Month: May 2014

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Circumstances Of Serendipity

George Eastman Lillacs in Durand Eastman Park S. julianae 'George Eastman"
George Eastman Lillacs in Durand Eastman Park S. julianae ‘George Eastman”

These lilac blossoms in Durand Eastman make a rather late entrance but it is a grand one. There is a plaque next them with some history. We stood here for quite a while yesterday giving all our senses a workout. Here’s an abbreviated version.

“George Eastman, of Eastman Kodak fame, bestowed a gift upon the City of Rochester that in time became known as Durand-Eastman Park. It is a magnificent piece of property close to Lake Ontario, with hills, rivers and small lakes. If one were looking for a bit of the mountains and hills of China with their mirror lakes, he could not find a more ideal spot in which to plant some of the horticultural wonders of that land. Here Springtime comes gradually and winters are tempered by the great lake.”

Bernard Slavin, the Park’s first Superintendent (and “composer”), planted a number of lilac seedlings. Circumstances forced the widening of a park road and the lilacs were removed. Fortunately a cutting had been successfully rooted and grown in Medina, Ohio. It was brought back to the park and has naturalized itself from seed as lilacs on occasion do. Today it is known as S. julianae ‘George Eastman”.

“Liacdom is filled with circumstances of serendipity!”

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Headful

Arthur Dove "Fog Horns" from 1929
Arthur Dove “Fog Horns” from 1929

Fred Lipp, an artist and teacher at the Creative Workshop is giving a talk on Sunday at the MAG. I’ve talked about what Fred has tried to teach me many times. I am a slow learner. The talk is entitled “Comparisons of Visual Spatial Effects Utilized in Modern Painting.” That’s a mouthful but the talk is guaranteed to to be an eyeful and a headful as well. Peggi and I were lucky enough to have a brief preview and feel this will be a most rewarding experience.

This could also be a last opportunity to see the fabulous Matisse show there.
2pm Sunday June 1, Memorial Art Gallery
Free with gallery admission.

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My Favorite Book

20,000 Words book by Leslie
20,000 Words book by Leslie

My math scores on the SATs were about twice my verbal scores. I am visually oriented. My favorite book is only 20,000 words long. In fact the title of the book is “20,000 Words.” It’s a dictionary without definitions and an old-time, invaluable resource for those who can’t spell. Me.

I love looking at the phonetically hyphenated words. Kilo-watt, knee-high, knight-hood, la-dy-bug, la-goon. And it is still a perfect resource for naming instrumental songs. I used it last night to come up with “Hard Boiled.” The photo that we used for the cover is one that went off while my camera was in my pocket. Somehow it found this amazing red light.

Each Margaret Explosion show is different but we’ve been closing in on this melody for the last few weeks. You’ll hear it stated here about a minute and a half into this song from last week’s performance. The bass clarinet plays variations on the theme and the guitar beautifully crystallizes it while the double bass carries the tune. The band is on a roll, as usually happens at the end of a string of shows. We hope you can stop out tonight for our last show in the Little Theater Café until Fall.

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Inflated American Flag

Leaning trees in the park, Rochester, New York
Leaning trees in the park, Rochester, New York

John Gilmore called us yesterday just to tell us he had driven by an inflated “God Bless America” lawn ornament like one of those Santas you see at Christmas time. The words were written on a great big American Flag.

We speculated on just how patriotic God is? Does he/she/it have a soft spot for America? The message is exclusionary and I’m guessing that is the whole point. We are superior. Asking God to bless the world would be just as exclusionary and asking god to bless the universe that he/she/it supposedly created would be plain silly.

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Gun Nuts

Magnolias in the park in 3D
Magnolias in the park in 3D

Magnolias are much nicer to look at than political signs. Besides our sign is gone and I never got a photo of it.

Gary Pudup, former Monroe County Sheriff, head of the local ACLU and long time Margaret Explosion fan is running for state assembly in Greece and he has taken a stance on New York’s Safe act. He asked if we would put sign on our lawn and we did but I warned him it would probably be stolen. We live on a dead end but our property meets a busier road down back so we put it there. A little further down this road there are two “Repeal NYS Safe Act” signs in front of houses and I didn’t think those people would tolerate an opposing view. I’m not saying one of those two stole the sign and I certainly don’t want to start something with a gun owner but I’ve been thinking about alternate signage.

Something simple but with a different tact like, “MORE GUNS,” or “BIGGER GUNS,” or “GUN NUTS!”

A few years ago I recounted the story about my mom making a peace flag that got stolen.

My friend, who lived down the street, was in Viet Nam dropping Agent Orange out of a helicopter on anything that moved when my mom made a peace flag. She sewed it! It was a white cloth peace sign on a sky blue piece of material. I remember it being beautiful. We flew it on the flag pole out in front of our house and this friend’s mom got all bent out of shape about it. I remember her calling our house and screaming over the phone while my mom made a rational appeal to her. “Surely you want peace too”, I remember her saying, but the argument continued. This neighbor thought it was flat out wrong to fly something like that while her son was fighting for our country. He was only in the army because he flunked out of Bonaventure and got drafted.

I was so proud of my mom but the thing is a lot of people felt like this neighbor at that time so it was a bit of a mystery when the flag was stolen a few weeks later. “Who stole the peace flag?” became the family’s obsession as we weighed the suspicion level of each neighbor on the street. We found out months later that it was the younger brother of the guy who was in Viet Nam. I’ll bet the guys over there were real happy there were people back home working against peace.

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Viva España

España national team shirt
España national team shirt

We’ve been gearing up for the World Cup for four years now. Once the US gets knocked out of their really tough preliminary round we’ll be rooting (in America it means cheering, in Australia it means fucking) for Spain again and yesterday’s match, the Champion’s League Final, was the perfect opportunity to wear the national colors. For the first time ever the two finalists were from the same city, Madrid.

Why a big game like this, the culmination of inter league playoffs between all of Europe’s pro teams, the best players in the world, was so hard to find on tv in the US is a mystery to me. Last year 360 million watched the game. We emailed Matthew for help and he invited us over to their place to watch the game. He streamed a subscription feed from his laptop to the big screen. I’m afraid I wasn’t very sociable for 90 minutes and stoppage time, of course, where Real, clearly the better team here, tied the match in the final minutes and then those two grueling overtime periods where Real walked way with it. We were rooting for Ateletico but it is still a victory for Spain.

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Smile Sweetly

Gate at Wisner road Entrance to Durand Eastman Park
Gate at Wisner road Entrance to Durand Eastman Park

After a busy day I was ready to fall asleep to a good movie on Friday night but instead I got all antsy. “The Last Ride,” supposedly about the last few hours of Hank Williams’ life, was making me anxious and it had nothing to do with Hank’s plight. First of all, why were all his songs sung by somebody else in the movie? I’m guessing his estate got wind of this turkey and said, “forget it.” Hank was surely more complicated and interesting than the one dimensional Jessie James version. We have no idea how this damn thing wound up in our Netflix queue.

On the other hand, an email from Duane with a short rant about a bad day noted how he washed it all away with the fabulous “Beware of Mr. Baker,” a documentary about and with the great drummer Ginger Baker. OK, he’s a flawed character. Give the guy a break. He is a mind blowing drummer. Isn’t that enough?

Dave Mahoney and I hitchhiked down to NYC to see Blind Faith at Madison Square Garden and the crowd left their seats and we all got as close to the stage as possible when Ginger cut loose. This is primal stuff and this movie gets at the magic. Watch closely as he cries while talking about Max Roach, Art Blakey and Elvin Jones. Watch him smile sweetly while playing drums with Fela Kuti.

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Big Heart Benefit

Magnolia Warbler on our patio in Rochester, New York
Magnolia Warbler on our patio in Rochester, New York

I’m happy to report that this Magnolia Warbler shook off its collision with our window and flew away shortly after I took this picture. I hope there was no lasting damage.

I was knocked out once by three fraternity guys. I was a freshman at Indiana sitting on a stone wall near the street waiting for my friends to come home. I had sort of long hair at the time and a car drove by and someone yelled “faggot.” I flipped them the bird. They circled the block, stopped the car and three guys in blue windbreakers with yellow Greek letters on the front came at me. I got a few punches in but these guys were swinging like they wanted to kill me. I came to with my face planted in the sidewalk. My nose was broken and my jaw was dislocated. And my glasses were completely smashed.

I was in the charcoal section of Rochester Art Supply this afternoon when Sally Wood Winslow walked by with her RAS bucket. She and a few other employees fill the buckets with Amazon orders for virtual customers. Peggi was in the next aisle picking out a tube of watercolor and I heard her talking to someone. Turned out to be Jim Mott buying small canvases for paintings he’s doing of the migrating Warblers.

Joe Monacelli Snell works there as well and we said hi. We were just at his mom’s funeral on Tuesday. Pete and Gloria Monacelli have organized a benefit (six kids, no mom.) Six bands play and there’s lot’s of art for sale with all proceeds going to the family. This Sunday at Hochstein School of Music 6-10PM. Margaret Explosion starts at 8.

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Meet The New Guys

Three Paul Dodd drawings on wall at Creative Workshop in Rochester New York 2014
Three Paul Dodd drawings on wall at Creative Workshop in Rochester New York 2014

They painted the walls in our Creative Workshop room. I’m not crazy about the yellow tint but it does set the unframed drawings off. The drawings I bring to or do in Fred Lipp’s class are not done until Fred says they are done. Fred often tells the story of a student who titled his finished painting “Done.” These three were pronounced “done” last night.

Margaret Explosion plays tonight at the Little Theater.

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Matisse The Master

Matisse Prints Show at MAG in Rochester, New York
Matisse Prints Show at MAG in Rochester, New York

Someday the artist statement, the placards, the descriptions of the process, the photos of the artist and the back story will be a bigger percentage of the show than the work. Art educators and museum directors, responsible for the turnstile head count, are getting more aggressive. One way to work around this studied presentation is to start the show at the exit. This view knocked me out.

When Matisse’s artwork is in the house just get out of the way. The drawing, his life’s work, speaks for itself. Watch Matisse capture and portray form in an ever more essential, direct and wildly expressive display. “Matisse As Printmaker,” currently on view at the MAG, is a pure delight.

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Down Where The Bitey Things Breed

Mayapples in woods on May
Mayapples in woods on May

So many masterpieces, so little time. As I see it you take them down, one project at a time for seven bucks, or you swallow the Gigunda package for a Benjamin. “Down Where The Bitey Things Breed” from Pete LaBonne’s 1994 “Mega Fig Leaf Man” was last weekend’s theme song for me.

We were spending quality time with Pete and Shelley and I skipped a few days of showers so by the time I spotted the tick on my chest it was engorged. That is bloated. We had exchanged bodily fluids. Peggi got a hold of him with our tweezers but snoot was still drilled down and hanging on. Weekend evening options are scattered about town but most were closed so we headed out to Webster to an Urgent Care on Barrett Drive, a street that didn’t even exist when I lived out there. It was named after Webster’s long time town attorney, the man who gave the commencement speech at RL Thomas when I graduated and the father of my buddy, Joe.

The doctor out there numbed my skin and used a small scalpel to remove the snout. I went home with a fourteen day supply of antibiotics. Hoping I don’t wind up like The Punk Singer.

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Fake Review

Danny Fox Trio at the Bop Shop in Rochester, New York
Danny Fox Trio at the Bop Shop in Rochester, New York

We hadn’t quite finished this morning’s paper when Alice and Julio called from a nearby Best Western hotel. They were back in town from Maine to see a play and visit old friends. Hours flew by as the talk veered back and forth between art and Spain. And then back to the paper.

A review in the Art and Leisure section of the Danny Fox Trio caught my eye, a reference to chamber jazz and Duke Ellington, so I called up a sample on my iPad. The front page of their website said they were playing on the 18th at the Bop Shop so I checked the date. It was today and they were to start in ten minutes. We hopped in the car.

Turns out the drummer is from Brighton so it was one of the best crowds I’d seen at the record shop. I sat up on a counter. The piano player writes beautiful tunes with plenty of room in the arrangements for the bass player and drummer to bring them to life. They were a joy to listen to.

We talked to the piano player after the gig and he told us that for fun he used to write fake reviews of the band in the critic, Ben Ratliff’s, style. And guess who reviewed his band today?

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Hit Single

Tank behind the Bergen Family Restaurant
Tank behind the Bergen Family Restaurant

We still have a stack of 45s, a foot and a half tall black column of them, sitting next to our stereo. Most of them are Peggi’s and one with her friend, Chris Firth’s name on it, Bobby Darin’s “Nature Boy” is still on the top of the stack. We played it at our 45 party on 4/5 and we played at two in the morning last night when our friends, Pete and Shelley, were getting ready for bed. Both times it skipped after the second chorus but I can’t get the song out of my head.

I know Andy had some sort of falling out with Greg and the Chesterfield Kings are history even though the two live next door to one another but their new book is a smash! Greg is is happy and moving on and he seems to be in good graces with the House of Guitars again. That seems right.

Andy has a new group, the “Empty Hearts.” Steve Van Zandt came up with the name and they (Clem Burke from Blondie, Elliot Easton from the Cars and Wally Palmer from the Romantics) recorded an album in Rochester. “Ed Stasium produced it and I’m having a hard time getting this song out of my head too but it’s not as good as Nature Boy.

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Tick Check

Creek in commons in early Spring
Creek in commons in early Spring

The trillium, the trout lilies, the cut leaf toothwort, the mayapples and mayflowers are all up and soaking up the sun before the woods fills in. But don’t take my word for it, get out there. The Spring rush does not last long.

Pete LaBonne has come down from the mountain. He’ll be sitting in with us on the grand piano tonight. All of us will sit on the piano! The song below features Pete from last time he passed through Rochester.

"Dreamland" by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre on 11.06.13. Peggi Fournier - sax, Ken Frank - bass, Pete LaBonne - piano, Bob Martin - guitar, Paul Dodd - drums.
“Dreamland” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre on 11.06.13. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Pete LaBonne – piano, Bob Martin – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.
Listen to Dreamland by Margaret Explosion
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Fore Play

Graffiti on ad at 14th hole of Durand Eastman
Graffiti on ad at 14th hole of Durand Eastman
Graffiti on ad at 14th hole of Durand Eastman

Most days we head in to the woods near our house and quickly lose ourselves in nature’s overwhelming beauty. And it is always a shock when, maybe a mile or so in, we need to cross the golf course. The manicured greenery is startling enough but the golfers can really jolt you back to unreality.

We usually wait in the woods until they have played through and our spots allows us to eavesdrop for what that’s worth. A few years ago I made the mistake of crossing part way and standing in a grove of trees. When someone yelled “fore” I naturally turned in the direction of the ball and took it between the eyes. I heard someone say, “Holy shit. You hit someone.” and then they took off.

Which brings me to the tee on the fourteenth hole. I love this kind of stuff. Simple, sly, sneaky and subversive. It’s more than graffiti and a lot less as well. Like the best minimal art, it gets maximum effect from minimal means. I wonder how many golfers have even noticed the magic marker spider on the kitchen floor of the “Floor Coverings International” ad.

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Paving Paradise

Abby Wambach scores 2 goals on Sunday for WNY Flash
Abby Wambach scores 2 goals on Sunday for WNY Flash

We were attempting to call up the tv show “Fargo’ with our new TW “On Demand” box when we came across the public access channel, something we had never seen before. A guy with the worst crop of jet black hair on top of mismatched sideburns was addressing a woman about a driveway variance and the subhead read “66 Wisner Road,” a road that is only a block from us. This was real local tv and it was better than Fargo.

The gentleman who lives on a corner lot, across the street from the woman was petitioning the town to let him add a second driveway, one on each street of the corner, because he has so many cars. He works nights and his girlfriend’s kids moved in with them and they come home at different times and he has to wake up and move his car so he can out and it would be so much easier if he could just put another driveway in – something like that. This was riveting stuff.

The next guy up wanted to build a six foot fence around his house in order to park and hide his RV next to the garage. The town only likes to see four foot fences close to the street. The guy after that took the cake. He and his wife had five cars between the two of them and in the next couple of year two of his kids will have their own car so that would be seven vehicles and he wanted to widen his driveway by eighteen feet or something. The town has a regulation that limits the percentage of your lot that you can pave to 35 and they weren’t buying his argument.

Abby scored two goals this afternoon.

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Thinking About Drawing

Fingernail hands in shop window on Monroe Avenue
Fingernail hands in shop window on Monroe Avenue

We were all over the city yesterday. Out to MCC to meet with the financial master, Joe Marchese, over to Sophia’s Shoe Repair where my father picked up his reconditioned leather satchel, down to the the co-op to pick up some cherry concentrate, just enough time to stop home for a tuna sandwich and be at I-Square to take down the show and then over to Carroll’s on East Main where we had a pint to celebrate Martha O’Conner’s birthday. Onward to Geri’s, significantly numbered, Mexican themed, birthday bash. Her son, Paul, was bar-tending and I turned down his Patron and grapefruit in favor of a Tecaté.

I was ready to sleep in today but it was our neighborhood pool opening. We take off the winter cover, stick the umbrellas into the tabletops, wash the chairs, prime the pump, brush the scum off the walls and dowse the water with shock. The water temp is not even fifty so we’re a few weeks away from cannon balls.

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Bloggers Law

Quonset hut house on Titus Avenue in Rochester, New York
Quonset hut house on Titus Avenue in Rochester, New York

I thought I would read a bit more about Putin’s new “Blogger’s Law” before I risked speaking my mind but as I typed “Putin” in Google I was prompted to check out “Putin’s girlfriend” and I never got to the law so here goes.

When I was building homes as a “rougher” we built three types of homes, split levels, ranches and center entrance Colonials. Oh and there was this thing called a “raised ranch.” These “Domas Homes” were in a new development off Lyell Road. They were cheap and probably didn’t age well. In case you don’t know what a rougher is, some people call them framers, they build the basic wood structure and get out before the “finished” carpenters move in. When I first started as a rougher I hollered out a measurement to my boss, Salvatore Caramana, something like “62 and an eighth.” And he hollered back, “An eighth? I can’t see a fucking eighth.”

Anyway, we didn’t build any Quonset huts. They look like something they might have in Russia.

Here is a Contemplation from last week’s gig.

"Contemplation" by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre on 04.30.14. Peggi Fournier - sax, Ken Frank - bass, Bob Martin - guitar, Jack Schaefer - bass clarinet, Paul Dodd - drums.
“Contemplation” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre on 04.30.14. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Bob Martin – guitar, Jack Schaefer – bass clarinet, Paul Dodd – drums.
Listen to Contemplation by Margaret Explosion
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Generic God

Orange cone and dumpster at I-Square
Orange cone and dumpster at I-Square

A friend of ours is running for NYS assembly in the the town of Greece, the same town that W. came to when he wanted to sell the country on privatizing social security and the same suburb of Rochester where two women had their day in Supreme Court on Monday. I wish him luck.

As someone who came up in Catholic schools where the nuns would stop everything in the middle of a lesson and take us over to the church for some reason or start talking about religion in the middle of math class I understand that I (or my parents) asked for the intrusion. But when addressing the town on a legislative matter why should someone be made to feel uncomfortable or be put in a position of sucking up to some cult?

The town claims to be trying to recruit members of various faiths to offer prayers, “non-sectarian prayers” of course. Just what boundaries surround “non-sectarian prayers?” This calls for active, performance-art resistance, wacky, outrageous prayers to all sorts of imaginary devils, witches and gods.

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