I had the best tofu I have ever had at Edibles on University Ave. It was marinated in a ginger sauce and grilled in some fashion that left it moist and soft on the inside but slightly charred on the outside with a caramelized sauce. We had dinner with our neighbors before heading down the street to the Baobab Cultural Center where noted Jazz authority, saxophonist, and RIT Professor, Dr. Carl Atkins and his group, “Culture Clash” gave a lecture lecture-performance. He was Co-Director, along with bassist Ron Carter, of the Thelonious Monk Institute. He led a very cool group of bass, drums and vibes and w would up with, “Epistrophy” and “Ruby, My Dear” and “Well, You Needn’t” swimming around in our heads. That led us to YouTube this morning where watched and listened to main ingredient. And then we dug up dvd copy of “Straight, No Chaser” that Jeff Munson gave us. That’s now number one in our queue.

As a long time one movie at a time Netflix customer I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about when they jacked up their rates to cover the Instant Play movies that weren’t part of the package when I signed on but the announcement of the two separate companies seems plain crazy. At least they didn’t bring Meg Whitman on board.

On Tuesday we watched the Alice Neel movie from our Instant Queue. She is one my favorite painters so all they had to do was fill the screen with her paintings and I was happy. The movie was made by her grandson and he tried to come to terms with how Alice put her painting in front of family as if it follows that great artists should also have stellar parenting skills. Alice put her all into her work and her paintings testify to this. She was mostly ignored by the art world until well into her seventies. The story of how her sensational paintings could ever have been overlooked would have made a better movie.

The same art world embraced Mark Kostabi, the subject of Wednesday night’s movie, “Con Artist.” This one came in the mail in a red envelope. Kostabi did some really cute little line drawings early on and then decided to stop getting his hands dirty. He out flanked Warhol and hired a staff to not only churn out the work but come up with the concepts, mostly ugly, noisy paintings. They were snapped up as fast as he could sign them. Kostabi reminded us of Bob Ament, the muckraking candidate for our town supervisor. He rubbed his fakeness in the faces of the art establishment and demand continued to soar. So this really is the movie about how the art world ignored Alice Neel and it really isn’t all that good a movie.

We stopped by Clover Pools on East Ridge Road to pick up a new solar cover for our street pool. We found some paperwork that says we bought one back in 2007 so I guess these things only last five years or so out in the sun soaking in chorine. Clover Pools sells hot tubs and patio furniture too so we looked around a bit. We had recently told Rich and Andrea that our NetFlix queue was getting dangerously low and they emailed back their picks.Hot Tub Time Machine was on both of their lists so we just watched it last night. I fell asleep and that’s a thumbs up from me. I couldn’t get over this set of patio furniture that they wanted $2,325 for. The circular table had what looked like Philip Guston cigar butts in an inset fake fire pit.

We walked to the library in last weekend’s snow and picked out a double sided dvd (Does anyone get books at the library anymore?)” We curled up last for the double feature.

I certainly admire people who do things.” Bruno said this to Guy as he sat down next to him on the train in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 movie, “Stranger On A Train.” Bruno, a mama’s boy, who was wealthy enough to not work hated his father and had hatched a plan to get rid of him. Guy was supposed to be the good guy but in the Hitchcock’s hands Bruno was more likable. Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley) wrote the novel and she makes a cameo in a record store. Hitchcock’s cameo has him hopping on a train with a stand up bass that is as big as he is. And Hitchcock’s daughter gives an sizzling performance. We watched both the Britsh and the American version last night. The British one supposedly had homosexual overtones that escaped the American style censorship but we didn’t spot the extra footage. Both were amazing.

You can stream “A Walk Into The Sea” from Netflix but it was so much more fun to see it last night with a crowd in the Little Theater’s big venue “Theater 1.” Rochester Contemporary sponsored the event, an unusually arty documentary about Andy Warhol’s lover, Danny Williams, a film maker who disappeared and the following discussion. The beautiful black and white footage in the movie is all Danny’s except for a bit of “Chelsea Girls” and it was all edited in camera. Some great raw footage of the Velvet Underground and the Factory crowd all wrapped in a “who was using who?” who done it.

The George Eastman House has a world famous collection of films in their vaults and they screened a rare print of Joe Boyd’s 1973 film “Jimi Hendrix” last night. Made just three years after Hendrix’s death there wasn’t time for revisionist history and the interviews with Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton still show signs of jealousy. Lou Reed pretty much gives it up for Jimi, about as much as he can. And in the film Jimi gives it up for Bob Dylan with an incredible performance of of “Like A Rollin Stone.”

I left Woodstock before Hendrix performed because Dave thought we were going to starve and I’ll never let him forget that decision even though he is dead. I did get to see Hendrix in Indianapolis in 1969 with Dave’s ex, Kim. I sort of remember losing my brown shoes in a cemetery before the show. And what I mostly remember from the show is Hendrix flipping the bird to the fat cops that stood with their arms crossed in front of the stage.

There is some jaw dropping performances in the film like 1967′s black and white performance of “Purple Haze” at London’s Marque Club and Jimi in a TV studio playing 12 string against a white seamless backdrop. You can see why there hasn’t been another Hendrix movie since. They could never outdo the real thing and this is as close as it gets. I was transfixed by Jimi’s longtime girlfriend, Fayne Pridgon. She has a major role in this film and she was so engaging I came home and googled her but didn’t come up with much. Guess I’ll have to rent the dvd for more.

Peggi’s almost done with Keith Richards’ book and then I’ll set down my Guston book to dive in. There is only one more film left in the Eastman’s “Rock n’ Roll” series, next Wednesday’s showing of the “The Last Waltz.”

The Eastman House put up a mint copy of the 1974 political thriller “The Parallax View” with Warren Beatty last night. And it was free for members. Peggi and I both thought we had seen it back in the day but we hadn’t. We would have remembered the spectacular shots. Same cinematographer as the Godfather movies and it really looked good on the big screen, so good I was laughing at inappropriate times. The plot was delicious too. Just like the Warren Commission got to the bottom of the JFK assassination and George W.’s plan to hire Henry Kissinger to get to the bottom of the World Trade Center bombings we never really know who’s calling the shots but there is probably a multinational corporation behind it.

Graham Nash curated the Rock n’ Roll photography exhibit at the Eastman House and we’ve been trying to get there for a month or so. I’m hoping Anton Corbijn’s Beefheart portrait is in the show.

Don Van Vilet was a rock n’ roller and real painter. He told The Associated Press in 1991. “I don’t like getting out when I could be painting. And when I’m painting, I don’t want anybody else around.”

Local film director, Robin Lehman has two Oscars under his belt or above his fireplace or stashed away somewhere in his Rochester home. The Eastman House honored Lehman last night by showing three of his documentaries and then grilling him in a post movie Q and A session. I liked the first short the best. Beautiful, liquid shots from inside an African volcano that were orchestrated to a Bach organ fugue. The second short, close-ups of underwater creatures, was unbelievably beautiful but the soundtrack was cornball and the third, main feature, “Forever Young”, about aging well, was just what you would expect. Get into something and get into it good, advice that could just as easily be offered to people of any age. My neighbor, Leo, in his nineties, is a perfect case. Whenever I say “Take it easy,” as a parting salutation he shoots back, “I don’t want to take it easy.”

And then (we were following Rick and Monica around tonight) off to L&M Lanes on Merchants Road in the old hood for a few games of bowling and some pints of Victory Hop Devil. The juke box hits the spot as well with Neil Young, Parliament and Zeppelin. This place feels like ground zero Rochester.

John Gilmore insisted we put this cable tv show called “Breaking Bad” in our Netflix queue. In fact he asked for our password and he added the movie himself. We spotted it in there and bumped it down a few times (I didn’t like the name of it) but it eventually worked its way to the top when we weren’t looking and then showed up in our mailbox.

We really love it. It’s over the top and believable at the same time without getting into reality tv territory. We watched the first three episodes in a flash and while we were waiting for the next disc to arrive our neighbors brought over a movie called “Leaves of Grass” with Susan Sarandon and Richard Dreyfuss. It was a similar topic. We watched the movie together and I was obnoxious throughout because I couldn’t believe how pale this thing was stacked up to “Breaking Bad.”

We don’t have cable tv so we have a lot of catching up to do and there is nothing but “Breaking Bad” in our Netflix queue now.

Our car is over at Jeromes’s getting the once over. It was time for an oil change but it’s also time for new brakes, new tires and a new pump for the window washer fluid. Those guys are the best so I know it’s in good hands but it is a strange sensation handing over the keys to a car with an Obama sticker on it to a garage where Glen Beck’s fire and brimstone rants are blasting. Bipartisanship in action. We just watched Network the other night and were surprised how relevant the thirty four year old move is.

We borrowed our neighbor’s car so Peggi could get to emergency because she had a bloody nose that wouldn’t stop. They packed it with liquid cocaine solution. her lips went numb and the bleeding stopped. And then we borrowed our other neighbor’s car so I could get to my painting class. I didn’t mind asking him because I had just helped him take down a diseased tree. You can see his time tested method in the photo above. You basically create a hinge that runs across the center of the tree by cutting the wedge perpendicular to and facing the direction you want the tree to fall in and a cut straight in on the other side about four inches above the wedge cut. The tree teeters on the uncut “hinge, you can almost tip it with a wedge and it drops. Can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon.