I’ve started a collection of dumpster photos. The past is still here for hobby archeologists and the dumpsters are a record of our progress. Someone has got to catalog this stuff.
Leave a commentBeginning Of A Great Adventure
Hermie’s World, Excellent
Everyone knows Herman and for good reason. He’s the perfect bartender and conversationalist. Formerly a Bug Jar fixture he’s got his own place now, called the “Skylark Lounge”, on Union Street, a drag show venue for many years that he and Bug Jar inventor, Casey, have retooled with swank. The location, on a one way street in the East End, is a bit forlorn but it’ll be the center of the universe when the city fills in the Inner Loop.
We stopped in after the Margaret Explosion gig and sat at the bar by the juke box. Hermie told us he was considering one that played 45s but it wouldn’t hold enough music so he settled on one that plays cds, his cds, mostly old school, VU, Stones, Curtis Mayfield, Donovan, JB, Stooges.
Forget about wifi, the Rolling Stones pinball machine in the corner is the main attraction until they get their entertainment license. I couldn’t tell if I was getting extra points for hitting Mick or what but he kept prancing across the middle of the game and was definitely in the way. I won a few bonus balls and then a free game. I was slamming the machine and never tilted it. I wish they wouldn’t release those extra balls when you get on a roll. In the old days and you could get a get a good run going by working the ball, one ball.
Leave a commentVoices From The Past
People used to identify themselves when they called you but they don’t do that anymore because everyone has cell phones and they know who’s calling before they say hello. In fact people don’t even say hello any more they just start talking. Well we don’t have a cellphone and I’m often completely thrown as to who I’m talking to. Someone will prattle on about something while I’m running through my mental rolladex trying to figure out who the voice is. Is it work related or a friendly? No big deal. I’m just saying.
The phone rang during dinner the other night and our nephew was laughing at the quaintness of the answering machine on our land line and that led to a discussion of the old full size cassette answering machine that we had and how we’d record over and over the tapes until they were layered bits and pieces of voices from the past. I set a few of them aside and went downstairs to check to see if I could put my hands on them. I found a cassette deck and put on a white label advance copy of Colorblind James’ “Why Should I Stand Up?” from 1991 that had been put into service.
Brad Fox called and started with a joke. “Why did the Siamese twins go to England?” No punchline. A snippet of Colorblinds’ “That’s Entertainment”, Deb calling from Massachusetts asking for help with her computer which was suddenly in a foreign language. Peggi’s mom letting us know she didn’t like the answering machine. A snippet of “Ride Board.” A wrong number where someone left a message for someone we’ve never heard of. Our nephew calling for help getting a stuck floppy out of an Mac SE. He’s majoring in artificial intelligence today. Another snippet of “Ride Board.” And plenty of people complaining about the quality of our outgoing message which as I remember had either James Brown or Miles Davis blasting in the background.
Sometimes the machine would record our part of a conversation if we failed to pick up the phone in time. So we heard Steve Black from Singapore answering a call from Steve Hoy while we were out somewhere. Directions to Jeff and Mary Kaye’s house for the first time! And then Peggi’s dad and Gary Bennet calling from beyond the grave. Are people saving their cellphone messages these days? This stuff is priceless.
Leave a commentRemaking America
Animal is one of LA’s hottest restaurants. Google it, they have great publicists. We first read about it in the New Yorker last year but we’ve known about it for a few years because our nephew works there. Someday he’ll have his own place. He’s an amazing chef. We had dinner with him at Animal last night and the five of us shared eleven plates. “Plates” includes appetizers, salads and entrees and they are typically shared as we did. They do “New American” cuisine, “maximum flavor from a minimalist kitchen.” Each dish from their daily menu is entirely distinctive and sensational.
Our nephew took us to the Beverly Hills farmer’s market this morning where he shopped for mushrooms, delicata squash, cilantro, a persimmon that he used in our arugula pecan salad tonight.
1 CommentLiving In A Modern Way
The Getty has organized a sixty venue overview of work by LA artists entitled “Pacific Standard Time”. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a few of it’s galleries devoted to the show including “California Design – Living In A Modern Way” the first major study of California midcentury modern design. Although more style than art the style is so distinctive it still looks cutting edge or at least contemporary. On display are photos and plans for Neutra homes, Eames furniture, the first Barbie and these classic lp jackets. This gallery is where Duane Sherwood will spend eternity if he’s good.
Wandering in the hills west of LA without a star map you get a sense of the wide open design possibilities when money trumps steep slope ordinances. Swimming pools hang over cliffs. Architects have free reign to tear down and rebuild for the heck of it. Good taste crashes into bad. Mexican laborers transform the landscape. Houses are built in a Greco-Roman style or look like they were imported from Vermont, Switzerland, Turkey or Mexico. We saw one that looked like a castle from a Johnny Depp movie. Snow is not a concern, rain and cold hardly, roofs are flat, walls are made of glass. People here live in a modern way.
2 CommentsI Love My Chainsaw
Splitting wood is a perfect Fall activity. I used to swing a sledgehammer at a maul but my elbows hurt for days afterward so now we borrow my neighbor’s wood splitter. It’s a Heathkit. He built it from a kit in the fifties. The chainsaw is technically borrowed too. Bill Jones had one of his trees fall over his neighbor’s driveway a few years ago and bought the saw to clean up the mess and then he loaned it to us. We use it all the time and even let Bill borrow it back to cut down his way overgrown arborvitae.
Leave a commentModern Camping
We mentioned our camping trip to a few friends and neighbors and they offered to let us borrow all sorts of gear. It is amazing that an old fashioned activity like camping would have so many new products. We really hadn’t done any backwoods camping since our honeymoon when we were chased out of a Smokey Mountains virgin forest by a bear. We have a tent and some sleeping bags but none of the modern camping paraphernalia our friend’s offered.
Rubberized dry bags, like duffle bags but they keep your stuff dry.
Pots and pans without handles, sort of a backwards invention. They all share a detachable handle so the pots are easier to stack in your pack.
A tiny propane stove for making coffee.
Polar fleece outerwear that is incredibly light when portaging.
Battery operated headlamps so convenient you forget that the lamp you are wearing is shining in your partners’ eyes.
Slim sleeping pads that self inflate (sort of) and cushion and warm the space between you and the ground.
We had so much stuff I felt like we were packing to go away to college.
3 CommentsDestroyed In America
It’s hard to tell what people do downtown. I mean what kind of work goes on in an office these days that couldn’t be done by an automated program or by someone at home with an internet connection? I drove out West Ridge Road this morning and then south on Mount Read over to Lyell Avenue where I picked up some stainless steel rods from Triple A Welding. Out there it’s pretty easy to see what people do for a living. Mount Read is full of trucks moving equipment and supplies up and down. Large manufacturing facilities line both sides of the street. Although a ghost of its former self Kodak still has cars and trucks moving on its internal highway and smoke billowing from its stacks. AAA Welding has great big stainless steel food processing tanks out in their lot. People make things out here.
1 CommentKeys To The City
After barging in on our neighbors to watch the Women’s World Cup in the middle of the day for a few weeks in a row they bought us tickets to Wednesday’s New York Flash game against magicJack. It was a an opportunity for the mayor of Rochester to give Rochester’s Abby Wambach (24 hours after her Letterman appearance) the keys to the city as he welcomed fourteen returning Word Cup players from the two teams in front of a sold out crowd of over 15,000.
Rochester’s Flash have an amazing lineup with Canada’s Sinclair on the left flank working with Marta, the wold’s best female soccer player, and Alex Morgan right behind them. Marta’s moves are astounding. She out maneuvers opponents like a magician and gives the ball up to take the heat off only to move to an open spot in seconds so she can receive the pass. The tiniest player on the field, she’s is also tough as nails. We watched her shove an adversary to the ground in frustration because, as a matter of fact, she does own the road. The whole team plays world class soccer passing with artful finesse and they are a joy to watch. How did we get so lucky?
Leave a commentPB&J
We had our neighbors, Rick and Monica, over for dinner a few nights ago and we ate out on the deck. Monica spotted these raccoons in a tree behind our house and we watched them for a while. Monica said they can be vicious. She told us about a friend whose Irish Setter got in a fight with a raccoon near a pond in the woods and the raccoon almost drowned the dog. I started thinking about the Coon Hunting Convention that I played at outside Bloomington. I was in a working country band, playing two to three times a week in every American Legion, VFW, Elk’s, Eagle’s and Moose Club in southern Indiana and one of the strangest gigs was playing outdoors up on a flat bed trailer for coon hunters. As far as I knew they didn’t shoot the raccoons, they just “treed them” at night using dogs and flashlights.
Monica said the boys in her family used to go out after dinner to shoot ground hogs. They were a nuisance on two counts because they ate crops in the garden and they dug holes that horses might step in their holes and break their legs. Monica said she never ate a raccoon but she did eat squirrel one time. She couldn’t remember what it tasted like other than it was full of buckshot.
This morning I was reading the paper out back when Stella, our white kitty who only goes out for a few minutes in the morning to go to the bathroom, came face to face with one of the raccoons. I broke up the encounter but now feel like I’m going to have to borrow Leo’s Have-A-Heart trap to catch these guys and have Animal Control haul them off. I watched a video last night on how this all goes down. The exterminator in the video recommended peanut butter and jelly as bait.
5 CommentsFollow The Nuns
I have a small box of holy cards at home. I’ve collected them for many years so some are from my youth. I even have a relic of my patron saint in there that a priest friend of our family bought for me when he traveled to Italy. I was born on the feast day of Saint Paul and that’s how I got my name but it’s not the Saul/Saint Paul of the Letters, it’s Saint Paul of the Cross We used to book mark our missals with holy cards and they gave some when we made our first communion and confirmation and I fell in love with them. They were every bit as cool as baseball cards. I have some from relatives funerals and the Katarii shrine in Auriesville, New York
but most of my cards are from previous trips to Spain when we used to stop in almost every church we saw. We sort of have that under control now.
There used to be a cluster of religious shops around the Plaza Mayor in Madrid and there still are a few but the Catholics are dying and commerce has a new face. We stopped in the full blown priest supply store above and asked if they had any holy cards, they’re called estampas in Spanish, and the clerk recommended another shop where I found ten or so interesting ones for two euros.
Leave a commentAttention 2 Detail
Is my perception all warped or do Europeans pay a lot more attention to design than we do? Everywhere you look, the urinals for crying out loud, from high brow to low brow.
Sevilla has a great bike system for getting around too. It’s called “Sevici”. We noticed the fifties style bikes as soon as we got off the high speed train from Madrid (another great way to get around) and at first we thought they must be tourists but we soon realized they were mostly locals. You can pick up a bike at at over a hundred locations and drop it off at any one. They are a comfortable ride too, fat tires, baskets and fenders.
Last night we found Sevilla’s answer to the Bug Jar without the bands. Good music, Tom Jones to Abba with all sorts of Spanish pop we didn’t recognize, free Internet access and a cool relaxed vibe.
Leave a commentCivilization
Los Indignados in the Puerto del Sol decided last night to extend their protest for “democracia real.” I’m all for it but it seems like heaven to me. People out strolling not trapped in their cars. Couples, families, old people. Window shopping, talking, eating, smoking and drinking.
The coffee ritual (small plate, spoon, a bag of sugar and expertly frothed cafe con leche) puts everything right with the world. I’ll never forget being scolded for not saying “Buenos dias” immediately on entering a cafe on our first visit. Coffee shops turn seamlessly into “Menu del Dia” restaurants and then tapas bars often doing triple duty throughout the day. Food on display everywhere. No barriers to enjoyment. Spain is the perfect host or at least it seems that way to us.
Leave a commentLet It Grow
I stopped in the world famous “House of Guitars” the other day and found a nice looking snare in the back room. It didn’t sound as good as the old Leedy snare sitting next to it but it matched my set. The sales guy said “You can get nice loud crack out of this thing.” I said “I don’t want a loud crack. I want a loose, fat snare sound at low volume.” One of the owners, Bruce, said I could take it home and check it out so I did. I fooled around with it and like it so I went back and gave Bruce the cash.
Bruce’s brother, Armand, made some great underground records like the 3 LP set “A Lot of People Would Like to See Armand Schaubroeck… DEAD!” and “I Came to Visit, But Decided to Stay.” Armand put up a billboard downtown in 1968 that caused quite a reaction. I loved it. I saw a poster sized reproduction of the billboard in the Bop Shop the other day and photographed it. The HOG made some great tv commercials too, the kind that were designed to get under grownups’ skin. I included Armand in a series of “Local Icons” that I painted a long time ago. I heard he has a album in the can with Ginger Baker on drums.
5 CommentsJesus Is A Baritone
I had planned on stopping by Record Archive and the Bob Shop for Record Store Day. Peggi had emailed the Bop Shop ad we did for Tom for the upcoming Jazz Festival and I wanted to make sure it looked ok before we put it into InDesign and sent it off. I would also check the racks for new releases from my favorite artists, most of which are dead. I’m still hoping for one from Ornette before he says goodbye.
As it turns out we started the day by downloading a live Neil Young gig. So much for supporting local record stores. Duane sent us the link so I can blame him. We saw the “Chrome Dreams 2” tour in Buffalo where they were still using pieces of the Greendale set. This is an audience recording, it sounds amazing.
I’ve seen a few Rembrandts, just a handful really, but I was knocked out by how timeless they are. I mean they actually appear alive. This afternoon we heard Bach’s “St. John Passion” performed by “Voices”, the local professional chamber choir. Bach wrote the piece near the end of his long life and it was performed on Good Friday. Today was Palm Sunday and it was close enough. The eighteen voice chorus and small orchestra sounded great in the Lutheran Church, a fitting venue as they have a weekly service in German, a large German contingent to their parish and Bach’s “Passion” was performed in his and their native tongue. Bach’s music is also still alive. The church was packed. We squeezed into the back pew and were blown away by how powerful this music is. We are so fortunate to have this accumulated culture to dip into.
The Stations of the Cross were always my favorite part of church. I collected sources from newspaper clippings for a retelling, the Unabomber was on the front page one Good Friday, and I still plan to paint the Stations some day. I showed the studies at the Bug Jar in 1998 and they were shown again at the Finger Lakes Show in 1999.
I heard the last pope added a fifteen station, the resurrection, the most suspect of all miracles to say the least, for a happy ending. And the current pope wants to rush sainthood for the guy who hired him to “handle” the countless sex abuse cases. I say “sainthood now” for Rembrandt and Bach and Ornette.
Leave a commentLent Specials
“An Osteria is an Italian-style eating establishment, similar to a tavern, usually in the country, less formal than a ristorante or trattoria, where wine is served as the main attraction and tasty food is prepared to come along with it. The service is casual, wine is sold by the decanter rather than the bottle, prices are low, and the emphasis is on a steady clientele rather than on haute cuisine.
Clients become regulars at Osteria because their tastes and preferences become known, and they become part of the family. The food is modest but plentiful, mostly following regional and local recipes, often served by the owner or his family members on common tables, warm and personal.”
I copied all that from Wikipedia and pasted it here because it perfectly describes “Osteria Restaurant overlooking Lake Ontario on Culver Road in Rochester. We had the homemade Ricotta Raviolis last with a spicy calamari appetizer (two kinds of peppers and green and Calamata olives). Now that Peggi is on the cholesterol meds we plan to continue with our ongoing Italian Restaurant exploration.
The photo above (gotta click the photo above to see the full shot) is the last one I took with my brand new Nikon P7000. I packaged it up today and sent it back to Nikon. It’s two months old and I’ve had this intermittent problem since I got it. The lens covers doesn’t fully open when I turn it on so my photos look like they were taken with a Lomo. Not entirely bad but a Lomo would have been a lot cheaper. Turns out this is a pretty common problem. I contacted Nikon and they told me to send it in on my dime. I paid sixteen bucks to send a brand new camera back. Grrrr.
Leave a commentOutdoor Church
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.
Leave a commentPeople Who Do Things
We walked to the library in last weekend’s snow and picked out a double sided dvd (Does anyone get books at the library anymore?)” We curled up last for the double feature.
I certainly admire people who do things.” Bruno said this to Guy as he sat down next to him on the train in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 movie, “Stranger On A Train.” Bruno, a mama’s boy, who was wealthy enough to not work hated his father and had hatched a plan to get rid of him. Guy was supposed to be the good guy but in the Hitchcock’s hands Bruno was more likable. Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley) wrote the novel and she makes a cameo in a record store. Hitchcock’s cameo has him hopping on a train with a stand up bass that is as big as he is. And Hitchcock’s daughter gives an sizzling performance. We watched both the Britsh and the American version last night. The British one supposedly had homosexual overtones that escaped the American style censorship but we didn’t spot the extra footage. Both were amazing.
Leave a comment
Code Of The Great Outdoors
It seems miraculous that the chipmunks are out. We watched them pack their small caves with nuts in the Fall and now they’re out darting around on the piles of snow. We hadn’t seen any deer in weeks and we were speculating that they too were hunkered down in the cold but today we watched a group of eight up move across a hillside. There was a pileated woodpecker up in one of the trees too but we couldn’t spot it. Sounded like a jackhammer. We interrupted a hawk who was devouring this squirrel right in the middle of our path. On the way back the squirrel was gone.
Pete LaBonne has a song called “Code Of The Great Outdoors” with the refrain, “better out, better out, better out than in.” It’s on his “High Time” release, same album as “Punk Rock Dressing Room” and only seven bucks for the download!
Leave a commentEntering The Kingdom
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.