Coke vs. Pepsi ~ that sort of thing.
It Better Be
The second best thing about heading back up to the mountains for the weekend was knowing I would get another chance to photograph this sign. We kind of whizzed past it the first time and it’s beauty didn’t fully register until I was too far down the road to suggest turning around and driving back to photograph it. It haunted me for the last few weeks and I’m so happy that I had another shot at it. See more funky signs.
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We have enjoyed the best cross country skiing conditions of any year that I can remember and this weekend would been a good one if we had stuck around. We had talked with Jeff Munson about going somewhere out of town to ski this winter and time was running out. We considered Ottawa and Stillwater or Tug HIll and then Peggi found a place online that looked promising. She emailed the address and a women called us back on Thursday afternoon. She was calling from New Jersey but she said a caretaker would open up the cabin up near Indian Lake in the Adirondacks and she asked us to mail her a check, a check that she would not receive until we were back in Rochester. It was all knotty pine and perfect with a big fireplace. No cutesy stuff on wall just a sign that said “No Splitting Wood On The Hearth”. We brought enough food to feed an army. The firewood was plentiful. The rent was cheap. The cell phones wouldn’t work. The woods was sensational.
They had the same snowstorm as we did on Friday but the roads were pretty clear by the time we got going. We skied around a flow on Saturday and ate oranges deep in the woods. More snow on Saturday night freshened up the trails for Sunday and we headed out in the opposite direction.
On the way back we stopped for fuel and I gave Jeff a crisp hundred dollar bill to give to the cashier while I pumped the gas. I pumped twenty nine dollars worth of gas and went in to go to the bathroom. Jeff naturally assumed I was going for my change bit I had one thing on my mind. I found the gas station on a Google map and called the place. The drawer was over seventy dollars but Cassandra told me they couldn’t mail it it. They will hold it for me and I will have drive back to pick it. I asked to speak to her manager and she said Leslie will call me in the morning.
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I rode out to the Apple Store with my father and the place was packed, I mean really packed, because school kids were off for the week. My father is working on a presentation in Keynote that he plans to project from his iPad to group at the Buckland House in Brighton and he had all sorts of questions for the geniuses. Matt and Kim were playing on the sound system. I checked out the new MacBooks and grabbed a cup of espresso from Starbucks. On the way out of the mall we walked through FYE in the last days of their going out of business sale. All these kids were picking through crap marked 90% off while my father and I were standing in the jazz section talking a Buddy Rich record he heard at a friend’s house when they were kids.
Duane Sherwood called to discuss building a Facebook business page. They can look a little different than your neice’s page but not much. He sent me a few links to developers tips. I joined Facebook in order to help a business client use it and I let my own page just sit there occasionally checking in or cross posting a blog entry. Every few months I cleaned out the photos that populated my profile page, photos that someone else had posted with me tagged in them. If you don’t construct your own page Facebook pretty much constructs one for you with the photos your friends put up. I decided to do something about this and posted a couple folders of photos from my iPhoto library. I am only slowly getting with the program so I am probably the last person to ask for advice about using your fb page to get new business.
I spent a few hours yesterday cleaning up my YouTube channel. Actually spent most of the time watching my favorites like The Squires of the Subterrain “Sweet”, Rich Stim’s “Major Pipe” and Ornette Colman’s “Made In America.”
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Sculptors and artists in general have their hands full competing with nature.
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My parents took us down to Nick’s for dinner last night and the conversation eventually turned to the old days. My father, who grew up on Burlington Avenue over on the west side said there were two bakeries near his house on Brooks Avenue and another around the corner on Thurston. My mom talked about the ones near her place on Rosewood Terrace and lamented how now all we have is Wegmans where everything tastes the same. I was thinking about the Vergennes Laundry, a bakery in Vermont with an artfully presented small selection of incredible breads and pastries, so good it is almost worth driving to for a loaf.
This article in this morning’s paper has researchers concluding “The more ‘friends’ people have on Facebook the more likely they are to be stressed out and anxious”, according to a new study and “the negative effects of using the site outweighed the benefits it offers in terms of staying in touch with friends and family.” I like how they put ‘friends’ in small quotes. I have no idea who most of my ‘friends’ are and if I used Facebook as more than just a lark I would probably get stressed out too.
The other tech story I found interesting was about how blogs are getting less popular as everyone moves to fb.
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We approached Pete and Shelley’s mountain kingdom by sea on the Port Henry ferry that is temporarily replacing the Crown Point bridge which is currently being rebuilt. Lake Champlain separates the two states but there is a whole lot more at play. We spent some time looking at the New York mountains from the Vermont side and then the snow capped Vermont peaks from the New York side and we couldn’t quite put our finger on the difference in the two states. It is mostly perception but that is a lot.
There was so much snow up there we kept skiing into three feet of powder and getting so bogged down that we were tempted to take our skis off but we knew full well that would be the last anyone would see of us. We sat around the stove enough to learn what a condition called “Granny’s Tartan” is all about.
We came home without driving on the Northway or the New York State Thruway proving the adage that it is not the destination but the journey. We whizzed by a sign that read “Highway Hair Cuts”, hand painted in all caps. I pictured a brush cut with a flat top.
Rick Simpson played Pete LaBonne‘s “We Live Like Kings” on his radio show last week. I plan to request it this week.
Gary and Kathy come see Margaret Explosion quite a bit and they were telling us how much they like Vergennes. Gary called it “the smallest city in the US.” But the sign on the way into town read, “The Smallest City in Vermont.” All we knew about Vergennes was that Ted and Janet Williams used live in a museum there. They were the caretakers and Ted was the editor of the newspaper there, the oldest in the US until it folded. We asked around but couldn’t find the museum. We spotted a few posters for Chad and Jeremy who were playing that night at the Vergennes Opera House (which also doubles as the Vergennes Town Hall).
We had a delicious dinner at the Black Sheep Bistro. We couldn’t get in until eight at night because the place was booked. People drive down from Burlington to eat here and they are celebrating their tenth year so you know they are doing things right. The salads are incredibly crisp and distinctive. The walls are covered salon style with old drawings and prints. We sat near a Daumier. I had the vegetarian lasagna which had no pasta but held together like Mama Tacones.
The next morning we stopped in the Vergenes Laundry, a stylish bakery with white walls, steamy windows, rocket fuel espresso, wifi and some delicious bread. We drove up to Burlington and walked up and down the pedestrian friendly Church Street. Pretty idyllic up there overlooking Lake Champlain. They pipe soft classical music onto the street but this morning it was interrupted by some students cranking The Mothers’ “Trouble Coming Every Day.” It occurred to us that we had forgotten to feed the meter so we ran back to the car and got out of town.
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Ten days left to get down to LDR and put your guess in for the number of beans in this jar.
It is not every day in this viral world that you get two drum videos being called to your attention. John Gilmore sent us the top ten drummers of all time according to Rolling Stone and then Brian Peterson sent us this one of a young kid kickin’ it to a Joan Jett anthem.
I’ve been going to the same dentist for many and I think he’s great. His son thinks he’s pretty cool too because he named his restaurant after his father. We had dinner there last night and I’m reporting in that Rocco’s has the best grilled octopus salad in the world or at least in Rochester where it is almost impossible to count the number of Italian restaurants.
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We took any extra long ski through the fresh snow and up to the lake. It was cold, like ten degrees or something, so we went Muslim style in our Refrigerator hats. We barely got back in time to make it to painting class and we hadn’t eaten so we stopped at Palermo’s deli on Culver. They have $6 meals and we split one with roasted potatoes and a carrot/raison dish, an unbelievable deal. We sat the great big butcher block table and split a chocolate eclair for dessert.
After class we headed over to Abilene to drop off a few posters for the September 18th Margaret Explosion gig. We had a drink to celebrate Peggi’s birthday and chatted with Richie the bartender. For some reason he knows a lot of the same people we do but we hadn’t really connected until recently. Rochester works that way. He told us about the time he emptied the trash out and locked himself out of the bar. I think we had already heard that story but this one was better. He got someone from the gay bathhouse next door to help him out and by chance there was a guy sitting at the bar with us last night who was from out of town but staying in one of the seventy some rooms they have at the bath house with holes in the wall and all. He went out back to smoke between each drink and then started hitting on the two girls at the end of the bar. He told them where he staying and bought them each a drink. We were only good for one drink but could have talked to Richie a lot longer. We were just getting started.
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You can never tell what the cross skiing will be like until you get out there. The other day it was plenty cold and we had a few inches of new snow but the sun was shining and the snow was sticky. It was above freezing today, in fact it started raining while we were out there, but we moved along just fine. This has been the best winter we can remember for skiing.
Southtown Beverages is one cool spot. They had both of doors open today and a pretty steady flow of drive through traffic. Of course it is the day after the Super Bowl. We watched the big game over at my parents on big tv. My mom said the guy with the big black curly hair reminded her of Brad Fox. Brad lived at our house for a while a long time ago. Peggi and I were the only ones routing for Pittsburgh but neither of us really gave a hoot in fact Peggi spent most of the game loading up their Netflix queue on my father’s iPad.
We stopped in Old Navy and Peggi bought some jeans. It’s her birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday Peggi! We stopped t pick up Chinese on the way home and I ordered Jalapeno Tofu and we each ordered fresh Spring Rolls. The total was was $21 and it seemed kinda cheap but when we got home we found out there was no Jalapeno Tufu in the bag. Something was lost in translation.
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“Nowadays if you’re a crook you can write books, go on TV, give interviews—you’re a big celebrity and nobody even looks down on you.”
from the The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
I have sort of a false memory of seeing Andy Warhol’s “Thirteen Most Wanted” at the New York State of the 1964 World’s Fair. I was there with my father and brother. We drove down and slept in the car in a parking lot in Queens. My father is big on architecture and I know we went in the Philip Johnson designed New York State Pavilion but Warhol had probably already painted over the mug shots.
I have my own mug shot piece, a watercolor, in the new show at the Lucy Burne Gallery at the Creative Workshop.
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On skis you can cover a lot more ground with the same amount of effort on foot. We wind up at the lake on most days. Sometimes you can’t find the horizon in the beautiful grey mist. Lately we stop and study the icebergs that form on the sand bars and eventually float free. This view, like the pages on the daily dog calendar that our neighbors have, is completely different every day.
Luka Romel commented on the tree shirt I talked about here. She designed the shirt for Matt & Kim and she ordered me to buy it. All she had to do was ask. I went to M&Ks merch store but that T was sold out. Speaking of fulfillment, we’re handling that department for PeteLaBonne.com and today we shipped our first $100 order for the complete “Gigunda” collection!
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Can’t remember how I first came across Milton Rogovin’s Buffalo photos. They really hit home with me and I painted a picture of Rogovin and his wife, Anne, in 2003. The Pyramid Art Gallery hosted a traveling show of his work around that time and I met him there and gave him a print of my painting. His wife had just died at that point and now Milton is dead at 101. There’s a nice slideshow of his photos on the Times’ site.
We took Sam Jones out to the Apple Store on Saturday before Steve Jobs announced his decision to step down for a bit. Sam was wearing his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt and his Buffalo Bills jacket. His iPad kept trying to restart while he was using it. The store was mobbed and we waited in line to make an appointment with a genius. Sam gave the woman in a blue shirt his email address and about five minutes later a friendly guy in a blue shirt came over to help us. He scrolled through Sam’s ten pages of game app icons and said, “This looks like it’s been dropped.” Sam said, “Oh yeah. I’ve dropped it a bunch of times.” I cringed but the Apple guy smiled and said. “Breakage isn’t covered in your warranty but I’ll see what I can do.” Sam walked out with a new iPad.
I’m definitely a long time Apple fanboy. When my father bought his Mac II in the late eighties we used to go over there to set type and we eventually bought our own Mac II. We’ve probably had one of almost every model they’ve made since. Well I guess we never had a “toilet seat” and we don’t have an Airbook and we don’t have an iPhone but I wouldn’t leave home without my iTouch. Just by looking at Steve Jobs I would say he has a lot to do with their elegantly designed products. I don’t get that confident feeling by looking at the other execs. I hope he gets well soon.
Nod doesn’t play out that often and I was bummed that we missed them on Saturday at Abilene.
I love the work of Robert Smithson. And he has so much beyond Spiral Jetty. I’m always on the lookout for earth art and I think I have come across a fair amount in the woods. I was marveling at this dead tree today while Peggi was taking a pee. It seemed to have grown in a spiral pattern and then shed all it’s bark.
We ski for about a mile before breaking out of the woods and onto the golf course. It is often a surreal experience but today we were in earth art territory. We watched this guy, undoubtably the same guy who taped the small flag to the tree that I talked about yesterday, walking in right angles to spell “USA” in the snow in giant letters. You get a good view of his work when you’re on top of the hill to the right so we skied up there.
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My newest camera weighs a ton. David Pogue described this model as feeling like “a brick in your pocket.” I carry at least three pens, a Swiss Army knife, a small flashlight and a drum key attached on my key chain and a pocket full of change on the other side so I’m sort of balanced. In the rear my wallet is bloated with notes and membership and credit cards and an iPod on the other side. I don’t have room for a phone if I had one.
I did lighten my load a bit by weeding out my keys. I couldn’t find any match for half of them. I had keys to Sparky’s shed and I gave them back to him. I’m quite sure one of these keys goes to our old house. I ran into Elizabeth a while back and she told me she reads this blog so Elizabeth, if you need an extra key I might have one. I’m putting them all in a jar out in the garage for future archeologists to sort out.
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I love the chocolate color of this sign and the white type against the snow. The confident, rough and tumble lettering sits in the space perfectly. The way they tucked the two “t”s together in the word bottle and the mixed usage of upper and lower case is masterful. More like this on on Funky Signs.
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Golf courses are prettier in the winter. This big old willow tree straddles the property line of Durand Eastman Park and a private home. Willow trees are soft wood and they’re messy but I love them. The guy who lives in this house has three “No Trespassing signs stuck up there to keep golfers off his lawn. I stepped on his lawn last summer to retrieve a couple of balls that were sitting out there and he came out on his porch and yelled, “Get off the lawn.” It was like something out of a movie. If I see him again I’m prepared to yell, “You’re lawns is an eyesore.”
Speaking of golf. My friend Angel posted a print I did a long time ago in a printmaking class. And she has a cool photo up there of the Chinaboise. Peggi and I were in this band for a few months before we moved here and long before they recorded this beautiful song.
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Nobody stacks wood like Pete and Shelley but we try. Firewood needs to sit and we’ll have enough for a couple of years but we’re about due for something to drop out of the sky. As long as it doesn’t drop on our house. We covered this new stack with the original “Wood Hood.”
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This tree on Culver Road in front of the Church of the Transfiguration is older than the United States. It has it’s own plaque. And it reminds me that a lot of what I like about this place was here before the Revolutionary War.
We had dinner across the street last night and I started a dissing Christmas. We’ve only been celebrating this holiday for a hundred years or so. Why can’t we stop? Christ wasn’t born on Christmas. (Rick looked it up. He was born in September or July according to two different sources.) Jesus was Jew. He wasn’t a Christian! The Catholics gloomed on to the Solstice and picked the date for Christ’s birth just like they lifted lifted all their mysteries and miracles from pagan myths. Etc. I was just trying to liven up the conversation. I do like the holiday lights.
I only have one tom in my set and I haven’t liked the way this floor tom has sounded for a long time. I tuned it higher the other night and it sounded better but too loud. This afternoon I took the dampening ring that has been on my snare and tossed it on the tom. It sounds just amazing, almost melodic. And the snare sounds better without the ring. The tom is about to become a big part of my sound.
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We haven’t seen the sun in days, maybe weeks. When it comes out, it’s dramatic. You appreciate things like that if you live around here. The days are noticeably longer. Twenty eleven is beckoning. Margaret Explosion plays our last gig at the Little Theater until March tonight. We plan to cover the Stooges’ 1969.
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