Lopsided Observations – Page 35

February 15, 2010August 23, 2019

Roots Are Showing

Shelley skating on marsh in the Adirondacks

We found Shelley wearing her Refrigerator Hat while skating on the marsh when we arrived at their home in the Adirondacks. She looked every bit as good as the Olympian figure skaters we watched tonight on TV. I don’t think Channel 10 is doing itself any favors running their weatherman commercials with the global warming denier/meteorologist, Kevin Williams while it rains in Vancouver. And Bob Costa’s wig looks pretty bad in hi def. Speedskater Apolo Ohno looked damned good though. The Short-track has been our favorite event so far.

We tried skiing like the mogul skiers today, holding our knees together as we zipped through the woods. We need some more snow. The roots are starting show through the snow.

I finally gave in and ordered the Luc Tuyman book from his show at SFMOMA. I’ve been obsessing over it for weeks now. Amazon had it for thirty seven bucks. I’m wondering how the pages of art books are going to look on the iPad. This may be the last art book I buy.

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February 11, 2010August 23, 2019

Freeze Or Die

I took this shot from the driver’s seat of our car. I stopped right in the middle of the road to grab it. We were somewhere between Keene and Keene Valley, just south of Lake Placid in the mountains and I glanced up at the frozen waterfall on the mountain to our left and spotted this moving figure!

I’m guessing this guy started at the bottom and was trying to get to the top without dying. In the full photo I can see another figure at the bottom and there are some ropes visible. If that was me up there I would be frozen in sheer terror.

Speaking of extreme activities – there is a new wireless network in our neighborhood. It shows up as “Corpus Silicosum “and I’m guessing it belongs to the skateboarder down the hill. I goggled it but it is that rare combination of words, unique and unindexed, left completely to the imagination.

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February 10, 2010August 23, 2019

Don’t Fear The Reaper

Dog sled on Mirror Lake in Lake Placid New York

We celebrated Peggi’s birthday with Pete and Shelley in the mountains and for some reason we got fixed on the BOC song. I really never paid much attention to the lyrics. I never do. I guess I look for other stuff in a song. Shelley pointed out how powerful this line is. “Seasons don’t fear the reaper. Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain..we can be like they are. We can! “None of us could come up with the rest of the lyrics but that didn’t stop Pete from banging out a version on acoustic guitar. We had such a good time we forgot our pillows.

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February 7, 2010August 23, 2019

Patriotic Drinking

We knew we were going to run into the man child Mayor of Durand today. And sure enough, we heard him and his buddy coming down the hill before we saw them. We chatted, lamenting that the fact that the big storm was going to miss us. Peggi thinks these guys are Viet Nam vets but I think they’re too young. Maybe just vets. They have little flags on their sleds like there is something patriotic about drinking beer in the park and sledding.

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February 6, 2010January 7, 2019

Fine Line Between Bad And Good

Julianna Furlong Williams painting at Rochester Contemporary

I think most painters would agree that there is a fine line between bad and good. You can be hating what you’re looking at and then make just the right move, one adjustment even, and the whole thing looks good. Not that this has anything to do with Juliana Furlong Williams‘ painting above. This is nothing but good. It was so nice to walk into RoCo last night see all those red dots. Juliana sold eight pieces at around $1000 each.

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February 1, 2010August 23, 2019

Don’t Trample On This

It is so exhilarating to come across a new path in the woods. We drove over near the clubhouse in Durand and parked our car along Kings Highway so we could ski off into the undeveloped western part of park. We’ve been over here before and we’re always surprised how big this park is. We are still able to explore and get lost and that is a wonderful feeling.

John Gilmore brought an Andy Warhol movie over on Saturday night. It was more than I needed to know about his sex life. Give the guy a little respect. You wouldn’t even be in this movie if it wasn’t for Andy. It was called the “The Complete Picture” so we were warned. Had some great footage of the early hand drawn pop days and paintings that were painted rather than screened. Kind of old fashioned. The thing that bothered me the most was having someone read Andy’s words. The producers didn’t have access to real recordings so an actor read quotes out of “A to B and Back Again” or “The Philosophy of” I couldn’t even listen to what they were reading, the voice was so not Andy. I wouldn’t think that any one who ever heard his voice would trample on it. Don’t even get me started on Bowie’s portrayal in the Basquiat movie. Warhol had a distinctive, delicate and charming speaking voice. You didn’t know whether to take the words at face value or look for the philosophical twists. Same experience as looking at his art.

Our neighbors bought a new tv yesterday and I helped set it up. I came back across the street to paint and I heard later that Rick was only able to get dvd picture in black and white only. I guess I plugged one of the yellow cables in the wrong spot. Rick picked up a “District 9” to christen the thing with and he popped the corn. It is a sci-fi mocumentary and I found it hard to get a look at the aliens with all those squirmy thing attached to their face. And I didn’t give a hoot about the lead character so I fell asleep – in someone else’s house. I can’t wait to hear if our friends on the west coast liked it or not. I saw it on their NetFlix list.

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January 27, 2010December 18, 2019

There Is Still Time

Now that the snow is gone, the beer cans are starting to come out down on Hoffman Road. We’re not really sure who is dumping all these. We have speculated wildly and even suspected neighbors but who knows. I bring them home so I don’t have to look at them, that and I collect the five cents. I don’t think kids would be so stuck on the Budweiser brand. And they wouldn’t always throw them in the same place. This seems like the work of an obsessive alcoholic, as if there is any other kind.

Well, I signed up to be notified when the iPad becomes available. I read so much hype and speculation about the product that the movie on Apple’s site looked like a spoof. I’m guessing Bob Martin will already have an iPad when get to the Little for tonight’s gig.

Brad Fox sent me one of those small 33 1/i books on Trout Mask Replica and the behind the scenes tales of that seminal Captain Beefheart lp were really interesting. I noticed a few other books from this series on the shelf at Duane‘s place in Brooklyn so I asked if I could borrow a them. I read “Low” first and learned that David Bowie was a bit of Nazi nut. So it came as no surprise when Quentin Tarantino used Bowie’s Cat People Theme (Putting Out Fire) in Inglourious Basterds. It seemed everything was borrowed in that movie and then I heard the movie itself was a remake. I dug out our 45 of that song and it sounded fantastic, best thing in that movie, the theme song from another movie.

I’m reading Joe Harvard’s (sounds like a made up name) 33 1/3 book on The Velvet Underground and Nico and loving it. Next up is Exile on Main Street and then I might have to buy one. Bruce Eaton has written one on Big Star and it includes a passage on Pete LaBonne. I never caught on to Big Star in the day but I guess there is still time.

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January 14, 2010August 23, 2019

Better To Ask For Forgiveness

"Spotless Restrooms" sign on door at Delta Sonic on Main Street in Rochester, NY — “Spotless Restrooms” sign on door at Delta Sonic on Main Street in Rochester, NY

Delta Sonic is in tough competition with the new Fastrac that open next door to its Main Street location. But it’s even tougher to figure out which station has the cheaper gas. Delta Sonic’s low price is available only with a car wash and Fastrac’s low price is only available if you use their card. The “Spotless Restrooms” at Delta Sonic hardly seem possible.

I plan to add this photo to the “Signs” section that I have been quietly building on Popwars. I have a “Signs” collection on the Refrigerator but that site became unwieldily so I am slowly rebuilding it on PopWars where I am using php to update the navigation and MySql to populate the pages. I wrestle with every stage of this thing and then get interrupted by paying work so it may be a few years before launch.

John Gilmore rode downtown with us last night for the Margaret Explosion gig. He was telling us how he stuck his own handmade sign on the outside of the building he worked in at Kodak Park. It read, “This Space Reserved For (his ID badge number)”. So had his own private parking spot in a crowded lot. He quoted an oft used but new to us corporate saying, “Better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

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December 30, 2009August 23, 2019

iEatPhotos

View of Lake Ontario while skiing at Durand

I carry a camera with me most of the time. Well, all of the time, actually, except when I’m swimming or sleeping. And so I come home with a lot of photos but I throw most of them out and keep the good ones. I have a big photo library. I keep minis on my iPod and I’m thinking about going “pro” at Flikr so I can see them full screen at other locations.

My father, on the other hand, goes out to shoot photos, mostly birds and moss and barns. He brings home 200 photos at a time and he keeps them all. I thought I was bad but he has manage to fill his computer’s hard disc to the breaking point. I had him sort his hard drive by file size and 90% of it is in his iPhoto library.

So I ordered an external hard drive (one Terabyte for $79 from Buy.com) and found this link on Apple’s site that explains how you tell iPhoto where the library is once you move it out of the “Pictures” folder. You can’t do this in the “Preferences” like you do in iTunes when your music is on an external drive. You basically have to confuse iPhotos by moving the Library and then starting the app with “Option” key down so you can tell it where the photos are.

There is something spooky about that “iPhoto Library” folder. Unlike other folders, you can’t open this one. And yet there are 180 gigs worth of photos in there. I do like the application though. the way it keeps your photos in the original camera format and yet you can adjust the color, crop, straighten, add tags, publish to Flickr etc. The slide shows look great. I would much rather look at a photo on a monitor than print it out. It amazes me that Kodak is still in business.

New Years day is supposed to be near 40 degrees and rainy but the skiing conditions right now are excellent. We skied into the park, around the ponds and up the lake. I took a few photos. I’ll put one up here when I get back home.

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December 17, 2009August 23, 2019

Half Full, Half Empty . . .

A few years back I was having a discussion with Mike Deming and he said, “Oh yeah, you’re the ‘half full’ guy”. And I usually am so I didn’t argue. I spotted these coffee cups in a gallery in Williamsburg last weekend and recalled that quip. I had always heard the “half full, half empty” part but didn’t know there more to it.

Back on the street, our host, Duane, pointed to some of the newly painted bike lanes there and he told us a bit about Mayor Bloomberg buying some votes by having the lanes removed before the election so the Hasidic community didn’t have to look at scantily clad women as they rode through there neighborhood. It all sounded whacked but it’s a real story.

I road my bike to the post office this afternoon in fifteen degree weather and because the sidewalks are snow packed I stayed on the road. It gets crazy where Culver meets the Expressway. I’m thinking of painting some bike lanes over there when the weather breaks.

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December 15, 2009August 23, 2019

NYC Hangover

Not that type of hangover, more like the way you feel after a really long walk. Renewed yet sluggish. And that’s probably why they say, “Great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

Wandering in and out of galleries in Chelsea on Saturday alters your perception of everything. You start by just looking at the art, some great and some dreadful. There are so many galleries in this five or six block area that after a while you lose track of whether the art is on the walls or behind the desks where the gallery attendants sit with Apple monitors or in gallery goers themselves or out on the sidewalk or in the halls of a warehouse where you are desperately trying to find a bathroom.

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December 14, 2009August 23, 2019

You Are The Figure

Duane had parked his car under a tree in Brooklyn (imagine that) and apparently pigeons like that tree so his car was covered with bird do do when we woke up. Fortunately he lives around the corner from Hollywood Lube & Wash, a 24 hour joint, so we took the car over and had them give it a bath. Chores attended to, we walked to the Ft. Hamilton subway stop and rode into lower Manhattan to gallery hop in Chelsea.

We spotted Bill Viola’s name on the door of a building on 26th Street and popped into a series of dark rooms filled with his l”Bodies of Light” videos. Our next stop was the David Hockney show of big bold paintings at Pace Wildenstein on 25th Street. There was a quote from Hockney on the wall that read, “I have taken to thinking of these recent canvases as figure paintings . . . you, the viewer, are the figure in them. If I was the figure in these paintings I would leave.

We continued to wander and found all sorts of fun stuff like the Warhol Polaroids of sports figures and a beautiful Bruce Davidson photo show. Before leaving Rochester, Brian Peterson had recommended a show by “Wallace Berman”, a friend of his Brian’s from his San Francisco days, so we tracked that show down. As luck would have it John Zorn, who had recorded a sound track to Berman’s 8 mm films was performing live in the gallery with Trevor Dunn bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums. The loose limbed Wollensen played with Bill Frisell at last years Jazz Fest. The film was projected on one of the gallery’s walls and the band set up facing the wall so they could play to the film. NY’s first couple, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, were seated in the front row.

We stopped at a green grocers on the way back and picked up a few things for as Duane termed it a “more hippy than Chinese” vegetable dish at Duane’s table and watched Duane’s and Howard Thompson‘s Suicide footage from Detich Galley in 02/02/02.

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December 9, 2009August 23, 2019

Old World Shoes

Sofia Shoe Service on Monroe Avenue in Rochester, NY — Sofia Shoe Service on Monroe Avenue in Rochester,

When my grandfather first came to Rochester he found a job in a shoe factory on Elton Street where Bernie Lehman’s studio and Four Walls Gallery are. Shoes, not just “Made in America” but made in Rochester. i’ve been buying my shoes at Marshalls or Target and they are usually under $50. When they wear out it doesn’t even cross mind to have them repaired or resoled. I take it all these brown paper bag packages are waiting to be picked up so it looks like Sofia’s Shoe Service is weathering the storm.

I came in here with a leather jacket. Not a black biker thing but a cream colored dandy like leather jacket. Peggi’s father bought it on one of his foreign business trips and we never saw him wear it. I inherited it. It zips up on the wrong side like some women’s clothing does. I get compliments on it all the time. In fact Sue Rogers complimented me and I told her how I had wrecked it and she she suggested Sofia’s. I love it in here. I love Dave Kelly’s DA and the black hair and smile on the short woman behind the counter. Dave told me it cost about $35 to repair it and he said he didn’t think it was worth it because the leather was so dry. Thirty five dollars seemed like a steal so I had him go for it.

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December 8, 2009August 23, 2019

That’s Italian

Henry B's restaurant in downtown Rochester NY — Henry B’s new owner’s father three times

I kind of miss doing half assed reviews of Italian Restaurants the way we did for the Refrigerator. I use the past tense “did” because that project became overwhelming. It was a hobby that spun out of control. To update it or add content is a nightmare. So many of the primary pages were done in the days before CSS an it is just begging to to MySQL or at least have php includes so I can update and add to the navigation as we continue to build without ripping apart thousands of pages. I have reworked it in my mind. I just need a little time to tidy it up.

But that isn’t even the real reason I stopped. Peggi is controlling her cholesterol with diet but to do so we have pretty much cut out cheese and butter which brings me to Henry B’s in downtown Rochester. The four salads in the “Insalata” all have mozzarella, Caesar dressing with parmesan reggiano, goat cheese, toasted pine nuts and Gorgonzola cheese.

We asked the manager which of the entrees didn’t include cheese or butter and recommended the “Pasta e Pollo” (Chunks of roasted chicken breast in a shitake mushroom and Marsala sauce. Tossed with rigatoni and finished with Parmesan Reggiano. “It only has a slight amount of butter” and parm. It was pretty amazing. We started with their flash fried “Calamari Fritti” which was tender, meaty and not as spectacular as Mario’s grilled calamari. We ordered a second pasta dish, “Gnocchi alla Mamma” (Homemade gnocchi tossed with tomato basil sauce and Parmesan Reggiano) that was delicious but there wasn’t enough sauce. And the “tomato basil sauce” looked and tasted creamy. Enough! This dish packed a wallop. We were with Peggi’s mom and only she had room for dessert. The portions are HUGE and we brought home enough for two addition meals.

I asked our server whether the three photos on the wall at the end of the room were all the same because I desperately wanted to find some difference in them because one didn’t bear the the decorator’s touch of repetition. They are all the new owner’s grandfather and they were all exactly the same. So this dude is competing with Henry B (on the door in photo above) who I gather was the original owner’s grandfather. And what’s with the painful smooth jazz with drum machine music? We heard the satellite station dj and we heard him back announce a David Sanborn track. My dentist has better music than that. We reviewed the former location and incarnation of this place few years back. I remember l liking it quite a bit.

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December 4, 2009August 23, 2019

As It Seems

“No Bikes or Motorized Vehicles allowed on County Park trails”. I think that’s how the sign reads. Maybe that doesn’t apply to the gentle paths that circle the the two ponds in Durand Eastman Park (above). Nothing is as it seems anymore. That’s not right. Everything is as it seems, not as it is labeled. “Dogs Must Be Kept On Leash”, “No Texting While Driving”, “Fair & Balanced”. I better stop. They didn’t specifically say, “No Bulldozers allowed on County Park Paths” so I guess that lets Bulldozer Man off the hook.

Jeff Munson and Mike Allen were at the Margaret Explosion gig last night and we talking about another classmate who might be trapped in his blog. Conversation turned to Kevin Williams, the local meteorologist/global warming denier, and his wacky letter to the editor in the morning paper. Meanwhile, we might have just had the warmest November on record. I know, “Does not a trend make”.

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November 30, 2009August 23, 2019

Flesh Made Paint

Grafitti Tanks at Cobbs Hill in Fall 2009

We stopped back to see “Paint Made Flesh”, the sensational painting show at the Memorial Art Gallery. Last time we were here was for the opening and that is no time to see a show. This one, especially, requires some time with each of the all-star artist’s works. At the opening I was trying to survey the room between conversations and stack one painting against another from my vantage point. A much richer experience unfolds when you move from one to the next ignoring the damn placards on the wall and the audio tour and just letting the paintings talk to you one by one.

There are some absolutely beautiful paintings here like Picasso’s “The Artist and his Model“, Eric Fischl’s “Frailty Is a Moment of Self Reflection”, Richard Diebenkorn’s “Woman by a Window”, and Jenny Saville’s “Hyphen“. And then there are some tough, challenging paintings here like Guston’s “The Web“, Tony Bevan’s “Self Portrait”, Frank Auerbach’s “Head of David Landau”, Susan Rothenberg’s “Crying“, Lucian Freud’s “Standing by the Rags” and Alice Neel’s “Randall in Extremis“. I found these to be the most rewarding.

And hey, Francis Bacon, Francesco Clemente, George Baselitz, A.R. Penck, David Park, John Currin and the film director, Julian Schnabel are all in the house. The show is up until January 3rd. You gotta get over there.

I was just getting ready to pop a picture of Picasso’s painting when the guard said, “No photos.” We left the gallery and headed over to Cobbs Hill where we walked up the hill and around the empty reservoir and then into the woods to the graffiti tanks at Washington Park. From high brow to Low Brow, there are no rules up there.

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November 16, 2009August 23, 2019

It Hurts Me Too

Buffalo Bills jacket in the neighborhood

I have Bob Dylan’s “Self Portrait ” on my iPod and I’m really diggin’ it. His voice sounds great and there are some beautiful songs. I like the cover painting a lot too. There’s a song on there called, “It Hurts Me Too” with the lyric.
“When things go wrong, so wrong with you
It hurts me too.”

I thought of it today when I was behind this guy. I’m not a football fan but I would like to see the the Bills win for a change.

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November 15, 2009August 23, 2019

Crash Boom Bang

Mysore Woodlands Indian restaurant in Rochester, NY

Arpad and Danita’s son turned six on Saturday and about twenty kids met at the martial arts studio on Clinton for a party. They were all out on the mat doing double kicks when we showed up. We had a slice of pizza and some walnut cake that Arpad’s mother made but we were still hungry when we left so we followed our noses next door to Mysore Woodlands. It’s kind of a strange name for a restaurant. “Mysore” is nasty and “Woodlands” sounds like a park. Boasting that they specialize in both northern and southern Indian food is plain goofy. We ordered dosas from the southern side. It is amazing how potatoes, beans, pancakes and crepes can be supercharged with spices. We loved it.

Monica was away for the weekend so we invited Rick over to watch a movie. He brought the movie too. It was a James Bond thing called “Quantum of Solace”. Jack White and Alicia Keys sang the theme song and then the chase scenes started. I couldn’t tell who was chasing who. Most of the movie was chase scenes and fights. The cutting was so fast and furious that I could,’t tell which guy was James Bond. I gave up on the movie and started ripping some cds. The movie was loud as hell, all screaming and crunching and crashing.

I was in the dark over by the stereo and I tripped on the audio cord yanking the old laptop off the shelf and then the external drive which was connected to it with a short Firewire cable. The cd that I was ripping bounced out of the laptop when it hit the floor. Peggi stopped the movie while I assessed the damage. The cable was shot, the cd drive won’t read a cd anymore but the laptop and hard drive survived.

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November 3, 2009August 23, 2019

Face2Face Blogging

Peggi in hammock out back western New York

Spevak columns, written on assignment for the D&C, work well on a few levels. Slyly reported with descriptive delight, they often do the job without touching the subject and they always carry weight between the lines. So what does an untethered, bedroom slippered Jeff read like? JeffSpevak.com was launched yesterday in old school fashion, upstairs at Abilene. The 4D designed site was projected on the big screen and food was laid out at three stations. Manchego cheese, candy corn, chocolate covered expresso beans and out-of-this-world, smoked salmon prepared by the blogger-in-chief.

I talked baseball with Scott Regan, MySQL with Stan the Man, juggling with Don Christiano’s son, and lucrative Montauk and the Hamptons gigs with Brian Williams. Dale Evans discussed her exercise routine and Peter and Nancy told us why they’re moving to Portland. There’s more going on there. I can’t handle any more.

In his “Opening Day” post Jeff writes, “Thank You for joining me on the Internet. I’d rather we could do this face-to-face, sitting in a bar. Nonetheless, I shall have a dirty martini, thank you. And The Essential George Jones.” That, in a nut shell, is his site map. I’ve added Jeff’s site to my daily reads and I’m looking forward to joining him at the bar over “A Cup Of Loneliness“.

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October 27, 2009April 11, 2019

Nobody Gonna Take No Picnic Table

I have a hard time being on time and I accept the fact that it is a selfish trait. But I do appreciate it when others are late for something that I schedule. This morning I was late for jury duty. I had a good excuse but those are easy. Peggi was driving me because she needed the car. The new traffic circle at Seneca Road and 590 was closed, no detour signs or warning until we got up to the “Road Closed” sign. We tried getting on at Titus but it was backed up for half a mile so we gave up and drove down Culver. When we got to Court Street, it was closed so they could unload the World Wrestling tractor trailers for tonight’s performance at the Blue Cross Arena. I removed my belt, emptied my pockets and took off my sweater but still set off the alarm at the Hall of Justice. I gave up my watch and then my wallet and I still beeped. They brought over the the guards with the hand held wands and they determined it was the snap on my Levis. I sat down in the court room and asked the woman next to me if they had called anyone’s name who wasn’t there and she asked, “Are you Paul Dodd?”

I watched as they found their last jury member and I was excused for another eight years. I was wrong when I said these lawyers were looking for blank slates. After two days I have no idea what they were looking for. It did seem obvious that the defense was determined to find one person who could doubt eye witness testimony and the cops statements and then stick to their guns even though the rest of the jury felt differently.

I hopped on my bike as another guy on a bike said, “Hey Bro. Where’d you lock your bike up at?” I said, “I locked to that picnic table over there.” He smiled and said, “I don’t think nobody gonna take no picnic table.”

I rode down Monroe Avenue past KrudCo and the Bug Jar to Lumierre Photo where Bill Jones is printing a post card for us. I stopped by Parkleigh to visit my sister but she hadn’t showed up for work yet. I cruised through the Public Market and bought some new red potatoes. And then I rode down Clifford to Savoia Bakery and bought some almond cookies for Peggi. I recognized the woman behind the counter and asked her if she used to work at Calabresse’s Bakery on Culver. She said, “Wow! I guess I don’t look all that different.” I was too embarrassed to tell her she was featured in a song we wrote for the Planetarium Gig in 1987. She was the girl in the bakery with silver fingernails!

Personal Effects “Silver Finger Nails” from “90 Day In The Planetarium” 1987

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