Coke vs. Pepsi ~ that sort of thing.
We wandered around Sea Breeze on our bikes, checked out the progress on the traffic circles over on 590, and then rode down to the bay. We sat on the blue bench at the Newport Yacht Club and looked out at the sail boats. Can’t remember where we were when I spotted this lawn installation. I think it may be a Jeff Koons piece.
Leave a commentIt’s vinyl only in Rick and Monica’s basement and last night it was “Doug Sahm and Band”, Tim Buckley’s “Lorca” and Procol Harem’s “Shine On Brightly”. Rick and Monica had friends over for dinner and and one of the guests was Tom Kohn from the Bop Shop so the party naturally gravitated toward the vinyl. We had eaten dinner with Pete and Shelley out on our deck and we were sort of winding down when Rick called to invite us over for some late night pool. So we merged parties.
Rick regularly rotates the album covers in the 12′ x 12″ pictures frames on the wall down there. Personal Effects’ “This Is It” cover was in one of the featured spots. But my favorite picture on the wall is the print of Van Gogh’s “The Pool Players” that hangs behind the pool table. This short movie takes you inside that painting.
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We’re thinking it won’t rain this evening so we’ll be able to play outdoors at the Village Gate and if it does rain we move the action inside, fire jugglers and all. But we’re thinking it won’t rain.
There is beautiful section of Durand Eastman that we used to call the “undeveloped section” and we hike up there three or four times a week. It’s located south of Titus between Kings Highway and Hoffman Road and in five years we have only come across two other parties on the trail. Today we found the path had been widened to to ten feet or so by a bulldozer. We can’t imagine what kind of nightmare scenario this is part of. Widened and flattened for dirt bikes? ATVs? Housing development going in? Bored park maintenance staff with new taxpayer funded equipment? Handicapped Accessible woods?
We wanted to cry but we were too mad. We plan to call Stephanie Aldersley, our town represenative.
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It was hot twenty six years ago today, real hot. Personal Effects rented the Community Playhouse on South Avenue where we were able to back project lights, slides, movies and liquid light on a giant scrim. The multi-media show was called “This Is It”. Duane Sherwood created a mind blowing special effects show, Don Scorgie provided the concessions and Al “Balloon Buffoon” Kerstein engineered the ballon drop. You can hear it on this song. Steve Lippincott in Portland has been after us for a copy of that show and I finally got around to digitizing a cassette recording.
Three members of Personal Effects play in Margaret Explosion and we have a show tomorrow night at the Village Gate in the courtyard at 6pm. We’ll be performing with fire jugglers, not at the same time of course. And we don’t play anywhere near as fast as we used to.
“Subscriptions Are My Prescription” by Personal Effects – Live from the Community Playhouse in Rochester, NY August 27,1983.
Maureen emailed us to alert us to an event she thought we would like, the “2009 Point Pleasant Firemen’s Association Tournament in the Valley”. Volunteer firemen groups from as far away as Long Island compete in “3 Man Ladder”, “Hose Efficiency”, “Motor Pump”, and “Buckets” events. We assumed it was at the Point Pleasant firehouse where we vote and it is within walking distance so we set out on bikes. There was nothing going on over there so we rode down Culver to the Sea Breeze Fire Department but there was nothing going on there either. We rode along the lake and asked a park official if he had any idea where the event was happening. He told us it was up near the the Town Hall on Goodman. There are two Point Pleasant Fire Departments and the event was being held at No. 2. So we we got here a little late but we saw some of the last two events. We rooted for our home team, the Point Pleasant Pea Pickers, and we were happy to see that our first responders were in such good shape. We watched them run up ladders with buckets of water and fill a 55 gallon barrel in mater of seconds.
I was really taken with the logos.
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We rode our bikes down to Durand Eastman beech to catch Joe Plus N’s Day Tour performance, the tenth annual, on Saturday. We have caught at least one stop all ten years except for the year we were in Spain on vacation. Joe had asked me to play with him that year too so I missed out twice as bad. This stop was billed as random trios and Joe Tunis was to play with Will Veeder of Hinkley and Scott Oliver of ORAA but Will didn’t show up. The duo sounded especially nice on the beach.
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I was talking to Tom Lacagnina at the last RoCo opening about a mutual friend who had passed out at a dinner party. Tom said he remembered passing out at Church and I do too. I remember the sinking sensation as my knees buckled and all that Catholic imagery began to swirl. It seemed someone in our family was always passing out during Mass. It was often hot and the clothes we had to wear were stuffy but that wasn’t the reason. We used to have to fast for three hours before receiving Communion. As kids we were up running around the house for hours before my parents rounded us up for Mass. We were starved by the time the service began. And a dry wafer stuck to the roof of your mouth did not exactly hit the spot. Sacrifice is a big part of the Catholic experience.
My favorite part of Catholic Churches has always been the Stations of the Cross. They are usually different in each Church and offer more to contemplate than a single statue. The fourteen stations are spread around the church and tell the story of Christ’s crucifixion. In older churches they are usually presented in a in a traditional fashion but in contemorary churches they are often minimal and symbolic. The greatest story ever told is is fertile ground for artists.
The owner of this pickup truck is ready for a real sacrifice. You just never know when you might come across a Christlike figure. I was not surprised to see this cross parked near the corner of Main and Goodman. I picked East Main Street years ago as the setting for a modern day crucifixion. In 1993 I began collecting source material for a series of paintings that I planned to do of this story. I photographed locations for a contemporary setting that would have Christ sentenced near our home at East High and crucified at the Liberty Pole. This truck is on that route, just across the street from the adult book store.
I still haven’t done the paintings but I did make large prints of the source material and displayed them at the Bug Jar for a month. I entered them in the Finger Lakes Show in 1999 and won a few awards with the “Passion Play” piece. I will do those paintings some day.
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We stopped by Clover Pool Supply to pick up some more ph to add to our street’s pool. We are the presidents this year and our duties include keeping the chemistry balanced. With all the rain the ph has been consistently low. While we were there I noticed these signs for sale. I was trying to decide which one the members would like best.
1 CommentWe drove deep into “Death Panel” country this week to attend the Wyoming County Fair in Pike, New York. New York’s gun toting junior senator was there and I grabbed a photo of her giving a balloon to a little kid. She got pretty cool reception when they introduced her. We rode down with Jeff and Mary Kaye and Jeff really knows the back roads so the scenery was “I Love NY” dreamy. We made this trip last year but our timing was off. We were there at the end of the week and the animals had already gone home. We did have fresh lemonade, ride the Ferris Wheel and see a nasty tractor pull.
This year we went on Tuesday and the fairground barns were full of prize winning livestock. We wandered around for hours and looking at goats, cows, rabbits, pigs, chickens, roosters, horses and sheep. We sat in the stands and watched the judging of cows and horses. It was hard for us to tell whether they were judging the animal or the the handler but that really didn’t matter.
There were no freak shows or creepy things in formaldehyde jars but there was a midway with the usual corn dogs and fried dough fare and farm equipment on display and booths selling t-shirts, wood stoves and ATVs. And a few buildings were devoted to trade show like booths for groups like the American Legion, the Republican Party, Right To Lifers offering tiny feet lapel pins for a dollar, a church group with free literature debunking evolution and a group that wanted to bring back “God given Jewish Law” that stated that “both persons involved in a homosexual act were to be be put to death.”
I spent a few minutes watching contestants play “I Got It”. The operator had a silky smooth voice and the contestants looked like they were in a trance. I took a short movie of one game and it turned out I caught a woman throwing two balls on one turn. Watch closely on ball number three.
More photos from the Wyoming County Fair
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Left to right, my mother, my brothers John and Fran, Brad Fox, my sister Amy’s four little buddies and Dave Mahoney
This is one of the first photos I took with my first camera. My father brought it home from the Camera Shop at Kodak. I took the photo in the summer of 69 but I don’t have any photos from Woodstock so I’m guessing I got this camera after the festival. Spevak had called me for some quotes for the article he was writing on Woodstock for the paper and then the editor emailed me to ask if I had any photos. Whatever I said was cut out by his editor but we did celebrate the 40th anniversary by seeing the director’s cut of the movie at the George Eastman House last weekend. They have a crankin’ sound system in the Dryden Theater.
As we sat there watching the movie I kept trying to remember who it was that had recently told me they were in in the movie. It wasn’t until near the end of the movie that I remembered that Holly Clarke from my high school class was one of the nude woman swimming in the pond. We got there a day early but still managed to get stuck in traffic. When it got unbearable we parked the car and started walking. I remember a long line of people going in one direction and an equally long line going in the opposite direction. No one was sure where the festival site was and we watched people turn around and switch directions on a hunch. I don’t remember packing any food, clothes or sleeping gear but we did have some acid they we planned on taking at the show. We couldn’t wait for that and took it the morning of the day before the show. We wandered around and tried purchasing some canned goods that a local family had arranged along the railing of their porch. It all looked so strange and we weren’t sure what we wanted or even how to conduct the transaction. We found the festival site and hung around in the blazing sun while the sound crew conducted an ungodly sound check. There were scattered groups of people with dogs on the hillside and the animals were howling at the stage.
We left before the show was over because Dave Mahoney thought we had better get out before they ran out of food. On the way out we bought some mescaline from some high school friends that we ran into. Back in Rochester we went to an afternoon matinee of “2001” at the old Stutson Theater where Herrema’s is now and took the blue capsules. We were the only “adults” in the theater and we laid down on the floor in front of the screen. I have no idea what that thing was all about. I haven’t done any of that stuff since 69 but it kinda stays with you.
Richie Havens was great in the movie. Canned Heat sounded like the inventors of sludge rock. The Who tore it up but looked pretty silly. I never like the Tommy stuff. Only Queen can mix rock and opera. Ten Years After were wankers. Sha Na Na was hideous and Joe Cooker was over the top. (Is that a Beatles song.? “High with a little help from friends.”) Peggi leaned over and said, “You have to admit that was a good song from pre-bloated Crosby Stills and Nash” and I admitted it. The Jefferson Airplane tracks were goofy one. The rest must have sucked. They could be pretty rough live. I saw their Volunteers tour. I never had any of Santana records but he kicked ass. His drummer was amazing. Sly, Janis and Jimi were all great. It was pretty good show.
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I took this photo over by the Public Market on Saturday. The dog is real.
It really bugs me that the Quicktime Pro “Export for Web” feature generates a movie that is not supported on the iPod Touch so I’m through with it. I put five or six movies from this blog (including my shaky Wreckless Eric / Amy Rigby video with extra footage) up on YouTube today and I switched the links. I hope I don’t effect the price of Apple stock with that. And I see the Bobby Henrie & The Goners video I put up there in my last post has a hundred views already.
Old guys are allowed to have favorite cashiers at Wegmans. I asked mine were the charcoal was and she led me down the aisle! She pointed to a big pile of Briquettes and I said, “no, regular charcoal.” She said, “What is regular charcoal?”. I saw a few bags of the old fashioned lump charcoal and I grabbed one of those and thanked her.
1 CommentWe woke up to a few orders for Margaret Explosion cds and they were all from Rochester. It took us a bit to realize that the sales were a result of the rebroadcast of the Margaret Explosion segment of WXXI’s “On Stage”. We were downtown out on the deck at Abilene listening to Bobby Henrie & The Goners so we missed the show. Martin Edic said it was on the tv inside the bar but we were busy watching the best band in the city. Besides, I was making a movie.
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I had worn a hole in the rear end of my pajamas so I stopped in A. J. Wright up in Culver Ridge Plaza. I asked the clerk where the pajamas were and she took me over to a rack of “Loungewear”, all bottoms, colorful concoctions that you sometimes see big muscular guys with mullets wearing out on the street. I guess they don’t sell pjs in sets anymore. This place is so discount they don’t have a dressing room and I couldn’t decide whether to go with Large or Medium. At 6 feet, 150, I’m half of each. I went with medium.
This “Fcuk Him” product caught my eye on the reduced table near the checkout. A kid with the “Why Can’t We All Just Get A Bong” t-shirt caught my eye at the Public Market this morning. And I was thinking of this line from Jeff Spevak’s review of the crowd at last night’s Phish concert – “a museum of non-sequiturs.” Give it up for Jeff.
Everything is in season now. We hauled four big bags home. Corn from Honeyoe Falls, peaches from Hamlin and blueberries, apricots, beets, cucumbers, peppers, pears from other local farms. I just made my first tomato and onion sandwich of the year.
Deer aren’t supposed to like Rhododendrons. That’s why ours are shaped like Palm trees. And they aren’t supposed to like Marigolds either but they got ours last night. Second time this year. The yellow would have spoiled all the green anyway.
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Want to ruin your day? Try previewing the site you’ve been working on all day in Internet Explorer. We were fine until we had to duke it out with the “Doubled Float Margin Bug”. Then Radio Rick made our day when he played Margaret Explosion’s “Playground Tavern” on WRUR.
Last night we sat on the porch with the lights out. Peggi lit a few candles and we contemplated sleeping out there. It was a beautiful night. I started thinking about The Marshing Band sessions from 2006. We recorded without electricity up at Pete and Shelley’s on a battery operated M-Audio Microtech (as shown in the blow-up of the above photo) and we lit the session with candlelight. We sold that device and bought one made by Sony that records on the small SDHC cards. This unit takes has built in mics and ports for two external mics and it runs on batteries. We could do a killer recording when we meet up there this Fall.
Listen to the Marshing Band
The other night around 12:30 we heard coyotes howling as we lay in bed. At first it sounded like a pack of dogs fighting but then there were a few cat like shrieks. It was a violent encounter and it lasted for about ten minutes. We have since talked to our neighbors about this and they all heard it. It was a full moon that night.
Earlier this year we came across a pile of deer hair mixed with blood and big patches of skin while walking in the woods. We found a deer leg on our property a few months ago too. I put it in a plastic bag and stuck it in the trash. And we saw a coyote scoot across an opening in Durand Eastman while we were hiking so we knew they are out there. We came across a bunch of turkeys yesterday and we snuck up on them to watch as they pecked at the ground. They are bigger than coyotes but are probably game as well.
Our 92 year old neighbor is a little harder to understand since they cut out his mouth cancer but we could understand him clearly when he asked his daughter-in-law for porridge. He even spelled out the word for us. It’s just that none of us could picture what it is. I was thinking of Hansel and Gretel and wondering if he was thinking of something his mom made for him in the old country. His daughter-in-law said she “saw oatmeal, Cream of Wheat and Maypo but Wegmans does not carry porridge.”
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We hadn’t been swimming in the lake since we sold our boat five years ago. We hiked through the woods with Duane on Saturday and then followed the path around the pond to the lake. There were some loud picnics going on up on Log Cabin Road and there were a number people fishing from the edge of the pond. One little kid was reeling in the tiniest sunfish when we walked by. His dad was helping him get it off the line. He was all excited. Lake Ontario’s water felt warm and refreshing at the same time.
We brought the paper down to the street pool on Sunday and we were the only ones there. I read the reviews of the new Woodstock books to Peggi revealing who was tripping while playing and how much the bands were paid. Someone was quoted as saying, “If the transportation was better, ninety per cent of the people would have left. I was there a full day early and watched the soundcheck but eventually left on the second night. Dave Mahoney thought we going to starve to death and he may have. He had to eat when he was hungary. And I read that thousands of people left there sleeping bags there. My brother came home with about ten and gave them away. I always assumed it was because people couldn’t find their campsite but it was because they were full of mud. We went down there with no sleeping bags or camping equipment and no food but we did have tickets that we sent away for through WSAY.
Our neighbors, Rick and Monica, came home from their vacation last night and Monica was wearing a Woodstock t-shirt that she bought at Target. She said some skateboarders that she was starring at flashed the peace sign at them. They missed Joey’s party. One of our other neighbors asked if they could use our driveway on Saturday because they were having a big party. We said sure but no one parked in our driveway. It might have had something to do with the arrow on the sign that Joey’s mother made. It was pointing away from our driveway.
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Art work with an NFS (Not For Sale) tag is especially appealing. It is often the best work in a show. Duane was in town for the weekend and we met at the RoCo opening for “State of the City”. It was a funny mix of un-unruly (I want to say the opposite of unruly but I guess ruly is not a word) graffiti, polite hip hop and empty warehouse photography. We spent most of time in the small Lab Space looking at Martha O’Connor’s show, “Augurhood”. Duane wanted to buy the piece shown above but it was NFS. Martha explained that she drew this on the paper wrapping from some imported Italian cheese that she liked.
The soundtrack from the movie, “Short Cuts”, that we ordered from eBay thanks to a link that Joel sent, arrived yesterday and we love it. Its a dark California soundscape complete with helicopters, earthquake rumblings, songs by Peggy Lee, Duke Ellington, Dr. John, Iggy Pop, Igor Stavinsky and Horace Silver. It was 75 cents plus shipping. Funny that clunky old cds are sometimes cheaper than downloads now.
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We managed to slow summer’s pace down a bit by not doing a whole lot of stuff. Not going out to see the bands we follow, not going to parties, not going to the last Rhino’s game and not making entries here for a few days. We’ve also been working most evenings because we have a backlog of work for a change. And after work, it’s out to the porch to read. The world slows to a crawl out there.
Peggi took her mom to the doctor this morning They are trying to determine why she has such a hard time swallowing. A battery of tests are in order. She’ll swallow some barium on Monday and they will track the decent with x-rays. I took our 92 year old neighbor’s mail in this morning and I plan to mow his lawn tomorrow while he figures out how to swallow again. They removed most of his pallet when they cut out his mouth cancer last week. He wants to throw in the towel but pep talks may dissuade him. I gave him my best shot while handing him his mail. He was slurping an Ensure.
I do my best thinking while mowing the lawn, taking a shower or walking in the woods. If I’m working on a logo, and I do sketches all day, I’ll jump in the shower and the best idea pops into my head. Today I was thinking about god and I sorted it all out in the shower. We have two neighbors on our small street that boast of being atheists. One is a chemist and the other teaches poetry in the City school district and their conversations got me going on this matter. As a Catholic, I was raised to believe that there was some sort of Trinity construct with the all knowing God the Father, His son, made visible in Jesus, and this spooky Holy Ghost that hovers about. I never could figure it out. I know that when I buried our cat he was stiff as a board I will be too when I die. I don’t believe I’ll be meeting any maker in the great beyond.
I was looking at my niece’s Facebook photos from the recent Jason Mraz concert. He does a song called “Good Orderly Direction“. The first time I came across this concept was in Julia Cameron’s book on creativity. But I gather it is also sort of an out for addicts who use AA but don’t believe in God. The natural order of things is enough of a god construct for me.
Which brings to mind the old MX-80 slogan. “Often in error. Never in doubt.”
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Spanish people know how to eat, not just what to eat. They kind of excel in both. Some restaurants around here offer what they call tapas but they aren’t. The proportions are way too large. You like that much of one thing, order the dish three times, ya slob!
Tapas in Spain are served over a counter and you eat them at the counter, often while standing. The plates are small like saucers and the silverware is even small sometimes. Maybe the fork only has three prongs or two. If you’re having a beer, a small plate of olives is often served on-the-house and sometimes the person behind the counter may even slide you a complimentary tapa. These small servings take the edge off before dinner and sometimes that is all you need.
We had a small tapas party on Sunday with our friends, Alice and Julio. They brought some, we made one in advance and then made a few while we talked. We ordered Padron Peppers from La Tienda and followed a YouTube chef”s instructions. Although they are a Galician dish we had these for the first time while in Madrid. The place was more cafeteria than bar, brightly lit by fluorescents and was somewhere near Plaza Santa Ana. It was late and we stumbled on it. It looked like it had been there for a century but we could not find it when we returned a few years later. They were sensational.
We watched a documentary on The Crips and The Bloods last night. Forest Whitaker narrated and the funniest part was when they showed how much starch the gangbangers put on there jeans. “Enough to make ’em stand up in the corner with nobody in them.”
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We were sitting out front watching our neighbors pack when Monica brought over three bags of greens that would probably go bad while they were gone. She said, “I think one of them is cilantro”‘ and I thought great. I was going to pick some up for one of the tapas we were planning on making when we got together with Julio and Alice this weekend. We headed out to the Public Market and bought as much as we could carry of local blueberries, peaches, dark red cherries and corn. I grabbed some Italian parsley that one of the tapas recipes called for and then we stopped at Wegmans to pick up the rest.
At the corner of Culver and Ridge, right in front of Walgreens, there was a gathering of protesters wearing suits and holding up big white signs. One of them said, “Honk if You Support Traditional Marriage”. Someone honked. I laid on the horn and didn’t let up. The protesters stared at us not knowing what to think. We drove by them again after shopping at Wegmans and I took some photos and yelled, “You guys are nuts.” They were all guys and one of their signs read, “Adam and Eve not Steve and Steve.”
I got home and unpacked and discovered the cilantro that Monica had given us was actually Italian parsley so I hopped on my bike and headed back to Wegmans. I told Peggi I might take a movie of the protesters and she suggested that I say, Hi Steve”, to all of them as I rode by so I did that. “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” etc. They really didn’t know what to think.
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