Author: Paul

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Mall Walking

Tweety house on Summerville Street in Rochester, New York

We go to the mall (they are all the same) about once a year and only out of necessity. My socks had holes in the heel. They all go at the same time because I buy them in six packs, “Gold Toes” at Lord & Taylor. And my underwear was losing its elasticity so I tried some Calvin Klines this time.

The mall can completely sap your energy. There is a relentless common denominator to halls and then all the stores carry the same stuff. The clerk at Banana Republic told us we would save fifty percent by opening a new charge card which will be good toward savings in Old Navy and the Gap because they are all owned by the same company. The music is mostly hideous. I hope they aren’t today’s pop songs. They are probably picked by an algorithm that determines the best doodles to accompany menial tasks and ranked by mindless shopping performance stats. Might be time sell Apple. The help in the store far outnumbered the customers. One store, Anthropologie, sort of broke the mold with its wide open spaces and comfortable couches. The women’s clothing store had a 1970’s vibe and they sold a small selection of books like “Madeline” and “Reading Andy Warhol.”

Peggi had her pedometer on, the free one picked up at jazz fest. We walked 2.2 miles in there.

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I Like Lichen

Lichen on blue chair out front
Lichen on blue chair out front

OK, so I was way wrong on Brazil. They totally fell apart. Enough said. We were way overdue for a lopsided game after all the nail-biters. I’m still optimistic about Argentina.

Our friend, Shelley Valechovic, did series of paintings of lichen and I have taken note of the stuff since. I found this bit in our front yard. Must have fallen off a tree above. I placed it on a blue chair out front for its closeup.

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Til Death Do Us Part

Uncle Bob with priest at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery
Uncle Bob with priest at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery

I still think the world of my Uncle Bob, even though he got going on government overreach while we drove him and my Aunt to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery where my dad’s cousin was being laid to rest. He called us kids “city slickers” when we went out to visit them on their farm in Dundee but he always showed us the time of our lives by involving us in sheering sheep or whatever the day’s chore was. Today, one of the funeral home directors asked if they could help him to a seat by the graveside and he said, “Hell no, I’m a farmer. I can take care of myself.”

A “Mass of Christian Burial” was celebrated at Saint Ambrose earlier in the day. Funerals seem to be the only masses I get to anymore and I am always struck by the changes in the service. I pretty much left off with Latin and the priest with his back to the parishioners. We would just zone out and look at the statues. The altar boys are all grown men now, probably retirees. The kneelers are still there to trip over but no one uses them anymore. People turn and shake hands with the people around them, wish them peace and sing songs from hymnals like the Protestants.

My father spoke and painted a nice picture of the close-knit families in the Thurston Road/Brooks Avenue area when he and his cousins were growing up. Jerry Christopher, who might be related to me in some way, sang a version of “Ave Marie” that could make you believe in the Immaculate Conception. My father’s cousin, Mary, would have loved it all.

Mary was a legal secretary and worked at the four couriers downtown. She married her boss, a practicing Jew, and her nephew, who joked that he had never spoke in a church before, said due to the constrictions of their faiths they were not allowed to be buried next to one another.

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Corporate Personhood

50's Chevy in front of Playground Tavern, Rochester, New York
50’s Chevy in front of Playground Tavern, Rochester, New York

Still have not set foot in the Playground Tavern. It has been up for sale for over a year and I couldn’t even find a listing for it so I doubt if it will be going anywhere soon but I’m itching to get inside.

We celebrated the fourth down at the lake at some friends’ house. The neighbors in the Crescent Beech area have parties that night and they collect driftwood all year to burn in the giant bonfires that line the beach. This year it got a title out of control with one of the neighbors calling the fire department on someone who built a three story tiki bar to burn when the sun went down. They must spend a fortune on the Chinese fireworks. They all come from stores on the Pennsylvania side of the border. The Chinese Lanterns, silently floating in the wind, were my favorite part. I was hoping the things burnt up before landing but we spotted a purple one in the woods today when we took our walk.

My father was telling me how his family used to take the trolley down there to the beech in front of where Schaller’s is now. His dad would go in the bar that was across the street and have beer or two while he watched the ballgame and he and his sisters would swim. He told us he never saw his mom or dad go in the water.

I was going to try and connect corporate personhood to this post, the way Maureen Dowd connected the US World Cup loss as a way to advance beyond American exceptionalism, but the two words themselves don’t even go together.

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Instinct Vs. Method

White boat offshore on Crescent Beach
White boat offshore on Crescent Beach

There is something about sun that affects the style of the game. The Northern Europeans play a technical, physical, methodical game. I know this is a huge generalization but Southern European teams play with artistic flair and the Latin American teams take that to the extreme. I would love to see Brazil win the Cup but that seems impossible with Neymar out with an injury and Silva out on a self inflicted penalty.

Everyone is drawn to Messi, viewers and especially opponents. But as they put pressure on Messi they only raise the bar for his artistic performance. And, at the same time, their magnetic attraction opens spaces for Messi to feed. I especially like the way he and DiMarie operate in that pressure cooker. With the US out we are pulling for Argentina. It was a joy to watch them take out the team that sent the US home but it was hard to watch DiMaria, “Fideo” (the noodle), leave the game with an injury.

I am happy Costa Rica took the Netherlands into the the penalty kick stage today but I’m happy the Netherlands won there, only because it will be so much fun to see Argentina take down the Orange in the semis. Brazil and Argentina in the finals would be the perfect final ticket but realistically I’m guessing it will be Argentina and Germany and we witness this class of instinct vs. method.

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Chain Gang

Stone quarry in Penfield New York
Stone quarry in Penfield New York

It used to be five bucks for a load of stone. The Penfield quarry now charges ten but it is still a steal. Peggi and I shoveled a ton (literally) of crushed stone into our neighbor’s pick-up yesterday. There are about ten different size stone piles here to choose from. We filled the truck bed with the finest grade and then loaded ten buckets or so of stone that was about two inches in diameter. We’ll use the crushed stone on our road and the course stone will go down in a drywell that we plan to dig for better drainage near our mailboxes.

I shoveled a lot of stone when I was working for Mitchell Construction Company in Bloomington. I was on a three man crew that built forms and poured concrete for garage floors and sidewalks. But before we finished any concrete we had to shovel dump truck loads of stone into the forms.

The boss of our crew was named “Frenchie.” He had a party boat that he and his wife rode in on one of Indiana’s manmade lakes in the summer. They drank tomato juice and beer cocktails. The other guy on my crew was named Wayne Anderson. He turned us onto Al Green. The only reason he was hired was because the 30 person company needed to have at least one black employee in order to bid on University jobs. I remember one of the guys on the carpentry crew asking me, “What’s it like working with a nigger?” The owner of the company drove a convertable Mercedes sports car like Robert Wagner in “Hart to Hart.”

All that came back to me while I was shoveling.

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Solo Mio

Hope Solo in goal vs. Flash in Rochester, New York
Hope Solo in goal vs. Flash in Rochester, New York

Hope Solo was back in the goal against the Flash tonight. We stalked her before the game. It was her first game since her arrest for domestic violence last weekend. She has apologized to her fans and says “adversity has always made us stronger.” Can’t argue with that.

Abby is still out for the Flash and wasn’t even in town but the Flash are playing better than ever. They were up 1-0 tonight against first place Seattle but then kind of ran out of steam in the second half before going down 2-1.

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Brutal City

220 Alexander Street Building in Rochester, New York
220 Alexander Street Building in Rochester, New York

Pete Monacelli did a series of drawings based on the old Security Trust building downtown. His wife worked there for many years and he found enough architectural details in the 1960’s building to churn out a brilliant batch of interpretations. And since seeing his show at Rochester Contemporary I have been paying closer attention to the buildings this city has to offer. As brutal as they are they don’t last forever. We’ve already begun tearing down buildings from the sixties.

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As Good As It Gets

Duane in the pool
Duane in the pool

July tomorrow. I can handle it. Jazz Fest was a whirlwind and then this World Cup thing. We didn’t expect Mexico to still be in the game with the Netherlands but they were up 1-0 late in the match as Duane showed up, up from the big city. Netherlands took them down in theatrical fashion and we headed down to the pool. Duane swims regularly at the Y in Brooklyn and in one of those giant outdoor recreation pools in the summer so he was still bobbing around after we had withdrawn.

We headed down to Vic & Irv’s for the usual (cheeseburger, onion rings and a vanilla milkshake in my case) and took our regular stools, stage left with a birds-eye view of the post-teenage chefs. When the food arrived Duane said, “I know this sounds corny but this is as good as it gets.” I was a little slow with any sort of response but I think he was right.

On the way out of the parking lot we passed a pickup truck with a sign on the back window that read, “God Bless Our Troops. F!ck the Politicians.” The “u” in the word fuck was an assault rifle graphic. The take-away being anarchy in the USA or a bible thumping military dictatorship? I should have asked Duane to stop so I could get a picture but again I was a little slow. I could have used the photo on my funky sign site.

Back home, the tiny nation of Costa Rica took out Greece in the penalty kick round. And then Duane left. We’ll have to catch up in New York.

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Radical Pigs

Midtown Rochester at night
Midtown Rochester at night

Getting from the Lutheran Church to Xerox Auditorium was rough with George Thorogood and the Destroyers playing in the middle of the street. We stood behind some guys wearing “Radical Pigs” biker gear for part of “Who Do You Love,” the part where festival promoter, John Nugent, played sax, and then got on with it.

My favorite act of this year’s jazz fest was the Norma Winstone Trio at the Xerox Auditorium. Like Peggy Lee she and her trio were quite exotic and intoxicating. My favorite song from her performance last night was one of hers called “Dance Without Answer.” They record for the ECM label and I tracked down a live version the song here.

Last night’s notes start here.
First day of this year’s Fest starts here.

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Telstar

Bill Frisell's "Guitar In The Space Age" at Kilbourn Hall in Rochester, New York 2014
Bill Frisell’s “Guitar In The Space Age” at Kilbourn Hall in Rochester, New York 2014

I would loved to have been able to see Heather O’Reilly play tonight against the Flash but then I would have missed this.

We queued up for Bill Frisell’s “Guitar In The Space Age” at Kilbourn and ran into our jazz buddy, Hal, who was recovering from a sports injury. We compared notes on the upcoming acts and broke into the dinner we had packed. Hugh from Nod was up from Utica and in line ahead of us. The time went by fast.

Kenny Wollesen was on drums. Tony Scheer, who has played with everyone from The Lounge Lizzards to Willie Nelson, was on electric bass and Buffalo native, Greg Leisz, played pedal steel and additional guitar. Frisell’s idea of guitar in the space age is decidedly American. We probably do have more junk floating around up there than any other country. The band toyed with Western swing with Hawaiian touches, a two-beat Americana thing, the Kinks “Tired of Waiting,” something funky that sounded a bit like “Mustang Sally” or “Walking The Dog,” Leisz sounded fantastic on slide but he switched to guitar for the middle of the set and that somehow managed to dilute what we came to hear. Brian Wilson’s “In My Room” was rich, “Telstar” was perfect and their version of “Surfer Girl” almost made me cry.

“I tell you this every time I play here. They wouldn’t let me in this school,” Frisell said, from the hall in the eastman School of Music. “45 years later I come back playing surf music to a standing ovation.”

Last night’s notes start here.
First day of this year’s Fest starts here.

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Not Ready For Our Close-Up

Annette Lein from the Democrat & Chronicle followed Peggi and me through our jazz fest routine yesterday. She started as we whizzed through the day’s offerings and made snap decisions on what to see/hear and then she met us downtown outside our first venue. She must have shot an hour’s worth of footage and later last night she had edited it down in Final Cut and posted it to the D&C’s site. She is a pro. We are not.

Annette’s edits and transitions are as smooth as silk. What looks like an edit is me jumping in before Peggi had a chance to explain what we look for. My favorite part is the shot of us trudging down the street. Unity Health has been giving away pedometers at the Jazz Fest and Peggi has been logging our miles. We walked over two last night and we never got over to Lucinda Williams in the Park. I was reminded of what my dad said when I sent him a link to a movie of us putting up their awnings. “Do we really walk like that?”

I’m keeping track of the Jazz Fest in a separate space.

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World Cup 1, Jazz Fest 1

Ivy covered building downtown, Rochester, New York
Ivy covered building downtown, Rochester, New York

Kind of strange cheering for the US as they lost but advanced.

The two tone building here is right next to the former Midtown Plaza. There was a building adjacent to the great wall that is long gone, a nightclub called the Rathskeller, I think. Bands played there and you used to have go down some steps to enter. Long gone like most of the city core, but coming back. Jazz Fest provides some interesting urban vistas.

High Tech Rochester’s plan to put twenty million into a Business Accelerator Cooperative downtown is the best news I’ve read about downtown in bit.

I’m keeping note on the jazz fest over here.

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Free Parking

5 dollar parking sign in front of City Blue on Scio Street in Rochester, New York
5 dollar parking sign in front of City Blue on Scio Street in Rochester, New York

Anybody remember where Backstreets was? I think it might have become a gay bar before it went under. They got busted at one point because the owners had illegally tapped into a power line out front and rigged so their utility bills were next to nil. I think I played there with New Math. Maybe it was Personal Effects. You could get near deadly shocks from the PA system by touching the mic and the monitor at the same time or something like that.

It was a hard rockin’ joint on Charlotte Street before the turned it into a gay club and they have pretty much torn down every building on that side of the street. Well, that is where we have parked for the last few nights of Jazz Fest. It might be a brownfield. In fact it is a brown field as in all mud. We refuse to pay to park downtown. That’s the way it has always been. There are spots.

My jazz fest note are over here.

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Orange Bronco

Orange Bronco in Rochester, New York
Orange Bronco in Rochester, New York

I guess they still make Broncos but not like this one. OJ sort of damaged the brand for a while with that Warhol-movie-like, slow speed chase.

We found four golf balls today without even trying. We never left the path to comb the underbrush like I used to do before the engorged tick incident. They were just laying out there in plain sight on the path as we skirted the course.

I’m keeping track of the Jazz Fest over here.

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A Hole In Three

Artist painting the back of Vic & Irvs in Rochester New York
Artist painting the back of Vic & Irvs in Rochester New York

We played 17 holes of miniature golf today with my sister, two nephews and a niece. We skipped the twelfth hole because we were holding up play with such big group. My nephew, who got to play for free because he is only five, got “a hole in three.” Oh, and we took a dip in the pool on our street. And then it was time to get in line for Jazz Fest. I know, it sounds like a retiree’s itinerary.

I’m keeping track of the Jazz Fest over here.

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Draw

Baby racoon in stream near Spring Valley
Baby racoon in stream near Spring Valley

When it came down to it, there was no question. The Copa Mundial came before Jazz Fest so we missed the first part of last night’s musical offerings.

Peggi has stayed in touch with her junior high swim mate and we stop by to see her whenever we get back to Detroit. A few years back her husband was telling us how he had heart attack at a Red Wings hockey game and the doctor told him he shouldn’t watch any more hockey. Serious. I was thinking about that scenario today as we watched the US lose the 2-1 lead they had seconds short of the final whistle. I was exhausted by the end of the match.

I’m keeping track of the Jazz Fest over here.

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We Play The Painting

Man in chicken suit at Christ Church on Culver Road, Rochester, New York
Man in chicken suit at Christ Church on Culver Road, Rochester, New York

A lot of people are afraid to sit in the front row. If it was a Suicide or a Contortions show I would be afraid too. They used to scare me but I loved it. We took seats in the front row of Xerox Auditorium for the Belgium big band, Flat Earth Society,
and tried to guess how many members would be in the band. The stage was full of equipment and music stands. We guessed ten and it turned out to be 14. The drums and bass were front and center flanked by guitar and keyboards and the horn section ran all across the back. FES is a wackier, more rambunctious Willem Breuker Kollektief. Never mind the movie. This is vivid, action-packed, cinematic, soundtrack music. They introduced a song called, “Broadway Boogie Woogie,” saying (with a Belgium accent) “We play the painting.”

Shai Maestro Trio was highly recommended to us by a couple that we only see at Jazz Fest each year. The band was at the Rochester Club at 10 but we couldn’t hang in there so we came home and listened to Shai Maestro on YouTube. We should have gone. Tonight we have a legit excuse for missing out on the early end of Jazz Fest. USA/Portugal. I’m keeping track of the Jazz Fest over here.

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Mexican Groundhog

Marsh near Conifer Lane in Rochester, New York
Marsh near Conifer Lane in Rochester, New York

We started a small army of beets from seed. The packet said the variety was good as greens so if they don’t develop below we’ll have them in a salad. We tore out the spinach that had wintered over and gone to seed and put the beets in that spot. It took us about an hour to transplant the wispy little things. A groundhog got at our cilantro early on but we caught him in a Hav-A-Heart trap and called animal control. I heard that the town lets them go over by the expressway interchange of 590 and 104.

Jazz Fest kicked off with a whimper for us but we found some cool stuff with our Club Pass. My brother, a Xerox (major sponsor) employee, gave us a couple of tickets for Janelle Monae at Kodak Hall so we popped in there for a few songs. The ushers who took our tickets at Kodak Hall asked, “Are you sure you want to go in there?” People were already out of their seats and in the aisles.

I’m keeping track of the Jazz Fest over here.

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We Must Rebel Against Defeat

Security after WNY Flash game in Rochester, New York
Security after WNY Flash game in Rochester, New York

We were going to take a day off from soccer but we got sucked into the England/Uruguay game this afternoon. We cheered for Australia yesterday and and then of course Spain, both to no avail. I even put on my España national team gear. And then we headed downtown for the Flash game. Insatiable, I guess.

You would think the World Cup would have spoiled us but the Flash are playing superbly. They were without their national team members last night but that hardly mattered. They played more like a team without Carly controlling play in the center and Abby Abby hulking near the goal.

Lydia Williams is solid in the goal. I’m not longing for Adrianna Franch with every shot on goal. Taylor and especially Reynolds are tough defenders and fun to watch. Zerboni, Salem and Losada are all hustlers in the midfield and able to turn the play around in surprising fashion. Adrianna is my favorite all around player. She is non-stop, free from her forward position but always moving to the right spot. A real pro. She would certainly be on our national team if she wasn’t from Spain. Samantha Kerr is wild. She had an amazing goal last night, from the far right corner over the goalie into the far left side of the net. And how could you not love the way Jasmyne Spencer plays. She is so tiny and so fast. She is a delight to watch as she maneuvers around opponents.

If I wasn’t afraid I’d miss the play I would join the “Flash Mob,” the rag tag percussion ensemble. They sit in stands behind the far goal and make the matches feel like they’re happening in a foreign country.

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