldn’t resist buffing down his own mercurial dimensions. He is a man who owes a whole, lotta’ money to a whole lotta’ entities, many which may be way beyond anything considered a financial institution.
Time is finite and on a continuum. Donald Trump cannot outrun justice forever, even if he thinks he can. Unlike the simplistic dismissal and derision that was put upon Special Counsel Robert Mueller, First Impeachment Chairman Adam Schiff, and Second Impeachment Chairman Jerrold Nadler, the former President is dealing with someone that he can’t easily be caricatured in the right-wing Trump-o-sphere.
Although Mr. Mueller, Schiff and Nadler have investigative power via Congressional mandate, the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland has the ability to criminally charge the former President.
In other words, you are now messing with the people with the handcuffs and authority to take you into custody and into a holding cell.
So even as you bark and howl at the injustice of a search warrant being served at your pad in West Palm Beach, just be glad were not at home and you didn’t act a fool to interfere with them gathering the boxes of documents.
At the time of the FBI search Donald Trump was in New York City for a court ordered deposition in an investigation by the New York Attorney General involving the Trump Organization’s financial shenanigans. By the way, the man who consistently scoffed at anyone who took the 5th in any sort of court hearing took it more than 445 times. So, as it always is, do as Donald says and not as Donald does.
Tick tock is the clock and it never stops.
Donald Trump had more than a year’s worth of time to be humble, apologize and give back those files that the National Archives had been gently pleading for you to return to that government agency.
But, oh no, Donald Trump had to be the arrogant son-of-a-Trump he’s always been, in mimicking Daffy Duck’s squawking of “It’s Mine!! It’s Mine!!” and putting up a tantrum on his rancid puss.
Venue shopping for the perfect judge to oversee his case versus the Department of Justice involving those classified documents Donald Trump found a kindred spirit in Judge Aileen Cannon, who’d been rocketed onto the Florida bench by Mitch McConnell during the period between that eleven-week transition to inauguration.
Tick tock. I guess that period of time seems to prove more advantageous as the days go by.
With Judge Cannon, she might as well have gotten down off that bench, tossed off that black robe, and sat with the Trump legal team to give them all the legal assistance that they needed to hold off the Department of Justice’s further investigation.
She even was making up arguments that they even didn’t come up with, as she insinuated that the classified documents were not verified as being classified; even though there is photographic evidence in the DOJ’s affidavit for the search warrant of Mar-a-Lago of multiple folder with labels marked as ‘top secret’.
To all who are swallowing the swill of untruths from the Donald J. Trump spigot, just remember that everyone doesn’t drink from that same well as they do.
Note to Donald Trump – Special Master Raymond Dearie ain’t no punk that can be rolled over by you and lawyers; because his judicial power does not flow from you being the person who nominated him to the bench and also is not in the bucket of being co-opted or compromised to do your bidding in a courthouse.
Judge Raymond Dearie isn’t a ‘dearie’ that needs a patting on the head to get in his good graces. He is the real deal that shouldn’t be mistaken for some cannon of compliance.
Time’s a ticking and Special Master Dearie is ready to get down to business and go through those documents without haste. As the adage goes; be careful what you wish for, Mr. Trump. By your own wisdom you proposed senior US District Judge Raymond Dearie, based in Brooklyn, to be the Special Master in this matter and now you’ve got him.
“He works incredibly well with parties, but doesn’t tolerate nonsense. He will not allow parties, or attorneys, to play games, or play fast-and-loose with the rules.” – Richard Garbarini, lawyer at Garbarini Fitzgerald, New York[7]
Looks like it’s off to a rocky start, as Judge Dearie seems not to be down for any foolishness your lawyers try to step to him with. This special master wants Donald Trump’s legal team to put forward which documents the former President actually declassified. And, unlike saying things on rally stages, radio streams, or written on social media platforms, it would be a crime in and of itself to say the same things in a court of law.
Without showing the paperwork that underlies how and when the documents were declassified, then Donald Trump is just pissing in the wind and howling at the moon at what he supposedly did. You can’t just say you laid the documents on a table and said a four-point blessing of declassification and it would materialize, Donald Trump. This has got to be in black and white and not made up on the fly to get you off the hook for any illegalities you may have committed.
Loose lips sink ships and Trump’s seems to be venturing into S.S. Titanic waters of that iceberg coming up quickly with each and every proclamation that comes from his mouth.
Time can catch up with a person when they least expect it. And, for Donald Trump, it seems all things that would be delayed or held off in his past by virtue of his position as President of the United States or becoming a recent resident of Florida is no longer an option.
Tick tock. Knock, knock.
Who’s there? New York calling.
Obsessed with the size of things, Donald is in a constant state of attempting to make everything of his bigger in every way. Slapped with a civil suit from the New York Attorney General with charges of misrepresentation of his organization’s financial statements from 2011 to 2021, Donald Trump made an enormous distortion of his net worth each year to feather his own pockets.
“This valuation estimated the apartment’s value at $29,738 per square foot. The property was also listed at more than 30,000 square feet when it was really about 11,000 square feet. Trump only lowered his size and valuation estimates of the triplex when Forbes published a 2017 article titled, “Donald Trump Has Been Lying About The Size Of His Penthouse.” – New York Attorney General Letitia James[8]
For Donald Trump and Trump Organization various fillings it’s a game of high-low, like something of a “Card Sharks” game show. Okay, when he needed more loans and financial lines of credit from banking institutions, the evaluation of his properties and developments would need to be sized upward. Then, when it came time to file papers with the IRS to get tax breaks and other goodies for the well-healed, then those same entities would be sized downward to pay a lower tax bill every year.
Tick tock. Plop, plop.
Empire of Trump is going pop, pop.
Yeah, Trump, all of it right down the toilet, just like the papers you rip up and flush with such contempt, so is the camouflage of Presidential prestige you try to hide behind.
January 20th, 2021, the only thing you have from your years of the Presidency to take to Mar-a-Lago or anywhere else you go with you is your Secret Service detail. Air Force One goes bye-bye. Presidential Daily Briefing goes bye-bye. Presidential Seal goes bye-bye. And, lastly, but definitely the most importantly is any modicum of Executive Privilege for one, Donald J. Trump.
But, know this; the Secret Service might not share the color orange in your future; for that is a road which you’ll have to hoe all by yourself. After all, they are a law enforcement entity.
In the crapper is any semblance of a reputation of gilded name.
Vice-chair of the January 6th Committee, Representative Liz Cheney may have been defeated in her primary in Wyoming, but is not deterred in holding former President Donald Trump accountable for his actions which led up to that chaos on the Capitol and the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago.
As if the former occupant of the White House was some kind idol of heavenly being by some; Cheney revisited a few sighs from one of her former colleagues in the Republican conference cloak room when there were objections to the certification of results stating “the things we do for orange Jesus[9]”. Like some bizarre citrus cult, Republican members of Congress bow down[10] to a man who demands loyalty when it only is a one-way effort.
Bullying his way through life, Donald Trump makes us all feel at times as if we were the Prime Minister of Montenegro, being shoved[11] to one side to let Trump trample all which is normal.
“There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it. You’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it.” – President Donald J. Trump[12]
Now, I shall share a solemn verse from ‘The Orange Jesus Version of The Holy Bible’:
1st Delassifications: verse 20:22 – “As I thinketh, I maketh so”.
WTF? You can’t just think you’re doing a skit on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and pull a Carnac the Magnificent act on America in saying the thought of declassifying top secret documents is all that you needed to make your illegal act of taking the documents to Mar-a-Lago suddenly legal because you say so. Uh-uh, it ain’t gonna’ fly, even as you said it to one of your biggest supporters[13], Sean Hannity.
Even he can’t swallow that idiotic fluff you’re tossing out, like you once did with paper towels to the survivors of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico five years ago to this year.
Oh yeah, that was also another disaster that was exacerbated in the Trump years.
Donald never misses a chance to make himself the victim and even tries to drag Melania into the arena of being put upon when Mar-a-Lago was legally searched.
“She felt very violated. I mean, this is a terrible thing. They go into her closet, they go through her dresses, and who knows what else, and it wasn’t left the way it – they found it.” – Donald J. Trump[14]
Speaking of that word ‘violate’ and women, well, let’s go down misogyny – oops, I mean memory lane.
When first confronted with the contents of that lewd “Access Hollywood” tape, Trump had the pebbles of intimating that what was said did not sound like him. Wow, even back then he was trying to squeak out something being ‘fake’. Just like he claims investigations into his financial misdeeds and ties to Russia are. But, then again, his old buddy Vladimir knows how it is to spread that numbing salve of misinformation about things being ‘fake’’ as with the maternity hospital that his forces bombed the life out of in Mariupol.
Yeah, Donald may have given a lackluster word of apology, but it wasn’t of remorse. I guess you would have to have honest regret over something for that to be so.
The boy born in Queens to the man in the White House is who Donald J. Trump has always been; with his fellow fanciers[15], predilections[16], gradations of predation[17], crass critiques[18], fallacies[19], and scant apology.
Kind of odd it is that a man who proclaims his prowess of ultra-masculinity gets a shaky bopping to a gay anthem[20] at his rallies. Alas, Donald Trump can convey his softer[21] side when it comes to a friend in being handsy.
They say what goes around comes around. I believe that to be true. Donald Trump being called on the carpet for the first time in his rarified life is something many people who have watched his act over the decades nod in agreement to, as the justice system has slowly creaked up behind him and bit him in his puffy posterior. Delay, deflect and deride is the playbook he uses with deftness. And, it’s worked quite well for him, until now.
You are a fraud of a man who says he holds women in high esteem, when the fact is you spew bitter vile from your lips to enlarge your ego on a poisonous screed. You are a fraud of success; a man who has frittered away millions and maybe billions due to your excess.
Time has boomeranged on you, Mr. Trump, as has the solidified will from corners you probably thought would never snap back. Merrick Garland has the will, as he’s shown you in approving the search warrant for the FBI to get those top-secret documents back. Letitia James has the will in exposing your once golden corporation as being nothing more than a rusted fraud. Fawnee Willis has the will, as she’s in the middle of investigating your scrounging around for 11,780 votes in Georgia.
And, lastly, in an ironic twist of fate, a person who is in the middle of trying to rehabilitate your administration’s flaccid reputation for the history books has stated a sobering truth that is a whiplashed verification to what you’ve done in dynamiting the peaceful transition to Joseph Biden.
“In Washington, it is kind of like a time-duration game, in the sense that you have to accomplish everything you can while you have the opportunity and the other side is doing everything they can to either frustrate you, attack you, stall you.” – Jared Kushner, Trump White House Senior Adviser[22]
As to you, Donald, the ticking hands on the clock are shifting towards karma’s conclusion, as no longer will you stall justice or stall democracy for your own miniscule benefit.
Door of reckoning is opening.
Knock, knock.
Tick tock!!
“Tick Tock (Knockin’ On Reckon’s Door – Second Knock)”
By
A.H. Scott
“Tick Tock (Knockin’ On Reckon’s Door – Second Knock)” – FOOTNOTES
1.-“I’m Really Rich”: Trump Claims he Doesn’t Even “need financing” as Truth Social Deal Falls Apart – Salon Magazine
Behind the Scenes Text by Tony Ward, Copyright 2022
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Photographs by Earnest Thomas, Copyright 2022
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Kitchie Ohh Luncheon
.
After the successful shoot with Kitchie Ohh for the new Vixen’s series, I invited friends over to meet Kitchie for lunch. I selected an eclectic group of friends drawing from different aspects of the professional world including; Kitty Hailey, the famous Philadelphia based private investigator who primarily works on civil rights cases. She is a good person to know if you’ve been abused by the U.S. legal system. Kitty was accompanied by her assistant investigator, Malik Mubashir a history and religion scholar who graduated from Harvard in the 1970’a. He’s currently one of the beloved teachers at the Friends Select School in Philadelphia. Malik is dedicating his free time assisting Kitty on various high profile civil rights cases.
Also in attendance was Anthony Seraphin and his lovely sister Bunny who once owned the Seraphin Gallery on Pine street in Philadelphia. Tony continues to make private sales and investments in the arts. Out of town guests included friend and colleague Ted Kawalerski, professional photographer/film maker New York and his girlfriend Dana Montemurno, a highly skilled skin care specialist based in Westport Ct.
Needless to say my personal assistant Anthony Colagreco was present offering up one of his spectacular vegetarian dishes. Besides his cooking talents TC is also a master massage therapist. Also in attendance was my long time friend, Sam Binder a Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts trained artist whose primary interest is in sculpture.
The gracious Miss Kitchie Ohh enjoyed the guests and delighted in the food, drink and lively conversations.
Many thanks to my creative director KVaughn who came up with the brilliant idea to invite the fabulous photographer Earnest Thomas to photograph the luncheon. Thanks Earnest!
