Author: Paul

Leaving the Hochstein last weekend we drove by Plymouth Photo. I was so surprised to see they were still in business. Joe used to be the best at knocking off passport photos and head shots for business people, actors, politicians, and especially aspiring models. I just assumed his business was swallowed up by the DIY digital machine. We still get head shots in the mail, more than ever actually, and I attribute that to the new parenthood model that sees exceptionalism in their offspring. I’ve taken to slicing the 8×10 heads in two and recombining them in mutant forms.

I was immediately attracted to Ann Oren’s video installation in the current “Me Pix” show at Rochester Contemporary. Like Andy Warhol’s “Screen Tests”, mentioned in yesterday’s post, Oren uses non actors as well as professional actors in her piece called “The Audition.” While it is interesting trying to determine the genuine from the fake as the models sell themselves the most interesting thing is how we squirm while watching them.

I love this little guy. He sits by our neighbor’s pond looking over the real frogs and goldfish and today he reminded me of Martin’s post on mindfullness.

We took a walk with the neighbor on the other side this afternoon. She got two phone calls while we we were in the woods. That was a different experience for us. She drove down to the Metropolitan over the weekend to see her brother perform withDean & Britta, doing their Warhol Screen Test thing in conjunction with the “Regarding Warhol” show there. She went to high school in Manhattan and told us the auditorium the band played in was the same one where she and Dean had their high school graduations.

We watch the chipmunks dart in and out of this hole in our sidewalk all day long. They have their own metropolis down there, tiny highway systems, food storage lockers, miniature coonskin hat factories, recreation rooms with large screen tvs, bunk beds and gymnasiums with wrestling mats. They also have a small office down there where chipmunk engineers are drawing up plans for squeezing this large nut through their small portal.

Apple has a tribute to Steve Jobs on it’s front page this morning, marking one year since his passing. Following the “related stories” link under that story, something I seem to spend half my day doing, I found “Ten Steve Jobs Quotes” including this one, “I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It purges the system of these old models that are obsolete.” Its a brutal assessment when you’re looking to fill the void.

We met Peggi’s family in Cabo San Lucas one Christmas and the hills outside that noisy tourist town smelled like cilantro. It grows like a weed down there. We planted cilantro seeds this Spring and the plants grew quickly but then turned spindly with more shoots and then seeds than leaves. This has happened to us before. I have always wondered how Wegmans gets those big leafy bunches. This year we let the seeds (coriander) go and in month’s time we have a beautiful patch. Nothing but leaves and delicious in salads.

My cousin has organized a family reunion this weekend and another cousin, a nun, was arranging to bring her father (my uncle) and our aunt (who went into and then out of hospice, the only person I know to have done so) to the picnic in a handicap van. But my uncle has taken a turn for the worse and is “on his way to heaven,” according to his daughter. That’s a comforting thought.

We drove our friend, Bill, to the Oncology Center yesterday so they could radiate the base of his spine in order to shrink his newest tumor, one that has made it painful for him to bend over. On the way home we stopped at the Mobil station at Twelve Corners to pick up his car. A mechanic there massaged the transmission so it would pass inspection and Bill wanted me to drive it home. I stayed in second gear the whole way and managed to get it into reverse before shutting it off in his driveway. Bill said he was thinking of giving the car to someone.

Advertising makes the modern world go ’round and this Avon promotion really lit up the mailboxes on our end of the street this morning. I was headed out to get the papers, still in my pjs and bleary eyed when I spotted this apparition. Had to go back in and get my camera before anyone disturbed the installation.

We still refer to the house next door as Leo’s even though he died two years ago but the new tenants are fairly disciplined and will soon have left their mark. One is a writer and from my perch her silhouette can be seen every morning in the saddle at her desk in the back room.

Leo’s lovable legacy includes his depression era skimpiness. When we first moved in he asked if he could put a few things in our trash and of course we said yes. We soon learned he had never purchased a trash pick-up contract and this would be a weekly routine. When a carpenter was rebuilding a wall in the basement for the new tenants he took all his measurements with his twenty five foot tape rule and then mistakenly picked up Leo’s tape rule to measure the lumber. He constructed the wall on the ground and then lifted it in to place and discovered it was ten inches short. It took him a bit to figure out that Leo had broken his tape measure and and instead of springing for a new one he cut out the inches between ten and twenty and then put it back together.

Our nephew hatched a plan to borrow his mom’s Lexus and drive us up the coast, “Something purely California.” But first we had to read the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. By the time we finished those and a few pots of coffee the whole family was on board, or what’s left of it. We packed a lunch of leftovers from the post memorial service gathering and a bag of plumcots, the plum apricot hybrid.

We travelled out Sunset Boulevard through Malibu while Peggi’s sister studied a map of hiking trails and we gawked out the window at the surfers and campers and funky bungalows along the coast. We stopped at Mugu in the Santa Monica mountains and left the air conditioned car for a three hour looped trail that was supposed to follow a creek with a small waterfalls. The creek bed was dry as bone. I borrowed a hat, shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt from my brother-in-laws closet and we lathered up with #60 sunscreen. No one in the family is anywhere near size twelve so I did the three hour hike in my street shoes.

We carefully rationed our water and by the time we returned to the car were primed for a Bud Light toast to our brother-in-law but we forgot the cooler.

As we drove by these trees today there was a guy in the middle of the road taking a picture of his girlfriend while she stood under them. They are quintessentially LA and could not exist in Rochester, New York. The traffic on this road is mostly workers – gardeners, pool maintenance people, maids, nannies, construction workers and taco trucks. They filmed the Beverly Hillbillies here. Quincy Jones lives nearby and Zsa Zsa Gabor but the biggest stars in my book are are our two nephews. One is law student and anti-fracking advocate the other is a chef who is currently working at 11 Madison Park and NoMad, two of the top restaurants in the world. They are featured in this week’s New Yorker.

The sky is impossibly blue in LA and the sun is so intense it is oppressive. You can’t walk for long without protection and protection is hot and uncomfortable. Walking up Bel Air Road the difference you see, in color and type, between the planted and tended vegetation and the native landscape tells that whole story.

But the stainless steel houses with the flat roofs and big picture windows are seriously dreamy and imagining the lives of the people who live behind the gated entries can occupy some mind space. Because the climate is so different the art is different. “Made In LA,” the first Los Angeles biennial, organized by the Hammer Museum was being disassembled when we arrived. Admission was free and all but four installations were gone. A minimal music piece with musicians scattered about the courtyard was underway when we got there and still going when left about two hours later. It was beautiful and spacious and perfectly LA, like something that had been out in the sun just long enough.