I had a dream, nothing as rich as Dr. King’s, about a new client we had taken on. We had agreed to tackle the task at hand and were trading contacts when they learned we didn’t have a cell phone. How can this be in this day and age? “What if your car broke down?” The ending is fuzzy but I had a sinking feeling when I woke up. I think we lost the clients.
I did a little running around with my dad. Most stops had to do with doctors, a check-up, blood test and new batteries for his hearing aids. We stopped for lunch at one of his favorite haunts, a Jewish delicatessen called Fox’s. My dad ordered “Balogna & the Beast” and a root beer. I had a sandwich called “My Generation” and a chocolate egg cream. This place is only open for lunch yet it always crowded. My dad bought a chocolate cookie to go for Peggi on the way out.
Detail from Lynette K. Stephenson painting entitles “Green Gloves”
I like this Lynette K. Stephenson painting from the Rochester Biennial at the MAG. Great paint handling and a mysterious, confrontational pose. I liked Richard Hirsch’s “Paintings of Nothing” too. They look like big, heavy slabs of clay hanging on the wall but are encaustic, clay, minerals and dry pigment on foam.
I thought about art quite a bit during the World Cup. It was full of surprises for starters. We got stuck on certain teams and then had to admit their opponent was better just as you do when you’re constructing a painting. We changed allegiances in the middle of a few matches and went in exactly the opposite direction. The marvelous, master craftsman, artistry of Messi and Neymar of course. The announcer, Ian Darke‘s” colorful play by play was peppered with literary, artistic phrases. He could almost be describing a painting as it unfolds. “Lovely ball, brilliant touch.”
But mostly I am struck by the exhilerating composition of the game, the way players move into space in order to advance the ball. They draw my eye as they try to get open. They draw players to them when they have the ball and create more openings. It is very fluid at all times and the entire pitch is involved in the composition the way a painter must keep the entire canvas in mind with every stroke.
And how about this whole concept of minimal art, maximum bang from minimal means. 120 minutes in the World Cup final with only one goal! I thought about Peggi’s childhood friend and her husband who had a heart attack at a Detroit Red Wing game. His doctor told him he couldn’t watch hockey games anymore. You have to keep things in perspective. Brazil taught the world the beautiful game, rate futbol, and now it belongs to us.
Mid July is a perfect time to kick back, way back, and wallow in the heat and humidity. It is It was so bright at the pool I couldn’t see the screen of my camera but I managed to shoot enough footage to make a no-edit movie for the Margaret Explosion song, Contemplation.
We go to the mall (they are all the same) about once a year and only out of necessity. My socks had holes in the heel. They all go at the same time because I buy them in six packs, “Gold Toes” at Lord & Taylor. And my underwear was losing its elasticity so I tried some Calvin Klines this time.
The mall can completely sap your energy. There is a relentless common denominator to halls and then all the stores carry the same stuff. The clerk at Banana Republic told us we would save fifty percent by opening a new charge card which will be good toward savings in Old Navy and the Gap because they are all owned by the same company. The music is mostly hideous. I hope they aren’t today’s pop songs. They are probably picked by an algorithm that determines the best doodles to accompany menial tasks and ranked by mindless shopping performance stats. Might be time sell Apple. The help in the store far outnumbered the customers. One store, Anthropologie, sort of broke the mold with its wide open spaces and comfortable couches. The women’s clothing store had a 1970’s vibe and they sold a small selection of books like “Madeline” and “Reading Andy Warhol.”
Peggi had her pedometer on, the free one picked up at jazz fest. We walked 2.2 miles in there.
OK, so I was way wrong on Brazil. They totally fell apart. Enough said. We were way overdue for a lopsided game after all the nail-biters. I’m still optimistic about Argentina.
Our friend, Shelley Valechovic, did series of paintings of lichen and I have taken note of the stuff since. I found this bit in our front yard. Must have fallen off a tree above. I placed it on a blue chair out front for its closeup.
I still think the world of my Uncle Bob, even though he got going on government overreach while we drove him and my Aunt to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery where my dad’s cousin was being laid to rest. He called us kids “city slickers” when we went out to visit them on their farm in Dundee but he always showed us the time of our lives by involving us in sheering sheep or whatever the day’s chore was. Today, one of the funeral home directors asked if they could help him to a seat by the graveside and he said, “Hell no, I’m a farmer. I can take care of myself.”
A “Mass of Christian Burial” was celebrated at Saint Ambrose earlier in the day. Funerals seem to be the only masses I get to anymore and I am always struck by the changes in the service. I pretty much left off with Latin and the priest with his back to the parishioners. We would just zone out and look at the statues. The altar boys are all grown men now, probably retirees. The kneelers are still there to trip over but no one uses them anymore. People turn and shake hands with the people around them, wish them peace and sing songs from hymnals like the Protestants.
My father spoke and painted a nice picture of the close-knit families in the Thurston Road/Brooks Avenue area when he and his cousins were growing up. Jerry Christopher, who might be related to me in some way, sang a version of “Ave Marie” that could make you believe in the Immaculate Conception. My father’s cousin, Mary, would have loved it all.
Mary was a legal secretary and worked at the four couriers downtown. She married her boss, a practicing Jew, and her nephew, who joked that he had never spoke in a church before, said due to the constrictions of their faiths they were not allowed to be buried next to one another.
50’s Chevy in front of Playground Tavern, Rochester, New York
Still have not set foot in the Playground Tavern. It has been up for sale for over a year and I couldn’t even find a listing for it so I doubt if it will be going anywhere soon but I’m itching to get inside.
We celebrated the fourth down at the lake at some friends’ house. The neighbors in the Crescent Beech area have parties that night and they collect driftwood all year to burn in the giant bonfires that line the beach. This year it got a title out of control with one of the neighbors calling the fire department on someone who built a three story tiki bar to burn when the sun went down. They must spend a fortune on the Chinese fireworks. They all come from stores on the Pennsylvania side of the border. The Chinese Lanterns, silently floating in the wind, were my favorite part. I was hoping the things burnt up before landing but we spotted a purple one in the woods today when we took our walk.
My father was telling me how his family used to take the trolley down there to the beech in front of where Schaller’s is now. His dad would go in the bar that was across the street and have beer or two while he watched the ballgame and he and his sisters would swim. He told us he never saw his mom or dad go in the water.
I was going to try and connect corporate personhood to this post, the way Maureen Dowd connected the US World Cup loss as a way to advance beyond American exceptionalism, but the two words themselves don’t even go together.
There is something about sun that affects the style of the game. The Northern Europeans play a technical, physical, methodical game. I know this is a huge generalization but Southern European teams play with artistic flair and the Latin American teams take that to the extreme. I would love to see Brazil win the Cup but that seems impossible with Neymar out with an injury and Silva out on a self inflicted penalty.
Everyone is drawn to Messi, viewers and especially opponents. But as they put pressure on Messi they only raise the bar for his artistic performance. And, at the same time, their magnetic attraction opens spaces for Messi to feed. I especially like the way he and DiMarie operate in that pressure cooker. With the US out we are pulling for Argentina. It was a joy to watch them take out the team that sent the US home but it was hard to watch DiMaria, “Fideo” (the noodle), leave the game with an injury.
I am happy Costa Rica took the Netherlands into the the penalty kick stage today but I’m happy the Netherlands won there, only because it will be so much fun to see Argentina take down the Orange in the semis. Brazil and Argentina in the finals would be the perfect final ticket but realistically I’m guessing it will be Argentina and Germany and we witness this class of instinct vs. method.
It used to be five bucks for a load of stone. The Penfield quarry now charges ten but it is still a steal. Peggi and I shoveled a ton (literally) of crushed stone into our neighbor’s pick-up yesterday. There are about ten different size stone piles here to choose from. We filled the truck bed with the finest grade and then loaded ten buckets or so of stone that was about two inches in diameter. We’ll use the crushed stone on our road and the course stone will go down in a drywell that we plan to dig for better drainage near our mailboxes.
I shoveled a lot of stone when I was working for Mitchell Construction Company in Bloomington. I was on a three man crew that built forms and poured concrete for garage floors and sidewalks. But before we finished any concrete we had to shovel dump truck loads of stone into the forms.
The boss of our crew was named “Frenchie.” He had a party boat that he and his wife rode in on one of Indiana’s manmade lakes in the summer. They drank tomato juice and beer cocktails. The other guy on my crew was named Wayne Anderson. He turned us onto Al Green. The only reason he was hired was because the 30 person company needed to have at least one black employee in order to bid on University jobs. I remember one of the guys on the carpentry crew asking me, “What’s it like working with a nigger?” The owner of the company drove a convertable Mercedes sports car like Robert Wagner in “Hart to Hart.”
Hope Solo in goal vs. Flash in Rochester, New York
Hope Solo was back in the goal against the Flash tonight. We stalked her before the game. It was her first game since her arrest for domestic violence last weekend. She has apologized to her fans and says “adversity has always made us stronger.” Can’t argue with that.
Abby is still out for the Flash and wasn’t even in town but the Flash are playing better than ever. They were up 1-0 tonight against first place Seattle but then kind of ran out of steam in the second half before going down 2-1.
220 Alexander Street Building in Rochester, New York
Pete Monacelli did a series of drawings based on the old Security Trust building downtown. His wife worked there for many years and he found enough architectural details in the 1960’s building to churn out a brilliant batch of interpretations. And since seeing his show at Rochester Contemporary I have been paying closer attention to the buildings this city has to offer. As brutal as they are they don’t last forever. We’ve already begun tearing down buildings from the sixties.
July tomorrow. I can handle it. Jazz Fest was a whirlwind and then this World Cup thing. We didn’t expect Mexico to still be in the game with the Netherlands but they were up 1-0 late in the match as Duane showed up, up from the big city. Netherlands took them down in theatrical fashion and we headed down to the pool. Duane swims regularly at the Y in Brooklyn and in one of those giant outdoor recreation pools in the summer so he was still bobbing around after we had withdrawn.
We headed down to Vic & Irv’s for the usual (cheeseburger, onion rings and a vanilla milkshake in my case) and took our regular stools, stage left with a birds-eye view of the post-teenage chefs. When the food arrived Duane said, “I know this sounds corny but this is as good as it gets.” I was a little slow with any sort of response but I think he was right.
On the way out of the parking lot we passed a pickup truck with a sign on the back window that read, “God Bless Our Troops. F!ck the Politicians.” The “u” in the word fuck was an assault rifle graphic. The take-away being anarchy in the USA or a bible thumping military dictatorship? I should have asked Duane to stop so I could get a picture but again I was a little slow. I could have used the photo on my funky sign site.
Back home, the tiny nation of Costa Rica took out Greece in the penalty kick round. And then Duane left. We’ll have to catch up in New York.
Getting from the Lutheran Church to Xerox Auditorium was rough with George Thorogood and the Destroyers playing in the middle of the street. We stood behind some guys wearing “Radical Pigs” biker gear for part of “Who Do You Love,” the part where festival promoter, John Nugent, played sax, and then got on with it.
My favorite act of this year’s jazz fest was the Norma Winstone Trio at the Xerox Auditorium. Like Peggy Lee she and her trio were quite exotic and intoxicating. My favorite song from her performance last night was one of hers called “Dance Without Answer.” They record for the ECM label and I tracked down a live version the song here.
Bill Frisell’s “Guitar In The Space Age” at Kilbourn Hall in Rochester, New York 2014
I would loved to have been able to see Heather O’Reilly play tonight against the Flash but then I would have missed this.
We queued up for Bill Frisell’s “Guitar In The Space Age” at Kilbourn and ran into our jazz buddy, Hal, who was recovering from a sports injury. We compared notes on the upcoming acts and broke into the dinner we had packed. Hugh from Nod was up from Utica and in line ahead of us. The time went by fast.
Kenny Wollesen was on drums. Tony Scheer, who has played with everyone from The Lounge Lizzards to Willie Nelson, was on electric bass and Buffalo native, Greg Leisz, played pedal steel and additional guitar. Frisell’s idea of guitar in the space age is decidedly American. We probably do have more junk floating around up there than any other country. The band toyed with Western swing with Hawaiian touches, a two-beat Americana thing, the Kinks “Tired of Waiting,” something funky that sounded a bit like “Mustang Sally” or “Walking The Dog,” Leisz sounded fantastic on slide but he switched to guitar for the middle of the set and that somehow managed to dilute what we came to hear. Brian Wilson’s “In My Room” was rich, “Telstar” was perfect and their version of “Surfer Girl” almost made me cry.
“I tell you this every time I play here. They wouldn’t let me in this school,” Frisell said, from the hall in the eastman School of Music. “45 years later I come back playing surf music to a standing ovation.”
Annette Lein from the Democrat & Chronicle followed Peggi and me through our jazz fest routine yesterday. She started as we whizzed through the day’s offerings and made snap decisions on what to see/hear and then she met us downtown outside our first venue. She must have shot an hour’s worth of footage and later last night she had edited it down in Final Cut and posted it to the D&C’s site. She is a pro. We are not.
Annette’s edits and transitions are as smooth as silk. What looks like an edit is me jumping in before Peggi had a chance to explain what we look for. My favorite part is the shot of us trudging down the street. Unity Health has been giving away pedometers at the Jazz Fest and Peggi has been logging our miles. We walked over two last night and we never got over to Lucinda Williams in the Park. I was reminded of what my dad said when I sent him a link to a movie of us putting up their awnings. “Do we really walk like that?”
Ivy covered building downtown, Rochester, New York
Kind of strange cheering for the US as they lost but advanced.
The two tone building here is right next to the former Midtown Plaza. There was a building adjacent to the great wall that is long gone, a nightclub called the Rathskeller, I think. Bands played there and you used to have go down some steps to enter. Long gone like most of the city core, but coming back. Jazz Fest provides some interesting urban vistas.
High Tech Rochester’s plan to put twenty million into a Business Accelerator Cooperative downtown is the best news I’ve read about downtown in bit.
5 dollar parking sign in front of City Blue on Scio Street in Rochester, New York
Anybody remember where Backstreets was? I think it might have become a gay bar before it went under. They got busted at one point because the owners had illegally tapped into a power line out front and rigged so their utility bills were next to nil. I think I played there with New Math. Maybe it was Personal Effects. You could get near deadly shocks from the PA system by touching the mic and the monitor at the same time or something like that.
It was a hard rockin’ joint on Charlotte Street before the turned it into a gay club and they have pretty much torn down every building on that side of the street. Well, that is where we have parked for the last few nights of Jazz Fest. It might be a brownfield. In fact it is a brown field as in all mud. We refuse to pay to park downtown. That’s the way it has always been. There are spots.
I guess they still make Broncos but not like this one. OJ sort of damaged the brand for a while with that Warhol-movie-like, slow speed chase.
We found four golf balls today without even trying. We never left the path to comb the underbrush like I used to do before the engorged tick incident. They were just laying out there in plain sight on the path as we skirted the course.
Artist painting the back of Vic & Irvs in Rochester New York
We played 17 holes of miniature golf today with my sister, two nephews and a niece. We skipped the twelfth hole because we were holding up play with such big group. My nephew, who got to play for free because he is only five, got “a hole in three.” Oh, and we took a dip in the pool on our street. And then it was time to get in line for Jazz Fest. I know, it sounds like a retiree’s itinerary.
When it came down to it, there was no question. The Copa Mundial came before Jazz Fest so we missed the first part of last night’s musical offerings.
Peggi has stayed in touch with her junior high swim mate and we stop by to see her whenever we get back to Detroit. A few years back her husband was telling us how he had heart attack at a Red Wings hockey game and the doctor told him he shouldn’t watch any more hockey. Serious. I was thinking about that scenario today as we watched the US lose the 2-1 lead they had seconds short of the final whistle. I was exhausted by the end of the match.
