Author: Paul

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How Bad Is Time Warner?

Yellow infrastucture for Huntington Hills Center
Yellow infrastucture for Huntington Hills Center

What a pleasant topic for a blog post. You should hear this idiotic, fifteen second loop that Time Warner has me listening to while I’m on hold. On hold for as long as I can stand it. It has been fifteen minutes. I am being punished for asking for a supervisor.

We are moving my parent’s internet connection to their new address and I was to meet TW there at 11AM. I gave them three phone numbers to reach us at and they didn’t call any of them. They just didn’t show up. I called them at 1, worked my way through the automated 800 maze and got a representative who said “the appointment was cancelled, sir.” “Cancelled by who?” I asked. “It doesn’t say.”

When the service manager finally got on the line, he told me the soonest TW could get there would be Friday, three days away. I was starting to lose it but doesn’t everybody do that with Time Warner? I tried to control myself. I know their business model. Controlled rage on the customer’s part gets special pricing. “OK, I found an opening for Thursday afternoon,” he said. And I’m supposed to be happy? I recapped how they blew me off and the guy relented. “OK, I’ll wave the 49.95 service charge.” I screamed at this point. I had only been quoted 19.99 for the service charge!

I told him Frontier was offering a DSL connection for 19.99 a month and I was thinking of canceling TW unless he could make me a better deal. He lowered the monthly quote to 41 bucks and I took it. He had the nerve to tell me to have a nice day as I was hanging up. Comcast can have them.

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Chain Letter

Creek running out of Spring Valley
Creek running out of Spring Valley

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released this report. I’m passing it on.

The ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct.

The oceans are rising at a pace that threatens coastal communities and are becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide given off by cars and power plants, which is killing some creatures or stunting their growth.

Organic matter frozen in Arctic soils since before civilization began is now melting, allowing it to decay into greenhouse gases that will cause further warming, the scientists said. And the worst is yet to come.

There must be something we can do about this.

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I Love My Cat

Peggi footprints in our driveway
Peggi footprints in our driveway

I realize we are probably the only ones who think this recent snowfall is pretty. Most people have had enough. It’s so late in the year for this stuff you can’t really take it seriously so I just enjoy it. It will probably be sixty degrees next week.

My cat has not developed in her seventeen years. She is still in the moment, she still enjoys the same toys, a crumpled up piece of paper, an old collar that she drags around the house, an empty box to scratch and sit in. She hasn’t gotten any smarter either. She is already plenty smart, smart enough to know she has a good thing going and she does the same thing every day as if it is the first time. She has taught me plenty and she lowers my blood pressure when I pet her.

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Warren’s World

Warren Philips Frame Shop on East Avenue
Warren Philips Frame Shop on East Avenue

I almost get the sense that Warren Phillips’ Frame Shop would be a lot busier if people didn’t feel as though this gem of a place was their little secret. They might want to make sure that Warren can meet their deadlines or they might not want to spread the word for fear that Warren may raise his prices. But artists and art collectors are not that selfish and when you get to know him you naturally want to do whatever you can to support him.

Warren has a great eye so if you are in doubt, let him pick the frame. He’s a craftsman and will even make one from scratch for you. And if you stop in without any art at all, he has a terrific collection of prints by local artists for sale. If you have the time. Warren has the gift of gab as well so you might want to hang while he makes your frame. Warren has been a fixture on East Avenue for a long time but the rent’s going up, way up, and he has ninety days to find another place.

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Decisive Moment

Real deer and fake mixing on Hoffman Road
Real deer and fake mixing on Hoffman Road

I’ve been waiting for years to get this shot. We laugh at the fake deer whenever we walk down Hoffman Road and we see real deer all the time in the woods and some day we said, we will see them both together.

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True Gentleman

Matthew's Spanish figurines
Matthew’s Spanish figurines

A good crowd is a mixed blessing. It becomes harder to hear each other and we don’t do crank so, out of necessity, we’ve developed a way to lower the din. We get really quiet in the middle of a song and the crowd follows along. A tuba player from the Eastman was there and he struck up a conversation about improvisation with the low end of our ensemble. Martin Edic was there celebrating his birthday. Tom Burke was there smiling. Jeff Spevak, the local music critic, was there so we should have been putting on our best musical face but we were getting kinda out, so much so that Jack, the bass clarinetist, suggested we do a waltz to start the second set.

Gap Mangione was there last week and I tried to start something a little more straight forward but we are not very good at that. We wound up doing some crazy stuff. Oscar was there tonight in new chair and he was a delight to play to. I thanked him for coming and like a true gentleman he thanked us for playing.

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Don’t Worry

Shawn Dunwoody got out there a week after Winter Storm Vulcan to do his Rochester version of Pharrell Williams'”Happy.” With an iPod, boom box and video camera, he yelled “I’m recording a “Happy” video for Rochester, if anyone wants to be a part of it.”

In the D&C he said. “Most people just walked by me like I didn’t exist. Then finally a young man on his lunch break said, ‘Sure.’ Then I started getting a few more.” Four days later he’s got 40,000 hits. Go Shawn. And then the video was taken down.

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Rebel Girl

Kathleen Hanna still from The Punk Singer
Kathleen Hanna still from The Punk Singer

I came awake thinking about “The Punk Singer,” a movie we saw last night at the Little. It is a pretty meaty movie with all the sexual abuse and gender unbalance issues that Kathleen Hanna so expertly shoves in our faces. I loved the clips of her old band, Bikini Kill, and it was a kick to see Joan Jett in the movie. I hope the whole Riot Grrrl thing still has some legs. Hanna stopped touring when she discovered she has late stage Lyme disease, a turn that hit hard.

We had just driven by a grizzly accident at Culver and Titus where a car was over on its side and another had its front end up where the front seat should be. There was someone lying in the street and a cop was already there but it had just happened. In the movie, the Beastie Boys Adam Horovitz, who married Hanna, describes the first time he saw Bikini Kill as like an accident you can’t turn away from. I got the picture.

The director was interviewed via Skype after the screening and she said the movie will released on dvd this week.

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We Are Being Played

Pete and Shelley in Stoney Creek
Pete and Shelley in Stoney Creek

Jaffe tunes the 9 foot grand piano at the Little Theater and we were chatting with him last night. He told us he’s been playing keyboards in a band with Frank who lives on the same street as Bob Martin and my parents. Jaffe told us this isn’t a coincidence. “We are being played.”

This afternoon I was on 590 coming back from my parents’ place and I was listening to a really cool accordion song on WRUR’s Italian radio show. I was wondering if Jaffe plays accordion and thinking he probably does. I look to the right and who’s in the car next to me? Jaffe with a big smile.

Our friends Pete and Shelley are probably maple syruping up in the Adrironacks. There was an article in the paper about the maple syrup process and it made me think of them. Next thing you know Pete’s “Arouse The Thunder” came up in iTunes.

Listen to Arouse The Thunder by Pete LaBonne

Lyrics and chord changes can be found in the sixth entry down on this page.

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World Full Of Sources

Subterranean Surrogates, photo installation by Paul Dodd, Rochester Contemporary Arts Center, August 5, 2011 - September 25, 2011 Photo 34
Subterranean Surrogates, photo installation by Paul Dodd, Rochester Contemporary Arts Center, August 5, 2011 – September 25, 2011 Photo 34

I’ve been drawing the concrete infrastructure that was put under the traffic circles on the old 590. I’m working from a bunch of photos that I took a few years back. Having fun with it but finding it is not as exciting as drawing these guys. I brought back a bunch of holy cards from Spain and I have one of the dreamy Santa Gema Galgani propped up near my monitor. I’m thinking about portraits of the saints.

I’m looking at Mary Heilmann for inspiration.

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Shrug

Mound of snow in cul-de-sac
Mound of snow in cul-de-sac

Back about ten years ago or so David Hockney was in the news with his theory about Renaissance artists using a device like a Camera Obscura and/or mirrors to create their masterpieces. He pointed to distortions in the length of model’s bodies in some famous paintings and even tell -tale convex mirrors on the walls of rooms in the paintings. He wrote a book about it and this Tim guy, a successful tinkerer with money and no art background, set out to prove Hockney right by painting a Vermeer. Like a Renaissance inventor he ingenoiusly determined the right combination of lens and mirrors painted a damn Vermeer.

The movie, “Tim’s Vermeer,” now playing at the Little makes it clear how much patience is required to paint in this tedious fashion. I’m thinking once Vermeer sold his first painting he probably hired minimum wage employees to paint his pictures. I kept wondering what my friend, the painter, Steve Piotrowski who loves Vermeer would think about all this. Someone in the movie made the point that it is only the art historians who are upset to see Vermeer’s star tarnished. Artists just shrug.

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Living Large In 3D

Leo Dodd walks around Cobblestone smokehouse in Irondequoit
Leo Dodd walks around Cobblestone smokehouse in Irondequoit

We were standing in my parents living room looking at their glass coffee table, the current centerpiece of their room. My mother had just announced that my brother was going to take it. I said, “Are you sure you don’t have room for it?” My father, who is really good at visualizing things, said “Our new living room is as big as the rug in this room. So if you move the furniture on to the rug you can see what we have room for.”

In ten days they will be in their new apartment and my father is working out the new floor plan in Google’s free SketchUp 3D drawing program. He has been able to find many of the pieces of furniture that they own in the Google 3D Library. He just plops the drawings that other users have contributed into his floor plan and sits my mom down in front of he computer while spins rotates the drawings in space.

We stopped by their new place this morning to take some final measurements and afterwards headed down to Nick’s for some lunch. We parked in the little park across from Sea Breeze Amusement Park next to the restored cobblestone smokehouse that was moved here a few years back from its original location near the Ridge Culver Fire Department. My parents new place is small but it is bigger than this smokehouse.

Nick came over and sat down with us. We told him a bit about Spain and how we found a place there that reminded us of his place. We talked about the food there and he said his mom used to make an Italian version of Tortilla Española. He got going on how she’d make homemade pasta on Sundays and “Eggs in Purgatory” where she would drop eggs into simmering sauce and pull them out when they were poached. He was nearly lost back in time when he said, “We thought that would last forever.” I told him the memories do.

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Green Bagels

Shamrock Jacks Rochester Ne York 2014
Shamrock Jacks Rochester Ne York 2014

I’m quite sure St. Patrick’s day is one of those holidays, formerly holy days, that have glommed onto the Equinox the way Christmas glommed onto the solstice. So we celebrate the first unofficial day of Spring by walking through the park and out onto Culver Road where the Guinness truck is parked in front of Shamrock Jacks. This is our family of two tradition.

We were there before noon and green bagels were still set up on a table in front. Our waitress, one of the sisters that own the place, was wearing a “Drink Like A Champion Today” shirt. A band was playing in the bar and another one was setting up out back in the tent. By the time we left the place was mobbed. These are my people. I’m getting out.

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Pointless Topics

Budweiser beer cans in Winter
Budweiser beer cans in Winter

I hadn’t checked the beer spot on Hoffman Road since our last thaw. The Budweiser man is still active. I should say I don’t know for a fact that it is a man who has been dumping these cans in the same spot for the last five years. Heck, it might even be the little woman who drives down to the marsh to walk her scruffy white dog. Her mother rides in the back of the car and used to get out but those days are over. Now she sits back there and waves to us through the glass. Like us they are regulars and the only thing we talk about is the weather. All other topics are pointless.

The road is a dead end so sometimes the women just stop their car right in the middle of the road. There is so little traffic down here that each car you see is either one of the few homeowners or a Budweiser suspect. I’ll bring a bag with me next time and clean up after the guy. I don’t really mind. I bring the cans to Michigan where I collect ten cents for each 22 ouncer.

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No R&R 4 R&R

Hook Face at Monty's Crown
Hook Face at Monty’s Crown

Rock and roll is dying. The process is so slow it only looks like “never.” Decay has been part of the art form for ages. Monty’s Crown on Monroe Avenue is an ideal host for the long funeral, darts, long bar, a dozen beers on tap, a back room with a PA for the band and a pool table stage left. Green shamrocks with the word “Blue” on them were carefully arranged by a beer rep in the front window. All this with two bands on the bill for a three dollar cover. That price hasn’t budged in thirty years.

Dave Anderson was there, Chris from the Squires, Joe Tunis from Carbon, Chris Schepp and Ted Williams of course. Hook Face and Nod were brilliant. Long live rock ‘n roll.

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Saint Rachel

Last ski through the woods, March 14, 2014
Last ski through the woods, March 14, 2014

Breaking Bad went through a few rather bleak periods and we hung in there. House of Cards is no substitute but it has us pretty wrapped up. Good thing it’s streamable because we keep having to back up to catch the dialog. It is dense and twisted with everyone playing everyone big time. We’re on episode 22 and all of the main characters are so soiled our sympathies are now with the born again prostitute, Rachel Posner, and the creepy photographer, Adam Galloway.

Although it’s set in the White House with a hapless president, the politics take a backseat to the lobbyists and business interests. The only defense against these forces is the naked quest for power. Good thing it is only a tv show.

It is worth watching the show though just to be able to enjoy Vulture’s coverage of it.

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Vitamin D Day

Skier on Durand Eastman Golf Course in Rochester, New York
Skier on Durand Eastman Golf Course in Rochester, New York

Our ski path in the woods had been covered up overnight with additional snow and all that had drifted. Despite the fact that the meteorologists had given the “blizzard” a name and even parked a Weather Channel truck a mile away at the Sea Breeze bridge the storm was just more winter. And this has been a particularly good one. It doesn’t need the hype.

At the other end of the woods we used to ski across a fairway and head up to the lake on one of the trails around the small lakes but a couple of years ago they started grooming paths on the golf course. It can be brutally cold out there in the wind and kind of bleak compared to the woods but in full sun the golf course is surreal. As the guy in this photo whizzed up the hill toward us he said “Who needs Florida?”

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Drawings For The Drawer

Paul Dodd Homeless Rochester Teen 2014 Charcoal on paper
Paul Dodd Homeless Rochester Teen 2014 Charcoal on paper

I photographed some homeless Rochester teenagers a few years ago. I did many drawings of them and then paintings. I finally finished a series of charcoal drawings of them and now I’m ready to move on. But first I have clean u the drawings a bit, spray them with fixative, photograph them am and put them in in a drawer between sheets of glassine.

I plan to pick my favorite version of them and show the batch in an upcoming show at I-Square gallery. The show in tentatively entitled “3 ‘D’s In Dodd” and there may be a subtitle such as “There Are More” so as not to slight the rest of the family. My brother John and our dad will also be featured. Lately I start with a source and quickly stop referring to it so the drawings look quite different from one another. The guy above in an upcoming show at the Creative Workshop.

Today is a perfect day to photograph and a not so good day to spray fixative. There is twenty inches of snow forecast for those of us near the lake and our Margaret Explosion gig at the Little has been canceled because the weather.

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Gulliver’s Travels

Red berries, blue sky and snow in Rochester, New York
Red berries, blue sky and snow in Rochester, New York

My brother was in town, helping my parents downsize in preparation for a change of address. My dad has been going through the items he’s squirreled away, giving them one last glance, scanning some old clippings, drawings and photos, choosing the ones he can’t live without and then letting the rest go either to offspring or Viet Nam Vets.

My brother loaded his car with a bookcase full of Harvard Classics and my dad showed him a hardback copy of “Gulliver’s Travels” that he had come across on a shelf. A chamber had been carved out of the inside pages, big enough to hold a small plastic box. As he was telling us this it all sounded vaguely familiar and I mean vaguely. I remember reading the book for a class and seeing a movie where someone hid a gun or something in an old book but would I have done something like this?. Maybe, not so much to hide pot in or anything (I kept that in my pocket) but just to do it.

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This Is Not A Door

Painted window and door on red brick wall in Madrid
Painted window and door on red brick wall in Madrid

When we were in Madrid we had coffee one morning with an artist from Toronto. She was there for an art fair, ArCo Madrid, and she was bemoaning the state of art today. To my ears she sounded more like a business woman than an artist. What artist thinks about the market? But the point she was making was one that stuck with me.

She produced large scale wall art that had something to do with therapy or healing and she had been all over the world with her art. She told us downtown Toronto was being rebuilt as luxury lofts, condos and apartments and everything was open plan with large glass windows and this trend is playing out everywhere. “There are no more walls,” she exclaimed. “People are not buying wall art because they don’t have any wall space.”

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