Author: Paul

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Cross Country Slackers

Bob sled painting at the Lake View Motel in Lake Placid, New York
Bob sled painting at the Lake View Motel in Lake Placid, New York

Would love to be in San Francisco for the opening of the Luc Tuymans show. They showed a few luscious paintings of his (one of a gas chamber) in a review in Sunday’s Times. But I’m not complaining. We have wifi access at the Lake Side Motel in Lake Placid New York and the Saints are winning. Kind of funny that the town of Lake Placid is not on Lake Placid. It’s on Mirror Lake. Lake Placid, the lake, is next door. The Olympics were held here in 1980 and some members of the US team are training here now. It’s fourteen degrees outside and they have real snow here unlike Vancouver.

We skied in the woods for a while this afternoon and then skied out on Mirror Lake at sunset before settling in at the bar for a local brew and the pregame show. Every other vehicle on the way up here was towing a trailer with a couple of sleds and we spotted snowmobiles darting across the road everywhere. If snowmobiling is a sport it has to be the most popular one up here. We had dinner with a bunch of Canadians downhill skiers. They kept slipping into French so we couldn’t understand what they were saying. They are going to be out on the slopes at 8 in the morning. They made us cross country skiers feel like slackers.

Our motel overlooks the lake and has some pretty cool artwork in the halls (above). We plan to head over to Pete and Shelley‘s neck of the woods tomorrow where we’ll celebrate a significant birthday for Peggi.

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Patriotic Drinking

Mayor of Durand trappings
Mayor of Durand trappings

We knew we were going to run into the man child Mayor of Durand today. And sure enough, we heard him and his buddy coming down the hill before we saw them. We chatted, lamenting that the fact that the big storm was going to miss us. Peggi thinks these guys are Viet Nam vets but I think they’re too young. Maybe just vets. They have little flags on their sleds like there is something patriotic about drinking beer in the park and sledding.

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Fine Line Between Bad And Good

Julianna Furlong Williams painting at Rochester Contemporary

I think most painters would agree that there is a fine line between bad and good. You can be hating what you’re looking at and then make just the right move, one adjustment even, and the whole thing looks good. Not that this has anything to do with Juliana Furlong Williams‘ painting above. This is nothing but good. It was so nice to walk into RoCo last night see all those red dots. Juliana sold eight pieces at around $1000 each.

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This Is A Series

Paul Dodd painting submissions to Lucy Burne Show at MAG 2010
Paul Dodd painting submissions to Lucy Burne Show at MAG 2010

Philip Guston is quoted as saying, “I imagine wanting to paint as a cave man would. . . I should like to paint like a man who has never seen a painting.” Sort of like Sandra Bernhard in King of Comedy which played on the big screen last night at the Dryden Theater. Her character, Masha, wanted to be black.

I submitted the paintings shown above to a show in the Lucy Burne Gallery at the MAG. The upcoming show is called, “This is a Series” so it is right up my alley since I have stuck in a rut.

Last night I was thinking about how I would like to paint and I had this mental picture of a head that had so much volume in it that I wanted to kick it like soccer ball. Duane from Lowel has been pushing me to use a back lighting technique on my subjects to illuminate the edges and provide 3d relief against a dark background.I am ready for a breakthrough.

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Too Many Things In The World

Margaret Explosion "Snowshoes" featuring Jack Schaefer
Margaret Explosion “Snowshoes” featuring Jack Schaefer

I have been getting into production of a modern version of the 45rpm record and I’m talking about the American version with the big hole not the English version with that contraption in the middle. The new versions are iPod ready complete with cover art and minimal info in the tags. I’ve been going with “psychedelic jazz” in the “Genre” section of iTunes. I’ve done about twenty of these things and we’ll eventually get them up on the Margaret Explosion page for downloads. We will probably record tonight and maybe come home with new single.

The conceptual artist, Tino Sehgal, who believes “there are too many things in the world” has a show at the Guggenheim in New York that I would love see. If only we had that high speed train that the politicians bee talking about. I read about the show here. Conceptual art is smart and the smarter it is the better it is. Plus it must be easier than painting.

We had take out Chinese with Peggi’s mom the other night and her fortune read, “Failures are opportunities”. Coincidentally, I have decided to make an effort to learn from my mistakes.

It might be out of boredom or maybe it’s my risk taking appetite for adventure but I don’t make things easy. Instead of buckling down and making considered moves in an orderly direction I have a tendency to throw too many things on my plate forcing a hand full of distractions and problems of my own making. There is a method, as laid out by my painting intstructor, Fred Lpp, and I cannot argue with it. Start with a plan but be ready to chuck it. Evaluate what you have down after every move. Always address the worst first and when there are no problems, you’re done. It could be so easy. Boldly proceed with caution.

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Don’t Trample On This

New path to explore in the woods
New path to explore in the woods

It is so exhilarating to come across a new path in the woods. We drove over near the clubhouse in Durand and parked our car along Kings Highway so we could ski off into the undeveloped western part of park. We’ve been over here before and we’re always surprised how big this park is. We are still able to explore and get lost and that is a wonderful feeling.

John Gilmore brought an Andy Warhol movie over on Saturday night. It was more than I needed to know about his sex life. Give the guy a little respect. You wouldn’t even be in this movie if it wasn’t for Andy. It was called the “The Complete Picture” so we were warned. Had some great footage of the early hand drawn pop days and paintings that were painted rather than screened. Kind of old fashioned. The thing that bothered me the most was having someone read Andy’s words. The producers didn’t have access to real recordings so an actor read quotes out of “A to B and Back Again” or “The Philosophy of” I couldn’t even listen to what they were reading, the voice was so not Andy. I wouldn’t think that any one who ever heard his voice would trample on it. Don’t even get me started on Bowie’s portrayal in the Basquiat movie. Warhol had a distinctive, delicate and charming speaking voice. You didn’t know whether to take the words at face value or look for the philosophical twists. Same experience as looking at his art.

Our neighbors bought a new tv yesterday and I helped set it up. I came back across the street to paint and I heard later that Rick was only able to get dvd picture in black and white only. I guess I plugged one of the yellow cables in the wrong spot. Rick picked up a “District 9” to christen the thing with and he popped the corn. It is a sci-fi mocumentary and I found it hard to get a look at the aliens with all those squirmy thing attached to their face. And I didn’t give a hoot about the lead character so I fell asleep – in someone else’s house. I can’t wait to hear if our friends on the west coast liked it or not. I saw it on their NetFlix list.

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How Do You Like Me Now?

Peggi getting her eyes examined at Dr. Goodfriend's office
Peggi getting her eyes examined at Dr. Goodfriend’s office Rochester, NY

Peggi and I had back to back eye exams today at Doctor Goodfriend’s. His partner, Doctor Searl is the father of Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad’s bassist, Jamie. The Dub Squad’s playing in Buffalo tonight at the Nietzsche’s in Buffalo. Not a good night to drive to Buffalo. We used to play Nietzsche’s back in the eighties. It’s a funky old club in a quiet part of town, nothing like the rough and tumble Continental. Nice warm sound to the room. I really liked the place.

Joan Weissegger and Cheryl Mitchell, two classmates from Rl Thomas came out to see Margaret Explosion last night. I saw them chatting with another classmate, Mike Allen AKOS, while we were playing. Yet another classmate, Jeff Munson, is usually there but he’s in Mexico. It’s kind of odd how you get thrown together in high school and then see these same people for your whole life. That kind of thing happens in Rochester.

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There Is Still Time

Beer cans lined up at the door
Beer cans lined up at the door

Now that the snow is gone, the beer cans are starting to come out down on Hoffman Road. We’re not really sure who is dumping all these. We have speculated wildly and even suspected neighbors but who knows. I bring them home so I don’t have to look at them, that and I collect the five cents. I don’t think kids would be so stuck on the Budweiser brand. And they wouldn’t always throw them in the same place. This seems like the work of an obsessive alcoholic, as if there is any other kind.

Well, I signed up to be notified when the iPad becomes available. I read so much hype and speculation about the product that the movie on Apple’s site looked like a spoof. I’m guessing Bob Martin will already have an iPad when get to the Little for tonight’s gig.

Brad Fox sent me one of those small 33 1/i books on Trout Mask Replica and the behind the scenes tales of that seminal Captain Beefheart lp were really interesting. I noticed a few other books from this series on the shelf at Duane‘s place in Brooklyn so I asked if I could borrow a them. I read “Low” first and learned that David Bowie was a bit of Nazi nut. So it came as no surprise when Quentin Tarantino used Bowie’s Cat People Theme (Putting Out Fire) in Inglourious Basterds. It seemed everything was borrowed in that movie and then I heard the movie itself was a remake. I dug out our 45 of that song and it sounded fantastic, best thing in that movie, the theme song from another movie.

I’m reading Joe Harvard’s (sounds like a made up name) 33 1/3 book on The Velvet Underground and Nico and loving it. Next up is Exile on Main Street and then I might have to buy one. Bruce Eaton has written one on Big Star and it includes a passage on Pete LaBonne. I never caught on to Big Star in the day but I guess there is still time.

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Crime Face Attraction

Crime face from Crimestopper’s page in Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

This mornings paper had an article about how Arthur Shawcross died of neglect while serving his life sentence. Sounds like someone found a way to trim the New York State budget. The article described Shawcross one of New York’s worst serial killer (I was trying to recall the best). And it reminded readers that noted crime author, Jack Olsen, wrote a book about him. Peggi reads true crime and thought that was a particularly good book.

I guess we share some sort of fascination with crime. I worked as a graphic artist for the Rochester Police, pulling mug shots for a memorable year, and I usually use that as my excuse. I’ve been painting mug shots from the paper on and off for many years now and I keep going through phases where I question why I paint these people. It doesn’t really help their plight and most people would rather not look at the paintings so what is the point? – That sort of questioning. I find these faces a lot more interesting than happy smily people, more interesting than good looking models, more interesting than poseurs although many of these people may be just that. It’s meaty material and there is probably no more to it than a preference for either C.S.I. or that Charlie Sheen show.

The last Crimestoppers page in our paper was in December and I just got around to scanning it. The photos are only thumbnail size in the paper and I discovered it helps to have a little bit bigger source so I print them out a larger size. Most of these people rather unattractive but every once and a while there is a looker like this 22 year old wanted for Grand Larceny.

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Sort Of Early Adaptors

Snow pile on deck out back
Snow pile on deck out back

We usually have a January thaw but fifty degrees is ridiculous. That glacier above, what’s left from the snow I shoveled off our roof, used to be the size of a truck. I have our iTouch set to check temps in five locations, Madrid, New York, San Francisco, Rochester and Paradox (up in the Adirondacks). Today Madrid was the coldest at 39 and New York the warmest at 55. I had to “restore” my iTouch because since my nephew put all these apps on it I kept getting a message that said I wasn’t authorized to update. I found that I could get my purchased apps back by pretending to buy them again and then clicking “Yes” when it it says “You have already bought these. Do you want to download them again for free”.

Our charge card gives us points that we can use at big box stores and we were thing about picking up one of the Apple Tablets when they get announced. We could use it as a reader I presume and I’m looking forward to drawing on it. We are sort of early adaptors and I know that comes with some risk. I say “sort of” because we still don’t have a cell phone (“refuseniks”) but we did buy the first iPod and we still have it in our car. We bought one of the first home computers, an Atari 1040 and we bought the first Walkman cassette player. It was made of metal and it had two headphone jacks on it. Peggi and I kept getting tangled up in the thing. And we’d each decide to go around different sides of a utility pole and get the headphones ripped out.

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Spinning Your Wheels

We had dinner across the street last night and the conversation turned to jobs, benefits and long term care. I won’t name any names but a teacher was grumbling about all the work involved with trying to stay one step ahead of students while correcting the mountain of papers from previous assignments. A former teacher expressed the numbing tediousness of correcting the same mistakes by different students over and over again. A museum worker said it was nice to walk out of the place and leave the job behind at the end of the day. And the web designers were assessing their lot. A career that will not stand still, that demands new, better but more complicated solutions all the time. Spending days and sometimes whole weeks between paychecks keeping up with new css, html, php and mysql standards while finding your own benefit packages.

We retired to the tv room for “Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season 3, Disc 4” and all was right with the world.

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Why I Hate The Beatles

Today’s paper had a picture of “Rain” doing their Beatles tribute. I guess they are in town at the Auditorium. It was one of those dreamlike pictures where the people sort of look like somebody you know and you stare at it but something is off.

Maybe my perception was altered by the dream Peggi told me about this morning. We had a big party and my brother and sister-in-law’s RIT buddies were all here with my family. I was thinking, “we don’t really know these RIT buddies.” My mom sat on the coffee table that my brother built and it broke so my brother tried to fix it. Maybe it was the Vox amps in that picture but something triggered “From Me To You” and that damn thing was stuck in my head.

I went to Kevin’s blog hoping to cleanse my mind but he didn’t have a fresh post up there. He has some cool links to other music blogs so I followed a few and bought an Amy Rigby/Wreckless Eric 45 with PayPal bucks, the perfect audio antidote.

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Beautiful Crime Scene

Feathers and crystalized blood on snow in the woods

You can the smell the woods again because the ground has thawed. Deer, turkey and coyote tracks run in all directions. Hawks and giant woodpeckers work the airspace. Snow topped fallen trees make the valleys look like Franz Kline paintings. Life and death issues are played out on this stage even in the depths of winter. We came across this scene this morning where the blood had crystalized on the snow.

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I H-art Ida!

Batik curtains (with water damage) by Peggi hanging in our basement window.

Temperatures near 40 for the last week have put a real damper on cross country skiing. We did some yard work yesterday and even had our wheelbarrow out. But I spent most of the day in the basement working on a few paintings. I know I got way out ahead of myself on this recent batch. Even if I know the bast procedure I can’t help but throw a monkey wrench in.

Weekend paper had an article about Ida Applebroog who has a sensational new show opening tomorrow night at Hauser & Wirth in New York. I wish I could be there. I spent quite a bit of time at her website and fell in love with her work. Hint, hint, hint.

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Flaming Bananas

Tracy with flaming bananas at the Bistro
Tracy with flaming bananas at the Bistro

After meeting with our financial adviser we had dinner at Peggi’s mom’s apartment in the Bistro. This is my favorite restaurant in the city. Is not open to the public but I suppose you could eat here if you said you were thinking about checking in to the Senior Living facility. We had a delicious portabella mushroom dish and peppermint tea for dessert. The table next to us ordered the flaming banana dish and we all cheered when Tracy torched them.

The Bistro’s walls are decorated with framed posters of black and white French café photos and they set a perfect mood of civilized escape. We had just watched a 2003 film on Henri Cartier Bresson last night called “An Impassioned Eye.” He is my favorite photographer by a long shot. His photos are full of life and perfectly composed. They feel sculptural to me. They read at a glance and from a distance as well. He spoils you. He is a master.

Back in Peggi’s mom’s apartment I took control of the remote an we hopped back and forth from the English Premier League’s Everton vs. Arsenal game to America’s Funniest Home Videos. Did you know Paul Dodd is “England’s Number One Soccer Yob?

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Better To Ask For Forgiveness

"Spotless Restrooms" sign on door at Delta Sonic on Main Street in Rochester, NY
“Spotless Restrooms” sign on door at Delta Sonic on Main Street in Rochester, NY

Delta Sonic is in tough competition with the new Fastrac that open next door to its Main Street location. But it’s even tougher to figure out which station has the cheaper gas. Delta Sonic’s low price is available only with a car wash and Fastrac’s low price is only available if you use their card. The “Spotless Restrooms” at Delta Sonic hardly seem possible.

I plan to add this photo to the “Signs” section that I have been quietly building on Popwars. I have a “Signs” collection on the Refrigerator but that site became unwieldily so I am slowly rebuilding it on PopWars where I am using php to update the navigation and MySql to populate the pages. I wrestle with every stage of this thing and then get interrupted by paying work so it may be a few years before launch.

John Gilmore rode downtown with us last night for the Margaret Explosion gig. He was telling us how he stuck his own handmade sign on the outside of the building he worked in at Kodak Park. It read, “This Space Reserved For (his ID badge number)”. So had his own private parking spot in a crowded lot. He quoted an oft used but new to us corporate saying, “Better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

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Pandora’s Box

Fountain Blue Hair Shop in Rochester, NY
Fountain Blue Hair Shop in Rochester, NY

We stopped by Canaltown Roasters to pick up 10 pounds of “Rochester’s Choice” coffee for 4D and spotted Fountain Blue defiantly standing on the city block that Wegman’s wants. I had just seen the newest plans that call for a monster store that will surround this tiny building because the current owner can not be bought. Good for him. Around the corner we couldn’t resist stopping into the Ravioli Shop. I love their baguettes and Peggi likes their semolina bread so we bought both. We tried to buy some mushroom raviolis but they were sold out so we picked up some pumpkin ravioli.

I went down to paint last night but their wasn’t any music on my iPod because I had copied over the iTunes Music Library.xml file with the one from our laptop and my old playlists were gone. I checked out Pandora. I hadn’t been here since I first bought the Touch. It remembered me saying I liked Sun Ra so I clicked the link and it played Miles tracks from Jack Johnson and A Silent Way, early Ornette, Archie Shepp, Yusef Lateef, Eric Dolphy and even Joe McFee. About every tenth track was from Sun Ra and that’s about the way all music stations should be. Why did I ever buy all this music and who need’s iTunes? It was a little humiliating to see how predictable I am. The people at the Pandora genome project really have my number.

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Back In The Saddle

Apple Guys in the window of the Eastview Mall Store in Rochester, New York
Apple Guys in the window of the Eastview Mall Store in Rochester, New York

These guys bailed me out by installing a new hard drive in my iMac. I suppose I could have figured out how to install a new drive and maybe even put in a bigger one but you have to take the glass screen off and the procedure looks pretty messy. Besides I had six months left on a three year AppleCare (like ObamaCare for computers) program that I had never used so this was all paid for. When I booted the machine it went through the welcome in many languages routine with the hip hop music and then asked if I wanted to restore from a Time Machine back-up. I did and it all came back, the desktop photo (wallpaper) that I took from the balcony of the Getty in LA, my docs and apps as they were, and even the stuff that was in my trash. My father just called and said he corrupted a large “Pages” file. I told him to go into Time Machine and bring it back from the dead. Peggi made Duane’s Faux Duck recipe for dinner, Mun-Cha’i-Ya (Peking Vegetarian Roast Duck in a can), and now we’re back in the saddle.

I found a copy of Monday’s New York Times in our mailbox this morning along with the local paper. That set me back awhile. It was a half price come on for daily delivery and it sounds pretty civilized but what about work? Speaking of avoiding work, we skied through the woods and then along the ridge on the west side of Eastman Lake in Durand. We stopped a bunch to look around and I felt that snow euphoria come over me. You know how you feel perfectly comfortable, probably near numb, when it’s only 15 degrees or so and you just want to lie down in the snow? We used to do this as kids in a snow fort or a big bank and I did it up in the mountains once and lost the car keys so those days are over. But I dig the dreamy sensation.

We’ve been checking out the snowshoe people, watching how they just walk right up the side of a steep hill they want to and how their big footprints just dart off the trail in all directions. Snowshoes are in are future. Won’t have to worry about going out of control on our skis and doing one of those violent smack downs. I think we might need special shoes to strap the snowshoes on so this might get complicated. Maybe next year.

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Time Machine

Apple logo on start up - if you're lucky
Apple logo on start up – if you’re lucky

The spinning color wheel that has been haunting me for the last week was an indication of hard drive failure. At least I think it was the hard drive. It got so all I got was a snowy screen. I was concerned that the the system was corrupt and that maybe my Time Machine backups would also be compromised but Marco at the Apple Store assured me that I would be able to do a full restore when I get my iMac back. I should have just looked at the Time Machine folder on my back up drive and I wouldn’t have lost sleep last night because all the files are there. I hadn’t really poked around in there because I pictured it all compressed and unreadable.

When Marco lifted my iMac out the box he spotted the small black and white photo of Peggi, sitting behind her Farfisa and in front of a Vox amp, that I had stuck on top of the Apple logo at the bottom of my screen. He said he was a musician too. He played with friends while going to school in Ithaca but hadn’t hooked up with anyone to play with since moving here. The Apple store was mobbed and they were running about twenty five minutes late at the Genius Bar. The place was packed and I felt like I was in China with all the busy workers running around in blue t-shirts swiping credit cards in their PDAs for the well heeled shoppers. A kid was holding a seminar in the middle of the showroom. Six middle aged students sat on stools at table with their iPhones and laptops. They were learning how to sync the two.

We stopped at Talbot’s on the way home and Peggi returned the sweater she got from my mom for Christmas. Peggi always says my mom has great taste in clothes but this sweater didn’t fit her body type. She found a suitable replacement and picked up an extra top. I found a comfortable chair to sit down in and I noticed that I was wearing the shirt that my mom gave me this year. They had no WiFi in the store but they were playing great music, all black pop, two Michael Jackson tunes and a great cover of “Some Kind of Wonderful”, a song by the 1960’s Rochester band, Soul Brothers Six, later covered by Grand Funk Railroad.

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