The Golden Age

I Pad launch at Best Buy in Rochester, New York

We watched “L’âge d’or”, a Buñuel movie from 1930, last night and I fell asleep before the extras. It was kind of bizarre. This from IMDB: “This film was granted a screening permit after being presented to the Board of Censors as the dream of a madman. Opening at Studio 28 in Paris in October 1930, word spread about the film’s bizarre content. On the evening of 3 December 1930, the fascist League of Patriots and other groups began (halfway through the film) to throw purple ink at the screen, then rushed out into the lobby of the theater, slashing paintings by Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Man Ray.” It didn’t make it’s US premiere until 1979.

I woke before the alarm this morning. We don’t usually set that but today was the official launch of Apple’s iPad. We cashed in some credit card point for Best Buy certificates and we were at the store at 8:30 with a thermos of coffee. Some kids in the front of the line were there at midnight but there only about twenty five people in line when we showed up. A store employee told the crowd that UPS had been there at eight and there would be enough for everybody. A couple of Best Buy employees went out to the Apple store to buy theirs before work. We heard hundreds were in two lines out there.

We had one in hands by 10AM and then headed downtown to look at an art show we had missed last night, a painting by Enrique Mora that the Philips Gallery used in their First Friday ad really caught my eye. The gallery didn’t open until noon.

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Yours Sincerely, Wasting Away

Love bicycle locked up in front of Village Gate
Love bicycle locked up in front of Village Gate

We had dinner with our friend and neighbor, Rick, and then raced downtown for the early show of Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer“. The is over two hours so started at 6:30. We met Monica in the lobby. She had just come from her yoga class. And we took sets down front. We were a little late so it was sort of confusing at first but then moved along effortlessly. Polanski has made some of favorite movies, Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, so was definitely not gonna be a “wait for Netflix.” He is a master in full control of this craft. Sparse but beautiful settings heighten the focus, rich characters whose performances stay with you when their parts have only a few lines and way of telling the story that lets all the movies that have gone before carry weight so you’re on the edge of your seat because you just know what’s coming and then something else happens. Ewan McGregor played a perfect ghost and even Pierce Brosnan was perfect.

We caught the second set of Miché and Scott Bradley at the Little and then headed over to Dick Storm’s 64th birthday celebration at the Flipside on East Main. Of course we all sang that McCartney song. And Jeff Spevak wrote about it all on the HerRochester page.

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