My Nephew, The Geek

Apple Store grand opening on 14th Street in Manhattan. Photo by Matthew Dodd
Apple Store grand opening on 14th Street in Manhattan. Photo by Matthew Dodd

Our nephew is a geek. When he was five or six he was picking up the empty computer boxes from the curb when neighbors upgraded their systems. He drew keyboards on cardboard and sat in front of the boxes like they were real computers. He had his first Mac at seven or eight and set up a server in his bedroom when he was sixteen. He is still in high school but recently won tickets to MacWorld in San Francisco this January. And today we heard that Information Week has used some of his photos and his reporting in a piece they did on the new Apple Store in Manhattan. He waited on line for four hours to get in the doors for their grand opening. He was paid $250 for the photos.

1 Comment

So Long Eric

We started the day in front of the fireplace in our pjs reading the New York Times. Our nintey year old neighbor brings the paper up to the door while we’re still sleeping. Peggi read Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich out loud while I cut up some fruit.I read the “Year In Ideas” in the Magazine section and wish I hadn’t. The “Cat Lady Syndrome” piece about the parasite you can get from your cat gave me the creeps.

I put a Charlie Mingus DVD that I bought from Amazon on around noon. We watched the 1964 rehearsals of “So Long Eric” and “Meditations on Integration” which were recorded in Sweden. Mingus’s “Town Hall Concert” with those two songs (only those two songs) on it was one of the first jazz albums I bought and every bit of it is so memorable. It came right after Eric Dolphy died and Mingus changed the name of “Meditations” to “Praying With Eric” for that release. Charlie Mingus is quoted as saying “Eric Dolphy is a saint”. He should know. The “Cornell 1964” cd that was just released by Mingus’s widow has the same tunes on it as well. And now comes this amazing DVD with recordings from three European stops that same year. The music remains so memorable because it is an absolutely beautiful composition performed by incredible players. Watching them (Mingus, Dolphy, Dannie Richmond, Clifford Jordan, Jaki Byard & Johnny Coles) rehearse and perform this music is an incredible treat. Thank god for the Europeans. I might a couple copies of this for Xmas gifts.

Chiminea in backyard in late Fall
Chiminea in backyard in late Fall


We went out to walk but got sidetracked in the backyard. We started a fire out there in our Home Depot chiminea and stood around like a couple of bums eatting peanuts.

Life Is A Spell

We went to the RoCo Members Show last night. Each member gets to submit one piece and it always manages to be a good show and a fun event. Anne Havens submitted a beautiful artist’s book and read it. We found a quote there attributed to E.D. (Emily Dickinson) that read, “Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it”. Wow.

Paul Dodd “Crime Face” 2007, at RoCo Members Show 2007
Paul Dodd “Crime Face” 2007, at RoCo Members Show 2007

On the way over to RoCo we stopped at Book Smart Studio where two RIT students were showing their thesis work. I really loved Jessica Marquez’s “A Naturual History”. She took profile shots of her extended family and fine tuned them in Photoshop so the detail of the features remained in the silouetted images. She coated the balnk pages of old books with something that allowed her to print her photos on these pages. They look like something she found in an attic. They require close examination and are exquisite!

Jessica Marquez’s “A Natural History” at Book Smart Studio
Jessica Marquez’s “A Natural History” at Book Smart Studio

After the galleries we stopped by Bill and Geri’s to see their renovation project. We bought Molson Ice 40 ouncer for $3 at the Twelve Corners Quickstop and watched a Heart reunion in high def on VH1.

1 Comment

Late Fall & Early Winter Collide

Leaf in snow, Rochester, NY
Leaf in snow, Rochester, NY

I did a logo for a women’s networking group today. They wanted sans serif type and no feminine colors. I put six versions online and sent off a link. Peggi did a print ad for an Indonesian supplement. This took most of the day. We went for a walk in the woods near dusk which happens around five now.

Eight deer in Irondequoit
Eight deer in Irondequoit


We saw nine deer in a pack. I got eight of them in this shot.

1 Comment

Your Product Is Too Good To Make A Profit

Williams Shaving Soap
Williams Shaving Soap

Last time I was in Wegman’s I looked for a refill for my shaving mug. Mine is not really a mug, it’s plastic cup that came with a thermos and I use one of those old-fashioned brushes. I only shave every two or three days and the shaving soap lasts forever. I couldn’t find the little boxes so I asked a woman who was stocking the shelves if she knew where they were. Turns out this woman didn’t even work for Wegman’s. She works for one of the many companies who have swung a deal with Wegmans to stock a certain number of cubic feet of shelf space with their product.

Wegmans makes a profit on sales of that company’s products and they also make money from the company to stock their wares in the first place. At least, I think this is how big stores work now.

This woman was nice enough to track down a store employee. I say “nice” but she was probably being paid by the hour and desperate for a diversion. You start noticing these things when you work for yourself. The real employee told me that they “stopped carrying that product because no one was buying it.” Ouch. I know why they stopped carrying it. It was a cheap ass, slow mover and it could not possibly earn its keep on their high rent shelves.

So today I stopped by Walgreen’s where I know I have bought this before and they had no space on their shelves for it. I went down the street to Top’s and they didn’t have any either. My last stop was Rite Aid and I bought the last box of William’s Shaving Soap on their shelves. It could be the last one in Rochester for all I know. I might have to buy my toiletries on eBay.

4 Comments

Endless Supply of Local Crime Faces

Someday I will get off this dime and paint something other that local crime faces. We had our last painting class until after the damn holidays. I finished the one below and I took another one over to the annual members show at Rochester Contemporary. That opening is Friday. The paint was still wet and I didn’t have a chance to photograph that one.

Paul Dodd Crime Face painting 2007
Paul Dodd Crime Face painting 2007

Margaret Explosion plays tonight at the Little Theatre Cafe. I haven’t touched my drums since our last gig.

2 Comments

What Googlebot Sees

I already use Safari, Firefox and Opera on our Macs and Firefox or IE on our PC for worst case scenario previews. But today I downloaded a new browser, new to me anyway, called Lynx. I did a little web surfing with it. It doesn’t do graphics or javascript but it handles text just fine. It’s a tiny window too, like phone size. It gives you a pretty good idea of what Google sees on a particular page. And what could be more important than that? Here’s what this page looked like in Lynx.

Lynx view of this web page
Lynx view of this web page
Leave a comment

Rick & Monica Envy

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s fireplace insert. But we did and today we put a down payment on one. In fact, it is the same one as Rick and Monica’s. We shopped around a bit. We looked at “Fireplace Fashions” and drove by “House of Fire.” That name sort of bothers me. It’s not what I want to picture when starting a fire in my living room. Rick and Monica recommended Williamson Hardware so that’s where we did our business. But then Monica told us she didn’t like Christmas and the next day we look out there and see white lights on some trees in front of their house. We dealt with the owner of Williamson Hardware. He does the installs as well. He is up at four, runs three to five miles a day and also does abstract photographs. He showed us one on his Blackberry. He is having a show at Image Gallery in April.

Our house was built in the forties and the fireplace is big. We have chopped and burnt a lot of wood. But it doesn’t exactly heat up the house or even the room. You have to sit right on top of it to feel the warmth. It drains heat from the house while we are having a fire and and the opening continues to drain heat while we aren’t. Didn’t they know this in the forties? Maybe energy was so much cheaper that it was a smaller issue. Wood burning fireplace inserts are expensive.

2 Comments

Psychedelic Sunrise

Road Masks by Paul Dodd at Tap & Hammer
Road Masks by Paul Dodd at Tap & Hammer

We went out to see Rochester’s Chesterfield Kings last night at the German House. They have been together about thirty years or so now. Their original drummer, Doug, just died. We caught a few minutes of the opening band and it was way too loud so we left and had a beer down at Tap & Mallet. We sat in the Road Mask room.

Greg Prevost oof the Chesterfield Kings
Greg Prevost oof the Chesterfield Kings

The Kings were great. Greg is a star. I’m not sure what he was singing about but it all sounded good like Iggy or the Dolls or the Cramps. Greg plays harp a lot these days and he must have brought his yellow Newspaper Recycling box to the gig because he kept tossing out handfuls of paper. He crawled around on top of the PA system and worked his way through the crowd to the back of the room and then got up on the bar there and started banging his mic on a Heineken bucket. I took a photo of the floor when the show was over.

Floor after Chesterfield Kings show.
Floor after Chesterfield Kings show

We had my mother in law over for dinner tonight. I rode along while Peggi took her back to her place. I laid on the floor in the back of the Element and looked up at the treetops through the sunroof. Peggi was playing a Charlie Mingus cd.

Leave a comment

Neil Young Is Much Better Than His Fans

In fact, Neil Young is much better than his band. He reaches for the sky. His band is the gauge by which you judge whether or not he made it. Shea’s in Buffalo is a beautiful concert hall. Relatively small, ornate, great sound and not a bad seat in the house. Neil’s wife Pegi opened the show with Ben Keith on pedal steel and Neil’s bass player, Rick Rosas. She was better than Social Distortion, who opened for Neil in the eighties.

Neil Young Buffalo 2007
Neil Young Buffalo 2007

Neil’s acoustic set opened with a beautiful version of “Hank to Hendrix” and a brave version of “A Man Needs A Maid.” Almost as good as the 1971 show. The crowd cheered every time he played harmonica like it was a miracle. And a bunch of idiots started clapping not in time to one song. There was guy sitting in front of us who told us he was thirty and he loved Neil. He said he was going to get his first tattoo when Neil dies even though his mother would hate it. He said he was wearing a four dollar brown leather jacket and Hunter Thompson shades for the event. This guy had the loudest whistle in the world.

We were happy to see Neil Young’s road manager dressed like the devil he played in Greendale. He was doing big paintings on canvas while the band played and he would bring one of them to the front of the stage and put it up on an easel before each song. They usually had the name of the song on them. I saw MX80 do something like this a long time ago.

Leave a comment