Old biker bar on Lake Avenue in Rochester New York
Trish, who’s married to one of the letters in “LDR” down at the Char Pit in Charlotte, says they tried to burn this old biker bar building down but it didn’t work. It’s a few doors down from the LDR and it looks like a Hollywood set. This whole part of town is kind of funky but LDR was hoppin’ when we stopped by for a Friday fish fry.
Pete LaBonne is visiting. He played with Margaret Explosion on Wednesday and has been preparing his 24 album “Gigunda” set for a digital release, 320 variable bit mp3s with the original cover art. I put a track from 1994 below. It’s sort of rude.
We watched the T.A.M.I. show dvd Wednesday and then again last night over in Rick and Monica’s basement. That thing is exhilarating. Watching James Brown I was thinking about how the husband of a childhood friend of Peggi’s. He was a huge fan of the Detroit Red Wings and had a heart attack while watching one of their games. The doctor ordered him not to watch any more games.
Horse Rooster Goat Paintings at the Creative Workshop Gallery in Rochester, NY
Our painting class took a two week break and resumed last night. There is a new show up down there in the gallery called “This Is A Series.” Most of the paintings are in threes and I have some crime faces one of the walls. I particularly like these three.
We walked in the woods today in the pouring rain and we noticed that animals really don’t give a hoot about whether its raining or not. We saw a couple of ducks, colorful mail and a brown female and then a groundhog going about his business. We interrupted a deer who was grazing and then came out on the golf course. It was especially green. I took a photo of Peggi in her slicker. We have matching slickers. I found a golf ball with a Guinness logo on it. I took that as a sign of good luck.
Stella weighed eighteen pounds last year. This photo was taken back then. She couldn’t even clean her butt. I just put her on the scale. Actually I got on the scale with her in my arms while she meowed. And then I weighed myself without Stella. She weighs 12 and half pounds.
No secret to her diet. She’s an indoor cat and we only put a third of can out in the morning and then a quarter cup of dry out at night. We weren’t able to control her weight when Ornette was alive because he was an active outdoor cat. He’d push the door open and chow down and run back outside. So we had to have food on hand at all times. We miss him.
Stella goes out in the morning for a few minutes but if one the neighbors makes a noise she comes to the door demanding to be let in immediately. She still sleeps most of the day but if he is awake for two hours that would be twice as many waking hours as when she was fat. Despite the new profile we still call her “Stelly Belly” and “Butterball”.
Swans prepare nest in pond in Trott Lake at Durand
After reading the “They Gay?” article about pets I can’t be too sure exactly what is going on here but what I think we’re watching a male swan prepare the nest for his Mrs. He was yanking these dry weeds out by the roots and piling them up on the nest while his lady worked the material under her butt.
Spring is moving in so fast it is going to be over with before we know it. We took a walk early then knocked out a backlog of work. We did a print ad for the Bop Shop for the Jazz Fest brochure and we airbrushed a a photo of the Stone Tolan house for a brochure the Landmark Society is putting together. And we did a layout for a new website, our second shopping cart set-up with the Russians (X-Cart). They use funny names for portions of the site that you need to customize to make it your own. They call the nav bar the “Speed Bar”. And when you want to add your own html content to pages within the data base framework you go into the “Languages’ section. They charge for customer support so we spend hours duking it out rather than paying.
We had Easter dinner at my sister’s and played Wii Music with our nephews. Peggi played guitar and I played percussion on a wild version of La Cucuracha. We passed the iPad around and my father wants one. We knew how easy it was import photos from iPhoto and music from iTunes but we were astounded how easy it was to set up our email accounts when we tried syncing with another computer. I bought the $9.99 Pages app this morning so I can have a program to work in when I’m not online. And my brother-in-law hooked me up with an WFMU app for streaming wacky music. I’m listening to Liza Minelli tear up “Stormy Weather” as I write this. In fact I entered this post from my iPad.
Easter lamb to the slaughter at Palermo’s on Culver Road in Rochester
My grandfather was a butcher so there is something very comforting about this photo. I used to love seeing him behind the counter and he would always pull on the big tubes of liver-sausage out of the case and slice a few slabs for me. I stopped into Palermo’s to buy some olives. Of course I picked up a few impulse items like freshly made octopus salad. While I was studying the options I spotted the owner throwing a whole lamb on the cutting board and before I could get my camera out of my pocket he had cut it’s head off. That’s the head shown to the left up above.
We watched “L’âge d’or”, a Buñuel movie from 1930, last night and I fell asleep before the extras. It was kind of bizarre. This from IMDB: “This film was granted a screening permit after being presented to the Board of Censors as the dream of a madman. Opening at Studio 28 in Paris in October 1930, word spread about the film’s bizarre content. On the evening of 3 December 1930, the fascist League of Patriots and other groups began (halfway through the film) to throw purple ink at the screen, then rushed out into the lobby of the theater, slashing paintings by Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Man Ray.” It didn’t make it’s US premiere until 1979.
I woke before the alarm this morning. We don’t usually set that but today was the official launch of Apple’s iPad. We cashed in some credit card point for Best Buy certificates and we were at the store at 8:30 with a thermos of coffee. Some kids in the front of the line were there at midnight but there only about twenty five people in line when we showed up. A store employee told the crowd that UPS had been there at eight and there would be enough for everybody. A couple of Best Buy employees went out to the Apple store to buy theirs before work. We heard hundreds were in two lines out there.
We had one in hands by 10AM and then headed downtown to look at an art show we had missed last night, a painting by Enrique Mora that the Philips Gallery used in their First Friday ad really caught my eye. The gallery didn’t open until noon.
We had dinner with our friend and neighbor, Rick, and then raced downtown for the early show of Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer“. The is over two hours so started at 6:30. We met Monica in the lobby. She had just come from her yoga class. And we took sets down front. We were a little late so it was sort of confusing at first but then moved along effortlessly. Polanski has made some of favorite movies, Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, so was definitely not gonna be a “wait for Netflix.” He is a master in full control of this craft. Sparse but beautiful settings heighten the focus, rich characters whose performances stay with you when their parts have only a few lines and way of telling the story that lets all the movies that have gone before carry weight so you’re on the edge of your seat because you just know what’s coming and then something else happens. Ewan McGregor played a perfect ghost and even Pierce Brosnan was perfect.
We caught the second set of Miché and Scott Bradley at the Little and then headed over to Dick Storm’s 64th birthday celebration at the Flipside on East Main. Of course we all sang that McCartney song. And Jeff Spevak wrote about it all on the HerRochester page.
Margaret Explosion 50 Song Compendium to Live Dive
We’ve listened to a lot of live Margaret Explosion in the last month while we picked songs for this 50 Song Compendium to “Live Dive”. Once we settled on the fifty song we liked best we tried them out and in the last week bumped the sampling rate of the aiffs (wavs on the pc side) up to 320 variable bit and re-uploaded them. Even tweaked a few of the covers and launched the site today. We sent out a few emails and we’ll see if the server holds up. We’ve broken even with cd sales so now we’re giving away the store. A shrewd and bone headed marketing move.
These Christian warriors’ heads look like specimens on a mad scientist’s shelf. I was really taken by this collection in this morning’s paper. I’m planning on painting them. And it has been so much fun to watch the pope squirm. Almost as much fun as watching the Code Pink woman accost Karl Rove in a Beverly Hills bookstore.
We read a pretty enticing review of the T.A.M.I. show dvd in last weekend’s paper and then another by Jack Garner in the local paper. So we hopped online and dutifully ordered it from Amazon. Eleven bucks and we’ve already got our money’s worth out of it. We expected James Brown to be sensational (that’s a freeze frame shot of the crowd while he performed) and he was, but Lesley Gore was a knockout. Her version of “You Don’t Own Me” transcended the whole teen thing by a mile. The Supremes did too. Diana Ross was at the peak of her powers. The Stones were very cool and it was great to see Brian back with the Beach Boys but James Brown kicked ass.
Sunday was sort of nice day. We picked up Peggi’s mom and took a ride in the country ending up overlooking the lake down at Canandaigua. By the time we got down there though, it was raining. Couldn’t find Kelloggs. They must have torn that place down. So decided to go to El Rincon but when we pulled up front, the name had changed. That is not usually a good sign but in this case we were assured that the place was still in the family and as good as ever. Can’t remember what the new name is.
The place was really crowded so we ordered an appetizer as soon as we had our waiter’s attention. Ceviche, made with Talapia, lime juice, fresh purple onion, real avocado slices and thin slivers of fresh jalapeños. So fantastic we quickly put in an order for another. It took them about twenty minutes to get our Margaritas but the only one that noticed was Peggi’s mom. We ordered some chicken flautas to split and then some blue corn tortillas with a chocolate mole sauce made with almonds, walnuts and pistachios and covered with stringy Oaxacan cheese.
Chandler Travis Philharmonic at the Bop Shop in 2010
Chandler Travis Philharmonic played at the Bop Shop on Friday night and Ricky, the cross dressing drummer extraordinaire and Candler’s Incredible Casual bandmate, was back home in Cape Cod. Chandler has put more space in his arrangements which almost sounds impossible with six big guys in the band. He writes NRBQ/Colorblind James like rock/popsongs and has sweet voice but he shines as the evening’s mc in pajama pants and clown hats. He performed a beautiful song with words written by David Greenberger from the Duplex Planet. We talked to him after the show and he told us he has a third band that does a cover of Pete LaBonne’s “Pajama Pants Baby”. That would work.
Tiny horse (born five days ago) and mom
This little horse is less than week old and already running around like a miniature race horse. He may be a race horse someday because the three horses in the corral next to him compete at the track in Canandagua. His mom was being very protective and and didn’t want us to get too close so we continued on our way.
Spring Valley Finger overlooking marsh in Durand Eastman Par
We headed down the hill and over to Spring Valley where the mustard green is already covering the ground in the sunny spots. Not only is it invasive, it also gets a head start on the competition. We hung around on one of the ridges that dead end up there overlooking the marsh. The vegetation is just slightly more brown than grey at this point.
Most of Saturday was devoted to chopping up the big pine trees that fell on the street’s pool lot during that heavy snowfall. There was enough sun out there to get a burn so we felt especially warm in Rick and Monica’s living room on Saturday night for their house concert. Connie Deming dedicated a beautiful song called “Beautiful Boy” to her son who was sitting nearby and she told the crowd that the setting reminded her of a Joni Mitchell song. She proceeded to do a spot-on version of Ladies of the Canyon. Maria Gillard followed and sounded great. Like Wreckless Eric, she is full of personality and most enjoyable between songs. As she laughed at one of her own stories she told the crowd her uncle used to say, “No one has more fun than people.”.
Osteria Restaurant on Culver Road in Rochester, NY
Before Peggi began controlling her cholesterol levels with diet we would frequent the many Italian spots in and around Rochester. At some point we we started keeping track of our meals and the experience on the pages of the Refrigerator. Readers submitted quite a few of their own opinions as well but we fell behind with the updates. There is a substantial backlog folder to post and I promise to get there soon. For now I thought I would prepare an entry here and move it to the Refrigerator column at a later date.
I had been drooling over the picture of the fried the Calamari from City newspaper’s review of the Osteria Restaurant on Culver Road. In fact we cut it out and have it on our counter. This place is the very last establishment on Culver Road before it turns to meet Lake Ontario. We were there at sunset last night and enjoyed a spectacular view. This place was Fiorivanti’s for a number of years, another Italian place of course, and thankfully they didn’t mess with the funky ambiance. The owner and manager of Osteria used be to be the owner and manager La Trattoria up on East Ridge Road but they have switched hats.
When this place was Fiorivanti’s they didn’t have a liquor license so we called ahead to find out if we could still bring our own bottle of wine. They said that would be fine but there would be a fifteen dollar corkage fee. It’s hard to come out ahead with that deal especially with the type of wine we buy. Fiorivanti’s charged only a dollar to uncork your bottle. Probably why they went under.
The obligatory Padra Pio donation box was on the counter as we entered and every table was full but one. Pretty good for a Wednesday night. We ordered the cheapest red wine on the menu and the Calamari dish we saw in the paper as an appetizer. Their bread and olive oil were delicious and the Calamari arrived in no time. It included peas, green and Calamata olives, garbanzo beans and Italian parsley. It was sensational! Almost as good as Mario’s. We could have made a meal of it. We decided to split the shrimp/pasta/sun-dried tomato/zucchini special that our waitress described but she told us there would be a five dollar “plate sharing charge”. Peggi tried arguing that the Calamari was her order and the pasta dish was my order and this confused the waitress. She went in the back for a second and came back to say, “Never mind”. That dish too was spectacular but there was enough oil left over for another dish.
Chef Giustino Toppi came out to greet us after our meal and we told him everything was delicious. How many times do you think he has heard that? He is old so you better get down here quick.
Sparky stopped over this morning. I was working but still in my pjs. He had a new car h anted to show us. He told us we were gonna die when we saw it. I tried to think of what an unlikely Sparky vehicle would look like. I guessed, “a sports car?” “No.” “A van?” Sparky had a small mobile home that he bought one time but it was full of trouble. And over the years he has had everything from a Ford Escort to a a pick-up truck. He even bought our old Olds that came from Peggi’s father. He buys cars to entertain himself. He used to run a garage called “Sparky’s Shell” on Hudson and he loves to tinker. He was always jacking them up and rotating the tires or greasing the underside. His prize possession is his 1987 Chevy and rents a neighbor’s garage each winter to store it there until the salt is gone.
I got dressed and went out front to see what looked like a brand new car with a distinctive hood ornament. It was a 1997 Cadillac and it made perfect sense for this country gentleman. (He was born in Kentucky and got as far as fifth grade). I told him he deserves this car. I gave him a bucket of what we thought was copper but he told us it was brass. He picks up junk all the time and recycles aluminum and all sorts of metal. I’ve gone to Krieger’s junk yard with him many times and left with a few bucks.
Back in the house I called up a Google map of our old street. We went up and down both sides of the street talking about the old neighbors. Jack is an assisted living now and two gay guys bought his house. The two sisters on the end of the street sold and moved on. Helen is living with her daughter and her grandkids are living in the place. The Boykins are still there and out in their small yard all of the time. All these people were there the whole time we lived there. A very nice black lady bought Barb’s house. The yard in our old house looked a little overgrown but Sparky said Elizabeth is is keeping the place up fine.
I did really simple photo site for our nephew last night. He’s uploading photos to it right now. It’s a one page site with links to photos that display themselves in a slideshow script called shadowbox 3.0. I really like it because he can put large full screen Flickr size photos up there and if the browser window isn’t big enough it scales them down. The site took about two hours to construct.
I love coincidences. Yesterday I took a photo of Rochester’s long gone train station and today we went to work on Mark Corsi’s PosterArtUSA’s site today and he has some posters of the Art Deco New York Central Terminal in Buffalo. It was abandoned in 1975 but was never torn down, probably because the city couldn’t afford to do so. Recently a historic preservation group has brought it back to life. Mark’s site will have Xcart installed so people can buy Buffalo posters while he sleeps.
Now all we need is that high speed train between Rochester and Buffalo that everybody keeps talking about.
Grinnell’s Restaurant on Monroe Avenue in Brighton is a funny place. That is if you think funny is old school, solid, moderately priced, fine dining with no discernible ethnic overtones. (I don’t count Jewish as an ethnic group when it comes to food.)
Peggi’s mom loves the place so we returned tonight and each one of us ordered the Grouper Piccata special. They have a player piano here which was quiet tonight and most nights they have a piano player that stops by to play the standards. They have a pretty good bar crowd and plenty of single elderly people who stop by for their Early Bird nightly meal. They’re open seven nights a week so they pick up the slack on Sundays and Mondays when so many high end spots are closed.
They seem to rotate historic photos of Brighton from the Erie Canal days on. And tonight they had photos on loan from the Rush Rhees Collection at the UofR. I took a photo of the photo of Rochester’s old New York Central train station. It was designed by Claude Bragdon and then torn down in 1964 in some bone-headed urban renewal effort with ethnic overtones.
Our friend Rich used to write the obit column for The Herald Telephone in Indiana. It was about that time that I put it together that people actually died.
Friday’s obits really got us going. I didn’t realize I had been so manipulated back when I wanted to sleep with my Davy Crockett coonskin cap on. Turns out, with over 3000 Disney/Crockett toys on the market, most kids in America had the same desire. I don’t remember having any of the other products though.
On the same page, right below the Fess Parker obit was Alex Chilton’s. I loved the songs he sang in the Box Tops and bought those singles but never caught on to Big Star. We absolutely loved the Cramps first singles and I knew Alex Chilton’s name was on those as producer. In fact, Peggi drove down with some friends to Max’s Kansas City to see the Cramps during that time period. I was in the studio that night with New Math recording our first single with Howard Thompson behind the boards so I missed the show. And I knew our friend Pete LaBonne played with Alex and would regularly send him his own releases. He and Shelley visited Alex backstage at one of the recent Box Top reunion shows. I played a few gigs with “Pete’s Rock Band” with Bruce Eaton on bass. Buffalo Bruce is a big Big Star fan and wrote the 33 1/3 book on “Radio City”, Big Star’s second album. Bruce wrote the Chilton obit for Salon Magazine.
So now that he is gone, just what was he all about. We downloaded about ten songs from various blogs and put them them in our iTunes library. The songs were pop and grungy and country and bluesy and all over the map. “September Gurls” is stuck in my head. And then I remembered Pete had given us a solo Chilton lp called “Like Sherbert on Flies”. Since he doesn’t have either electricity or a record player he asked us to keep it for him. We played both sides of this particularly odd record. It sounds sort of like Pete’s “Antique Revolt” and I know how that recording went. Pete bought some big cans of malt liquor and instructed Arpad to roll the tape.
On the editorial page of today’s paper Paul Westerberg wrote a piece on his mentor called “Beyond the Box Tops. He talked about Big Star and how Alex went on to record more challenging and artistic records “Like Flies On Sherbert.”
We spotted this dead mole in the woods and and Steve Hoy called us on Friday to tell us his mom had died. I feel especially lucky to be alive.
Margaret Explosion records most nights but we don’t get around to listening to it all. I had a pile of cds on my desk that Peggi and I have been working our way through as we work away our lives. It’s not that dire but enough is enough! We selected eighteen more songs that we like, stuck a title on them and created a picture sleeve for the mp3.
If you’re planning on doing any psychedelics this weekend I would recommend “Burning Man”. The lights were dimmed in the Café and we recorded this. We were accompanying Rob Storms’ “Burning Man” video projection. Bob’s guitar is amazing.
Most of this snow is gone. I took this photo a few days ago. We were down there again today and found more giant Bud cans and we picked some Pussy-willows while we were at it. Those are 24 ounce cans. Luckily we found an old bag to put them in. A school bus passed us as we were heading back with an armload of cans today. We waved. This Budweiser guy is remarkably consistent not only in the brand he drinks but in exactly where he throws his empties. A compulsive drunk.
I spent most of the day redrawing a three dimensional wagon wheel-like graphic for a client. It was probably generated in PowerPoint but they wanted to use it at poster size so I redrew it in Illustrator. Type on a curve, a million callouts, one of those crazy organizational charts that make your eyes glaze over.
Yogi tea bag fortune read “Empty your self and let the universe fill you.” I like that one. Most of them are annoying. I roughed up a painting in class and my teacher commented, “That guy is looking a lot more casual”. Made me realize what an important quality that is.
I’m Irish (and English) but I had to look up Saint Patrick when we got back home. You’d think he was some sort of pagan patron saint of debauchery. Turns out he was a Celt so I guess he walks a fine line.
I asked Peggi to take this photo of the guys in the booth next to us. I never would have got the same expression that she is capable of eliciting. We walked over to Shamrock Jack’s for lunch, our tradition on Saint Patty’s Day. When we lived in the city we would just walk to Carroll’s at the corner but out here we walk through the woods and part of the park and then through a funky neighborhood down near the lake that reminds us of Bloomington to get to Shamrock Jack’s. The little pockets of snow looked ridiculous in 55 degrees.
We each wore the only green clothes we have but they don’t come close to the toxic green that most revelers wear. The place was packed at noon. We could hardly hear each other. The music was all thump, thump and then a guy with a guitar started playing goofy folk ditties. After his first song he announced, “Drink up and I’ll sound better”. One of them was stuck in our heads for the way home but I can’t remember it now, thank god. An infomercial was playing on a tv above our booth, featuring Christie Brinkley and Chuck Norris on outdoor exercise equipment. I was mesmerized by the surrealness of it all.
Everybody has Guinness these days. Carroll’s used to have old guys playing accordion and bagpipe players and the Pogues on the juke box. Stuff that would have made Saint Patrick proud.
Pete and Shelley live in a dead zone and they like it that way. There are no cell towers near by and the mountains block the distant ones. There’s no electricity or running water either so well meaning family members give them battery operated toys. Last time we were up there I took this photo of Pete preparing food with a head lamp. And we came home with some coasters that Shelley’s sister gave them.
I read a small piece in our local paper (most of the pieces are small) about the government’s efforts to provide Internet access to all Americans and much faster connections to those of us who already have it. The article finished by saying the FCC was facing stiff opposition from broadcasters. So what are we to think about the Time Warner arrangement in this area where a giant media company controls our internet access? That’s an open question.
We switched to Time Warner’s digital phone service a couple of years ago and it has been pretty reliable. When our internet connection goes down it is usually just confused so I reboot the cable modem and routers and we’re back in business. Last week though that routine didn’t work. I picked up the phone to call Time Warner and it was dead too. I called Time Warner on a phone company land line and only got a recording saying they were “experiencing difficulties”. (I remember when the tv used to do that) Without internet access our small company ground to a halt. The rush revisions to a job we were working on couldn’t get through. We took a walk.
The next day our lawyer called from San Francisco. We were chatting and the line went dead. This usually happens when someone is on a cell phone and the signal is dropped but this time it was phone and internet problems in SF. Luckily we had already covered important matters like pre-ordering the iPad and finishing “Willmaker”, the 2006 Nolo publication that walks you through creating a will. Fortune magazine says “Willmaker is such an easy-to-use program that users may never need to look at the manual.” Sounds pretty easy and I committed to finishing the project but I can’t find the Quicken PC cd that came with the book/manual. I want to go on record saying “I leave everything to Peggi”!
Jaffe sat in with Margaret Explosion at our last gig and Peggi and I felt like the sound got to crowded and the conversation was all run-on sentences. It’s not Jaffe’s fault, it’s just a delicate thing. We thought the night pretty much sucked until we heard the recording. Funny how perception seems to carry so much weight.
