Our snowmen gave up the ghost on Christmas day. I don’t blame them. I went to Sears yesterday looking for a teapot for Peggi’s mom (she melted the last one) and I was right in the thick of it, pawing through merchandise with all the other desperate souls. I felt patriotic shopping but not very religious. Maybe if I bought all that “End of Days” nonsense I would feel more religious.
Peggi’s mom walks so slowly these days, I carry my laptop and type as we go. We’re off to Christmas dinner (for 27) at my parents. The madder the better.
These guys did an “artiste” thing on us overnight and donned their berets. I imagine them talking about how this whole Christmas thing has gotten in the way of their quality time.
The snowmen in our front yard have taken on real personalities with the new snow. I’m seeing Winston Churchill on the right.
I paid extra to have the hard drive that I ordered for my father delivered in two days. That should have been Friday. Tracking info showed it out for delivery but later in the day the page show an “Exception”. If I hovered over the word it said “Emergency conditions beyond UPS Control”. I’m guessing that was the snow we had. UPS doesn’t work weekends even in the holiday season so that would mean today if I’m lucky. You would think they might put it at the front of the line but it’s after four now and no package. The only reason I’m writing about this is the “Exception” claim. Can I use that on deadlines or do you have to be in a union?
I have a bunch of passes to MacWorld at the Moscone Center in SF if anyone wants them.
Watkins and the Rapiers at he Flipside on Main Street in Rochester, NY
You can tell it’s near Christmas by the amount of red that bands are wearing. Another clue is that almost every tune we heard last night was a Christmas thing. I finally got the picture and got in the spirit. Down on Main Street, at the Flipside, Watkins and the Rapiers were thoroughly entertaining. They have a Christmas cd under their belts and add new chestnuts every year. Their Christmas tunes sound like classics. The place was packed but there should have been a line out the door. These guys have rescued Christmas.
Bob Henrie and the Goners at Abilene
Over at Abilene the joint was rockin’. We had just walked in, our glasses were still steamed and people were trying to get us to dance. Bob Henrie and the Goners are real treasures. They are better at early rock n’ roll than anybody. Their covers sound better than the originals. Some bands sound too loud in this room and others just get lost unless you are right on top of the band but these guys sounded like a live record. They have been playing together for twenty five years or so and they are real pros but that is no reason to go see them. Go see them ’cause they are a blast.
Peggi buying cabbage at the Public Market in Rochester, NY
I loaded my mother-in-law’s SUN though SAT, MORN, NOON, EVE, BED pill container like we do every weekend but today I felt like I was loading an Advent calender. We used to have those things in our house when we were growing up and most of the little doors would be open by now. This one though has no surprises unless you forget what medicine you’re taking every day and my mother-in-law just may fall into that category.
We started the day at the Public Market downtown. I love this place especially the way it seems to draw equally from all sub cultures of the city. Red peppers were in abundance for some reason and local cabbage, pears, onions, potatoes and apples were everywhere. Christmas trees were fifteen dollars and every sort of nic nac or common junk drawer product was there, fresh off a Chinese container. One of the fish guys tried to talk Peggi into buying an eel by wiggling it at us. “They’re good in soup”, he said. We had read a rave review of Barry from Fair Game Foods’ pastrami sandwiches in City Newspaper so waited in line for one of those and took it to our car where we listened to a cd of Margaret Explosion with Phil Marshall from last week.
It started snowing on the way home and it looked like a shaker scene. We are up to about fifteen inches of the white stuff now. We had arranged to ski with Rick and Monica so we headed right out in to the woods. Rick led the way and took us across the golf course and down a few thrill seeker hills. When we got back home we built a fire and put James Brown’s “Hot Pants lp on.
There are a few things in the running for tonight. Bob Henrie and the Goners are at Abilene and Watkins and the rapiers are doing their Christmas show at the Flipside. We might try to do both.
Lumiere at the Litle Theater Cafe in Rochester, NY
We were kind of tired last night but heroically headed downtown for Lumiere’s last appearance this year. Guitarist Roy Berns fell off a ladder and injured his shoulder. He’s having it operated on and will miss most of next year. The violin player they had fits their gypsy jazz sound perfectly. I still miss Ed the accordion player but no sense crying over split milk. The band sounded great.
We must have had eight inches or up here near the lake. We talked about skiing all day but didn’t get out until four or so. We skiied down to the park and then back through the woods. The path was buried and it was pretty dark so we got lost a few times. We were so turned around we didn’t even know if we were headed in the right direction. We’ll look for our tracks tomorrow and find out where we were.
“Paul Dodd, made from Paul Dodd paintings” digital print by Steve Piotrowski
“Paul Dodd, Made from Paul Dodd Paintings” digital print by Steve Piotrowski on display at High Falls Gallery in Rochester – click photo for full picture
I first heard about this piece from John Gilmore. And then Steve emailed me that the piece was in a show at the High Falls Gallery. So Peggi and I headed over there this afternoon to check it out. Sally Wood Winslow (Janet Reno’s cousin) runs the gallery and she is so much fun to chat with that it took us about a half hour to get up the stairs to where the art is.
It is a portrait show and Steve, who also has a sensational oil painting of the falls on permanent display here, did this piece in Photoshop. He grabbed a photo of me off the web and digitally repainted my big pixels with other paintings of mine that he found online. You kind of have to squint or get away from it to make sense of the big picture. We were kind of knocked out by all this.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here. The temperature was somewhere in the low thirties so it was perfect packing and we rolled these two dudes up.
I tried to help my dad by buying a harddrive so he good do a proper backup of his system but the Western Digital drive I bought at Buy.com was defective so I spent a good part of the day getting an RMA number, repacking the thing and running it out to the UPS Store to return it. I took advantage of the trip to buy some new canvases at the Art Store in South Town Plaza. I bought six 20″ by 24″ canvases that were 50 per cent off. I was thinking of doing something other than crime guys but there was an enticing “CrimeStoppers” page in the paper this morning.
Monica had the brilliant idea to invite us to go skating with her and Rick at Manhattan Square Park after work on Friday. We put our long johns on and warmed up our skates by the heater. Peggi hung on to me for the first few laps and then she was on her own. She had a collision with a young kid and they both fell but no one was hurt. The rink here has been renovated and it is now kidney shaped and very pretty. I could have done without the Christmas music but that is a losing battle.
I clomped next door with my skates on to Manhattan Square apartments where Frank Paolo works but the guard told me “Frankie wasn’t in yet”. We drove over to Corn Hill to look for a Mexican restaurant and wound up at an Italian place called Tony D’s. They specialize in coal fired pizza and they let us to place a special order of caramelized onion pizza with no cheese. We sat by the oven and watched three beefy guys do the cooking. They played eighties soul music and got talking about Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and the whole soul revival thing goin’ on.
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is a beautiful movie. The lusiously colored, closely cropped, bedridden, framing really looks great on tv. We watched long stretches of it for the second time last night. The French speech therapist’s endless repetition of the alphabet hypnotized me. I felt as I too had “locked-in syndrome” like the lead character, Jean-Dominique Bauby. Julian Schnabel did a great job bringing this (based on a) true story to the screen. Bauby’s memoir, though, is where the magic came from. “My cocoon becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas’s court.”
I’m thinking our white cat may have a variation of this “locked-in-syndrome. She spends nearly twenty four hours a day on our bed yet we’re certain that she has a life in there and that it is full enough for her. We can see this in her eyes.
We met with our Merrill Lynch adviser this morning and were left with the distinct impression that capitalism is indeed eating itself. Our portfolio is worth less than what we put in to it and we’re doing “pretty good”. The same guys who have been saying for as long as I have been listening that “business knows best” are begging the government, who can’t balance a checkbook, for help. The receptionist, who used to greet us here, has been laid off because of the restructuring that Bank of America, who now owns Merrill, has started. And the Wall Street Journal I glanced at in ML’s lobby had an article about New York’s Attorney General, Mario Cuomo’s son, shaming Merrill’s CEO into not taking his ten million dollar bonus this year.
“Does the that fact that big business is begging the government for help indicate that things are really worse than they seem now?”, I asked. Our guy agreed that that was the case. We pushed ahead. Are there any buying opportunities out there now that just about everything has tanked? Maybe but even with their commission danging there they had no solid recommendations. “Do you feel that the Dow could drop much further?”. Our guy thought we would see a twenty to twenty five percent drop before things turned around.
We sold a few things at a loss so we could deduct it from our taxable income and called it a day at the races.
The golf course usually feels like a jarring intrusion when it appears at the end of the trail in the woods near our house. Maybe it has something to do with the memory of being clocked by a golf ball as we crossed this hole a couple of years ago. Sometimes, though, the manicurred golf course appears like an apparition and it just knocks me out – without the ball to the head thing.
Indo-Pak Coalition at the Village Gate Atrium last night in Rochester, NY
Last night we stopped in the at the Village Gate Atrium to see Indo-Pak Coalition with Rudresh Mahanthappa on sax . The sax, tabla, guitar lineup had all sorts of potential but it didn’t really work for me. Seemed kind of academic or something and I was never any good with that.
Rochester Contemporary has their Members Show opening tonight. I always like this show. I put this recent crime face in there. We saw Barbara Fox recently and she was complaining about how her work gets lost in it and that is certainly a drawback of an uncurated free for all but I like the chaos of it all. And it is full of surprises. We want to be over at the Eastman House by eight to see the Patti Smith movie, Dream of Life.
Eastman Lake in Durand Eastman Park, late Fall 2008
We walked through the woods and along the eastern shore of Eastman Lake this morning. Up near Lake Ontario we crossed over to Durand Lake and took the path along its western shore to the woods that lead back to our house. I didn’t see a soul the whole time except for my wife. Winter is coming on and the remaining leaves have lost most of their color other than this rich brown.
Winters in Rochester are tough and they toughen us. I’m looking forward to this one. I like the solitude, the warmth of the fireplace, the lighter social calender and the additional time to paint.
There was a squirrel fight going on outside our bedroom window this morning. At least i thought it was squirrels. It woke me up so I got up and didn’t think much about it. Later we saw our neighbor walk up our driveway to look at something in our back yard. We went out and found three large raccoons in a tree. Two were on a perch near the top and one was further down. Every time the third one tried to get on the same perch a nasty fight broke out with lots of loud squealing. Our neighbor said it was too early for mating so who knows what was going on. It was hard to watch. I took a few photos and went back in to work.
Margaret Explosion playing upstairs at Abilene in Rochester, NY
I dragged my feet getting to this report on Black Friday’s gig at Abilene. I wanted to post a sound file with the entry and I hadn’t found time to listen to the tracks. I was almost afraid to because Ken and I had such heavy colds. We were both doing legal drugs to take the edge off. Ken took some Sudafed and I went with the Advil.
Danny has a magical little room upstairs. And just like magic Dale and Myna showed up for our set. I hallucinated seeing Dale tuning a guitar at stage left while we were playing our set at the Scorgies thing but they couldn’t make that one. Dale and I played together for a couple years in early New Math and we did a gig with Myna’s band, Human Switchboard, and the rest is history. It is always good to see him.
Jack played guitar and bass clarinet with us, Bob was celebrating Liz’s birthday at ONE, and Ken played his electric bass instead of the stand up. The lineup switch, the room, the drugs and the Nod people shaped the sound of the evening. It felt out of our control. Peggi, though, was in full control and sounded better than ever.
The room could be both perfect and magical. Danny has to get a liquor license for the upstairs bar. NYS makes you get a separate license for each floor. Some one has to move the furniture out of the alcove where the low rise stage is. No furniture in that performance space. The Get Out The Vote posters should be history, as graphically interesting and successful as they are/were. The rest of the place is so timeless. And Danny needs to serve Guinness on tap. These demands will be in our rider the next time we play there.
Nod rocked the house downstairs. It was almost a perfect evening.
It will be a relief to play as Margaret Explosion tonight. The gig we did as Personal Effects required rehearsal time, stamia and earplugs. The night before Thanksgiving is usually a good night at the the Little. A woman from my high school class came to see the band when she was in town for our reunion and she asked if her husband could sit in with us on piano when they came back for Thanksgiving so we’ll see what happens.
Last night was my last painting class for the year. Lorraine Bohonos had some beautiful paintings near completion and Geri McCorrmick is breaking out of her concentric mandalas and Maureen Outlaw worked on the end stages of three fantasy scenes. I worked on a crime guy’s honkin’ neck all night. I still seem to spend a lot of time fumbling around trying to find a solution to a problem that I created. These kind of activities test my patience even though I know it is the process that I must learn to enjoy.
Margaret Explosion is a relief because it is all about the moment where Personal Effects was mostly about getting it right for the delivery.
We’ve had an ongoing short in the power supply for our old laptop and I wasn’t able to turn it on for the last two days so I took it to MacInTak on Clinton Avenue. They’re right across the street from the India House store in the same location where my grandfather had his grocery store. MacInTak is at the other end of the spectrum from the shiny Apple Store. They have about as many computers on display as the Apple Store does but in this case they are all vintage. Everything from the “toilet seat” G3 laptops to the G4 “Cube”, “bubble” I-Macs, G5 towers and every generation of I-Books. This place is family run just like my grandfather’s store was. But my grandfather never had a picture of Emperor Haile Selassie on the wall.
We sent “Blow Up” back to NetFlix today. Peggi and I had both seen it a long time ago but neither of remembered what it was all about. Now I know that’s because it was not about much and the characters are barely sympathetic but it was beautiful to look at. Someone took extra care in picking every shot in the movie with extraordinary attention to color and composition. It was a sensational mix of of old world Europe and swinging, mod London. Would that have been the director, Michelangelo Antonioni, or was there a cinematographer on the job? I’d like to thank that guy.
I feel asleep at some point and I was dreaming about the listening booths in the record store where Guy’s wife worked in Hitchcock’s “Strangers On A Train”. We saw that movie a few days ago. They had booths like that at Jay’s Record Ranch on Clinton Avenue in the sixties where you could check out the singles before plopping down your cash. The movie was still playing when I woke and the Yardbirds with a young Eric Clapton were playing at a party. I thought I was in Kevin Patrick’s blog where I had spent some time earlier in the day. I felt like I had just clicked on one of his mp3s and was now immersed in a whole new scene.
“Local Crime Face 01” oil on canvas by Paul Dodd 2008
I finally finished this guy’s nostrils. He’s another face from the Crimestoppers page in the Democrat & Chronicle. The painting happened really fast. I was just laying it in and it seemed like it was done so I stopped. But I knew the nostrils weren’t right so I repainted them and repainted them again. Then I set the painting aside for a few weeks. I took a fresh look and was not buying them.
I changed the color, I loosened up the edges, I made them less flat and they still weren’t right. Peggi had me tip my head back and she drew the shapes of my nostrils on a piece of junk mail. I changed the shape of these and the painting looked pretty good. Thank you Peggi. I dropped the painting off at RoCo for their Member’s Show. It opens on the first Friday of December.
I sorted my Scorgie’s Reunion photos while talking to Duane on the phone from Brooklyn. I put a about twenty five of them on the Scorgie’s site.
