Gary Pudup, a former sheriff and head of the local ACLU chapter, is very active in New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. When he ran for office we tried to support him by posting a NYAGV sign on the road behind our house. Someone stole it in the first week. Gary lost his race but we are still friends. He and his wife come to every Margaret Explosion performance.
Last night the Little Theater screened “No Control,” a documentary about gun violence, and Gary brought in the head of the statewide group and a photo journalist for a discussion. Joe Quint’s photos were really powerful. “No Control,” the movie, was a little messy. They contrasted an anti-gun artist with a pro-gun, freedom loving, Cody Wilson, who was busted for making the downloadable plans for a 3D printer gun, “The Liberator.” I didn’t care for the artwork and was kind of drawn into Cody’s open source argument.
My father gave me a Kodak Instamatic in 1969. It was my first camera. Left to right, top to bottom, my mother, my brothers John and Fran, my friend Brad Fox, Joey Occhipinti with the soccer ball, another Occhipinti with the basketball, my friend Dave Mahoney, and three neighborhood kids with toy guns. Tim Meisenzahl, at the bottom right, was dad’s financial advisor. I think my dad actually started with Tim’s dad. They lived across the street from us when I took this photo. I have to bring my dad’s death certificate out to Tim tomorrow and settle an account he had with Wells Fargo.
“Hitchcock/Truffaut” played to a packed House at the Dryden Theater last weekend. The 2015 movie based on the the 1962 week-long interview François Truffaut conducted with Hitchcock. That interview, the greatest cinema lesson of all time, became a book, a “bible” to filmmakers. The movie is footage from the interview. footage from Hitchcock movies along with commentary from Martin Scorsese, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Paul Schrader and, of course, Peter Bogdanovich. The Hitchcock quotes are mint. “Logic is dull.”
When we were coming down to Manhattan with the band in the early eighties the gallery scene was clustered in the loft spaces of SoHo. Clothing designers moved in, the gritty old factory spaces went upscale and the galleries moved out. Today there are a hundred or so galleries in a five block area of Chelsea and although the art market is richer than ever or maybe because the art market is richer than ever the real estate values in that part of town are going though the roof. So galleries are are closing shop or moving out.
The big galleries that remain are becoming small museums with suited guards and blue chip artists. Just today we saw shows by the op art queen, Bridget Riley, the minimalist champion, Donald Judd, giant photo emulsion paintings from the nineties by Robert Rauschenberg, career spanning work from Brice Marden in three different Matthew Marks galleries, twenty five large Jeff Koons’ copies of El Grecos, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Manet and Picasso, each with three dimensional, blue reflective globes mounted directly in front of the paintings, a move that struck me as John Baldesarri without the humor.
Claes Oldenburg is still doing three dimensional, oversize, soft looking everyday objects and easily filled gallery with new work. We sat in Mary Hielman’s brightly colored chairs in the center of a gallery and marveled at her new shaped canvas paintings. I get these clunky looking chairs now. They are a port to an immensely more playful world. Beautiful Robert Motherwell collages from the seventies filled a gallery on 24th Street. Fantastic to see how he picked up motifs in scraps of paper, a discarded cigarette package, and created a dialog with it. We stumbled on a group of graphic and somewhat rude Carrol Dunham paintings. He’s always popping up on my Tumblr blog. Louise Fishman was at her own show, holding court in front of a wall of her luscious water colors. And of course admission to all these shows was free.
I’ve saved the best for last. Georgio Morandi is one of my favorite artists. He lived his whole live in the house he grew up in painting fairly small still lifes of bottles and vases that he often painted before arranging, theatrically staging actually, on a tabletop. David Zwirner gallery has mounted a knock-out show of his work. Please click the detail photo above to see the whole painting. It is near criminal to crop a Morandi as I have.
Although he died in the mid sixties his work is painterly like that of a master yet dramatically minimal at the same time. The mundane taken to extremes. He is quoted as saying, “Nothing is more abstract than reality.” He does so much with so little. Looking at his paintings is somehow a quieting and exhilarating experience at the same time.
Peggi spotted a familiar looking tall man with a white beard talking to the people behind the desk in the gallery. It was the LA art guru himself, John Baldessari!
Inside old barn old barn on Westfall Road in Rochester, New York
There are very few remnants of farm life left in Brighton, a mature, inner-ring suburb of Rochester. The barns along Westfall Road, where there are now more doctors per square inch than Strong hospital, are some of the last remaining. My father, an active member of Historic Brighton, would like to see the town save them.
I met my dad the other day inside one of these barns, now a “ruin porn” site. He was measuring the distance between the poles so that he could do an architecturally true, three dimensional drawing of the barn. He uses the free SketchUp program that was developed by Google. I’m guessing he’ll submit the drawings to the town in hopes that they will be able to envision a repurposing. A long shot.
“Black Police Lives Matter” sign near he corner of Titus Avenue and Culver Road in Rochester, New York
We are all oblivious to things going on around us but I felt felt especially so when our new neighbor told me he was seriously considering not buying their house because the police in this part of town had a reputation for racism. It was shortly after they moved in when this story made the news.
So with some new found awareness this little sign near the corner of Titus Avenue and Culver Road caught my eye. Almost too small to be seen as you drive by it easily catches the eye of bike riders. I hope it has nothing to do with the nearby Art Deco house with the nautical theme but I suspect it is the work of a nearby neighbor. Irondequoit is the wrong town to be trying to take this meager campaign away from those whose lives are affected.
The sign, as seen above has had a few incarnations in the last few weeks. It started as “Police Lives Matter” in a lighter font. Someone scratched out “Police” and added “Black.” The originator came back with a bolder “Police Lives Matter” and pasted right over the amended sign and then shrink wrapped the whole sign in plastic.
Yesterday afternoon I wrote the word “Black” with a Sharpie, just above “Police Lives Matter” creating this confounding black police message. You see, I not only manage the Funky Signs website I am also a customer. Peggi and I rode by today and the sign was gone.
Apparently people feel left out by Black Lives Matter slogan because I keep hearing people say, “all lives matter.” Well, that wouldn’t be much of a campaign and it completely sidesteps the issue.
The bar at Cub Room on South Clinton Avenue, Rochester, New York
I was especially tired in Saturday morning’s yoga class. My ears were still buzzing from Big Ditch’s show the night before and the Three Heads‘ “The Kind” was still swimming around. It was our first class inside the Rochester Yacht Club facilities. The weather, now pretty much around the corner, has put an end to the outdoor adventure in the Port of Rochester. If I had to join a social club it would be this one. I don’t think you need a boat or anything.
Near the end of class, when we had been on our backs with a rolled up towel in lumbar curve for about a half hour, Jeffrey had us pretending to lift our arms. In doing so you become acutely aware of the muscles involved with such a simple act, muscles all over your body working together. Isometrics, I guess, but it stuck me as imaginary yoga. I asked Jeffrey if he could do a whole class of imaginary yoga and he laughed. That could but him out of a job.
The Cub Room on South Clinton is surely modeled on the Mad Men craze for cocktails and meat. Rat Pack photos line the walls above the booths and there is an air of glamour days gone by in the unofficial dress code. It is the city’s version of the Yacht Club. We ordered the only vegetarian dish on the menu, Crispy Chickpea Cake with roasted vegetables surrounded by a Romescu sauce. And we split an order of Grilled Octopus with Beluga lentils, grilled chicory, smoked paprika and Sherry vinegar. The octopus, like the cocktail club culture, was a bit overdone.
Sheryl Crowe’s shaky anthem was a clunker but the Democratic debate proved to be as entertaining as the Republican two. I really didn’t think they had it in them. Bernie lit the fire and Hilary rolled with the punches. The other three one per-centers just set the two leading candidates up. I don’t see how Biden fits in here.
We missed “2-Ton-Tony.” He was at our door and we were out so he left a note on his campaign flyer. I can sort of imagine what he looks like.
While walking with my mom in the halls of their apartment building I spotted a sign “Welcome to new residents, Giuseppe and Concetta Profetta” I am looking forward to meeting them.
I ran this idea by Gary Pudup at last week’s Margaret Explosion gig and it really didn’t click. He’s a former Monroe County Sheriff and then was the head of the local ACLU. On top of that experience he is a strong gun opponent. My idea was a bumper sticker, condensed block letters, black on white, that read “MORE GUNS.” Knowing where I’m coming from he just looked at me for bit and then said, “People would take that seriously.”
Sam lives in a home with four other young adults. The five are classified as autistic but, as with everything, the boundaries are fuzzy. We drove down to Elmira to visit him on Saturday. At first it was hard to tell the aides from the clients. That distinction becomes clear fairly quickly. The clients are more interesting. Sam is lucky. The proportion of aides to clients is weighted heavily in his favor and the aides genuinely like Sam. How could they not? He is so sweet.
Sam lived with his parents, friends of ours, for more than thirty years and now this is his home. He is happy here. He is healthier, much thinner and calmer. Sam took us up to see his room, his computer, game console and tv with the connection ports in the front where he likes them. Sam has always been a computer buff and he calls us every time Apple has an update to make sure we know about it.
An aide gave Sam his medication and we took off. He had an agenda. First stop was Five Guys, a hamburger joint. They pride themselves on their fries. They keep the skin on and use only peanut oil. The three of us ordered grilled cheese and fries and we each had a pop. Next stop was Target where Sam bought some new headphones, a gallon of grape juice with no sugar added and a big box of Scooby Doo graham crackers. We spent a good part of the afternoon in the store and had a ball. In fact I bought a ball, one of those size 5 soccer balls.
Memo to self: Elmira, Horseheads, Big Flats, the southern part of New York is gorgeous this time of year. Wear your camouflage and you’ll fit right in.
Sailboats on river from Rochester Yacht Club yoga class
I talked before about Jeffery’s Saturday morning yoga class at the Rochester Yacht Club so I won’t recap how beautiful the setting is. I will point out how delightfully distracting the activity on the river is. The yacht club is built out on the river. It almost feels like you are on an island and boats sail past on all sides. The view is unobstructed even when you are on your back because the railing is clear plexiglass. (You can see a bit of it in the blow-up of the photo above.) Yesterday Jeffery had us put out our legs up the wall, the clear plexiglass guardrails, and we did a series of inversions.
Jeffery improvises the practice and his classes have an effortless flow from one position to the next. Consequently the hour and a half flies by. He was telling us about someone who was helped by a particular class. The person asked Jeffery if he could recap what the exercises were and Jeffery said he could not remember. He said if he planned out a class he would be bored out of his mind. When we finished the inversions he said. “This is the best wall ever.” I liked that.
You don’t have to be a member of the club to participate in the class but many of the people are. When class was over a man who is a member, a trustworthy sort, said there was so much going on this weekend. He rattled off a few things and then mentioned the Landmark Society’s tour. My father had given us his tickets to this event and we had forgotten all about it so we thanked the gentleman for reminding us. We stopped back at the house, changed clothes and headed downtown. We found a spot on Washington Square with no problem and walked over to Claude Bragdon’s Universalist Church. There was hardly anyone around and the doors were locked. The tour is next week.
Jared helps pull the old horseshoe stakes in the front yard
The way Rick, my neighbor and horseshoe opponent, talks, the short stakes in our pits are a disadvantage to him alone. When one of his shoes slides off and he yells I tell him, “they are just as short for me.” Well I found some longer stakes at a garage sale and got my neighbor, Jared, to help us pull the old stakes out with his tractor. We drove the new ones in with a sledge hammer. The official rules have the stakes at fifteen inches tall with a fifteen degree slant toward the opposite stake. Once the new stakes were in place we played our earliest match. Best of three, as usual. Rick won.
Leo on bike in 1937 or 1938. This bike was handed down to me in the late fifties.
This is not the best picture of my father. Even he went through an awkward stage. My cousin has custody of my aunt’s (her mother’s) scrapbooks and she let my father borrow them and then he let me borrow them. This picture caught my attention. This was my first bike. My father gave me his old bike when I became old enough to ride.
We lived in the city over by School 28 on Humboldt Street and by the time my parents gave me the bike, at an age where they felt I would ride responsibly, somewhere near the awkward age of my father, I had already learned to ride by borrowing friends’ bikes. So I had to fake it when they presented the bike. I took a lot of ribbing because of this bike. Nothing that I couldn’t handle, just good natured teasing because the kickstand was something no one had seen before. The triangular stand swung down from the back spoke and held the back tire off the ground by a few inches. It was actually a pretty cool design.
At some point I got to pick out a new bike from a store on Clinton Avenue that is long gone. Seems like it had a German name. This bike was so cool. I would love to have something like it now. Medium tire width, two gears with back pedal brakes. Not a gear shift or anything. You back pedaled slightly, not enough to put the brakes on and you found the other gear.
My camera is still in the shop so I’ve been taking my iPad mini with me on walks. I tried to photograph some butterflies in bright sunlight, so bright I couldn’t see the the iPad display. Don’t know how I managed to get the shot above.
Our niece recommended Old Navy to Peggi as a good place to shop for jeans. We had a banking problem to deal with, a few checks for services written out to a company that we no longer manage, so we signed in on the big touch screen at Eastman Savings & Loan and met with Ken. He advised us to tell the clients, who have so gracefully paid their bills on time, to rewrite the checks. So off we went to the closest Old Navy.
We studied their “hi, denim” chart and determined they offered “Original,” “Curvy,” “Rockstar” and “Boyfriend” jeans in “Skinny,” “Straight” and “Boot-Cut.” And to complicate that they are offered in low, mid and high rise. found a place to sit down and I overheard Peggi telling the young clerk, “These look like I’ve been working in the dust. I’d rather have real dust on my jeans.”
I always have a good time listening to the music in stores like this. There are some styles that never go away and consequently most things sound like stuff that has gone before. Here it is all youthful and upbeat. Can you imagine shopping to Americana? T-Rex’s “Jeepster,” was the only song I recognized, sounded up to the minute to me.
Both Paul Gauguin and sixty years later, Marlon Brando, found their Arcadia in Tahiti. Brando was drawn by the innocence he found in the pages of National Geographic, Gauguin by early 1800’s ethnographer’s accounts. In 1891, Gauguin announced he was travelling to Tahiti to paint illustrations for the most popular novel of the day, “The Marriage of Loti” saying the primitive, erotic living conditions on Tahiti would revive his muse. Of course, both men were escaping troubled domestic situations.
“Listen To Me Marlon” is a must see film for anyone who cares about acting. The good, the bad and the ugly are all here in Brando’s own words. And each of these ingredients is necessasary to form an actor, an artist of Brando’s caliber. He talks about going within, alone, in order to perform, to avoid the obvious and the lie in order to convince. The filmmakers had access to 200 hours of audio, self-hypnotism tapes included, and of course all those fabulous scenes from his movies. Oh yeah, and some goofy, early 3D computer modeling of Brando’s head, a perfect vehicle for reminding you that it is all a construct.
Cloud over Saturday morning yoga class at Rochester Yacht Club
This is my view from my yoga mat at the Rochester Yacht Club on Saturday mornings. I leave all my pocket stuff at home so it doesn’t come tumbling out of my shorts but I always bring my camera. That and enough quiet money to get an iced latte after class. We took the lattes with us and walked out to the end of the pier. Funny, I just searched google for a photo of “Charlotte pier” and found my own photo from a few years ago.
At seventy degrees the water in our street pool was warmer than the air today. I had to get in there. While I was jumping up and down in the deep end, a feat made more difficult by my parachute-like suit, I remembered that Geri had invited us to an open house for Virgin Wood Type. So we headed over there and found Geri working away in the shop. The Open House was yesterday.
We needed to do some banking yesterday but it was too hot to think about riding uphill to the plaza so we rolled downhill to the lake and cruised along Lakeshore. The non-working class was out and the beach scene was happening. My camera is in the shop so I committed the Arcadia snapshots to memory. In Greek mythology “Arcadia” is the home of Pan. In poetic fantasy it represents a pastoral paradise. I spent quite few nights on the porch this summer with “Visions of Arcadia.”
At the other end the beach we turned into the road that leads to Johnson’s Pond, one of my father’s haunts. The town was celebrating October Fest in September in giant big tent and an um-pah band was playing. Grown men were walking around in lederhose and couples were sitting at picnic tables with pictures of beer. There was quite a bit of dancing going on for the afternoon. We had smoked sausage, sauerkraut and German potato salad with a Genesee Scotch Ale. We got back on our bikes and spotted my father at the pond sneaking up on a couple of wood ducks.
Chuck Prophet is doing a house concert across the street at 8 o’clock tonight. It’s after six and no sign of him over there. We heard him open for Sharon Jones a few years back. Both were kinda bombastic that night. Of Chuck UNCUT says, “Sounds for all the world like Bruce Springsteen doing ‘Diamond Dogs.'”
Was this really the opening night of Fringe Fest? We were downtown for an opening at the gallery in the main library. My basketball players were on display. Janet Williams, who works there and was on duty, stopped down to take a look. She is one of my favorite painters so I hung on her every word. She told me, “I feel like I know these people.”
We parked stategicly so we could check out the festival after the art. There was a play or something going on in the Xerox auditorium. It was too nice a nice for that. We walked over to Manhattan Square Park and watched some young kids climb the dangerously steep concrete steps. They were setting up lights on the giant erector set. Across the street the group that dances down the side of the twenty story bank building was rehearsing for tomorrow night’s performance. A band was playing inside a small red bus on Gibbs Street. A crowd was gathered around a clear plastic tent in the parking lot. People inside were in a hot tub and more people were gathered around the tub and a band was playing in there as well. I know I read about this one but I can’t remember if the performers were in the tub or outside of the tub. We talked to Marc Hamilton, Jeff Spingut and Peter Monacelli and were home in time to watch “Gimme Shelter” before bed.
MP3 files from “Margaret Explosion 200,” a dvd with two hundred Margaret Explosion songs. 2015
Aren’t the titles themselves enough lyrics for a song? And these titles are afterthoughts at that. We are an instrumental band. We leave as much to the imagination as we can get away with. Next Wednesday during the Fringe Fest we will be giving away DVDs with 200 Margaret Explosion songs on them. They are all available for free on our website but that would involve too much clicking. All but two of the songs (“Fever” and “God Rest,” which were written by someone else) were created live, mostly at the Little Theater but also at the George Eastman House, Bug Jar, outdoors at the Village Gate and at a private party on Canandaigua Lake. Only a handful of these songs have we ever performed again. It is alway better the first time. Here are some of the 200 “first times.”
Here is song number 200, Stop Time, recorded last week at the Little Theater Café.Leave a comment
Sycamore tree at the Eastman House in Rochester, New York
Before the Sycamore tree drops its leaves it sheds its bark. Seneca Street is lined with these trees and a homeowner was raking up the bark as we rode by.
Getting exercise while doing errands feels especially satisfactory. My cymbals have cut a hole through the bottom of my cymbal bag so it was time for a new case. We rode over to the House of Guitars and on the way we stopped at the new library and found a few dvds to take home. Turns out we had already seen Neil Young’s “Journeys,” the Jonathan Demme movie of his 2010 solo show in Toronto, but it was even better the second time. Young puts it all on the line, insuring great performances of old song while risking it all by performing brand new ones. I love the incredible close-ups, the mundane backstage footage and the banter with his brother in their home town. Tonight we watch “Gimme Shelter.”
Bruce cut me a deal on an Ultimate Support bag. It comes with straps so you can wear it on your back and I did that on the way home. Of course we had stop and pick up some sweet corn at Vercruysse’s, just down the road on Titus. They have the best corn we have ever had. No salt, no butter, just the ears!
Station 7 from “Passion Play” by Paul Dodd, 24″ x 30″ inkjet print 1998
The Spiritus Christi community rose from temporal Corpus Christi (body of Christ) church, the place I was baptized in. My parents had a second floor apartment around the corner on Alexander Street, a place so small, I have heard, that my crib was out in the hall. In Jim Callan’s 2001 book, “Studentbakker Corporation” Jim tells the now familiar story of his early priesthood.
He was assigned to Saint Ambrose’ parish. They had just spent a fortune on new facilities and Jim had taken a vow of poverty. He refused the opulence and for his obstinance he was reassigned to Corpus Christi, a parish long past its glory days with a dwindling congregation. With ideals borrowed from Jesus he turned the place around with little regard to church orthodoxy. He shared communion with non Catholics, he welcomed gays and he allowed women to take their rightful place at the alter. He filled the pews and after twenty two years the church hierarchy, god’s rottweiler himself, Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI gave him the boot. They renamed their community, Spiritus Christi, and under the direction of Mary Braverman made it the largest breakaway Catholic group in the country.
Matthew Spaull, an RIT graduate, made a short film of the story and screened it for a sold old crowd tonight at the Little Theater. The director spoke after the film and said “I made this film, not for the people in this theater, I made it for Pope Francis.” He tried to speak to the Catholic Church for six months but they would not talk to him on the record.
Kueka Lake is one of the coolest Finger Lakes because it breaks with the motif and looks more like a “y.” The prime lakeside real estate, naturally, is on the peninsula that runs down the middle. We never made it out there. Instead we drove around the entire mass taking East Lake Road from Hammondsport up to Penn Yan. Whenever possible we hugged the shore on the old lake road. We stopped about halfway up at the Switzerland Inn (above). We sat out on the deck and the waitress gave a menu. We couldn’t find anything we wanted to eat on the menu and we weren’t really hungry so after the third time she asked if she could get us something we ordered a beer.
We continued on, writing down phone numbers for rental properties when the cottage looked particularly funky. Up in Penn Yan we rented a plastic kayak, something made by Hobie and called the “Mirage Oasis,” a whole new category of watercraft. It took us a bit to get the hang of it but pretty soon were picking targets on the shore and aiming the boat directly at them. We swam near the water treatment plant.
Back on the road we pointed the car toward Clifton Springs, another well preserved town that time didn’t so much forget but managed to keep the mucky-muck out. We walked the covered sidewalks and visited the “Wildroot Show” at Main Street Arts. We were the first customers at the Warfield restaurant, across the street, and we sat on the patio in the garden. We hardly left home and it was all like dream.
