Beautiful Crime Scene
You can the smell the woods again because the ground has thawed. Deer, turkey and coyote tracks run in all directions. Hawks and giant woodpeckers work the airspace. Snow topped fallen trees make the valleys look like Franz Kline paintings. Life and death issues are played out on this stage even in the depths of winter. We came across this scene this morning where the blood had crystalized on the snow.
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I H-art Ida!
Temperatures near 40 for the last week have put a real damper on cross country skiing. We did some yard work yesterday and even had our wheelbarrow out. But I spent most of the day in the basement working on a few paintings. I know I got way out ahead of myself on this recent batch. Even if I know the bast procedure I can’t help but throw a monkey wrench in.
Weekend paper had an article about Ida Applebroog who has a sensational new show opening tomorrow night at Hauser & Wirth in New York. I wish I could be there. I spent quite a bit of time at her website and fell in love with her work. Hint, hint, hint.
2 CommentsFlaming Bananas
After meeting with our financial adviser we had dinner at Peggi’s mom’s apartment in the Bistro. This is my favorite restaurant in the city. Is not open to the public but I suppose you could eat here if you said you were thinking about checking in to the Senior Living facility. We had a delicious portabella mushroom dish and peppermint tea for dessert. The table next to us ordered the flaming banana dish and we all cheered when Tracy torched them.
The Bistro’s walls are decorated with framed posters of black and white French café photos and they set a perfect mood of civilized escape. We had just watched a 2003 film on Henri Cartier Bresson last night called “An Impassioned Eye.” He is my favorite photographer by a long shot. His photos are full of life and perfectly composed. They feel sculptural to me. They read at a glance and from a distance as well. He spoils you. He is a master.
Back in Peggi’s mom’s apartment I took control of the remote an we hopped back and forth from the English Premier League’s Everton vs. Arsenal game to America’s Funniest Home Videos. Did you know Paul Dodd is “England’s Number One Soccer Yob?
1 CommentBetter To Ask For Forgiveness
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.”
2 CommentsPandora’s Box
We stopped by Canaltown Roasters to pick up 10 pounds of “Rochester’s Choice” coffee for 4D and spotted Fountain Blue defiantly standing on the city block that Wegman’s wants. I had just seen the newest plans that call for a monster store that will surround this tiny building because the current owner can not be bought. Good for him. Around the corner we couldn’t resist stopping into the Ravioli Shop. I love their baguettes and Peggi likes their semolina bread so we bought both. We tried to buy some mushroom raviolis but they were sold out so we picked up some pumpkin ravioli.
I went down to paint last night but their wasn’t any music on my iPod because I had copied over the iTunes Music Library.xml file with the one from our laptop and my old playlists were gone. I checked out Pandora. I hadn’t been here since I first bought the Touch. It remembered me saying I liked Sun Ra so I clicked the link and it played Miles tracks from Jack Johnson and A Silent Way, early Ornette, Archie Shepp, Yusef Lateef, Eric Dolphy and even Joe McFee. About every tenth track was from Sun Ra and that’s about the way all music stations should be. Why did I ever buy all this music and who need’s iTunes? It was a little humiliating to see how predictable I am. The people at the Pandora genome project really have my number.
1 CommentBack In The Saddle
These guys bailed me out by installing a new hard drive in my iMac. I suppose I could have figured out how to install a new drive and maybe even put in a bigger one but you have to take the glass screen off and the procedure looks pretty messy. Besides I had six months left on a three year AppleCare (like ObamaCare for computers) program that I had never used so this was all paid for. When I booted the machine it went through the welcome in many languages routine with the hip hop music and then asked if I wanted to restore from a Time Machine back-up. I did and it all came back, the desktop photo (wallpaper) that I took from the balcony of the Getty in LA, my docs and apps as they were, and even the stuff that was in my trash. My father just called and said he corrupted a large “Pages” file. I told him to go into Time Machine and bring it back from the dead. Peggi made Duane’s Faux Duck recipe for dinner, Mun-Cha’i-Ya (Peking Vegetarian Roast Duck in a can), and now we’re back in the saddle.
I found a copy of Monday’s New York Times in our mailbox this morning along with the local paper. That set me back awhile. It was a half price come on for daily delivery and it sounds pretty civilized but what about work? Speaking of avoiding work, we skied through the woods and then along the ridge on the west side of Eastman Lake in Durand. We stopped a bunch to look around and I felt that snow euphoria come over me. You know how you feel perfectly comfortable, probably near numb, when it’s only 15 degrees or so and you just want to lie down in the snow? We used to do this as kids in a snow fort or a big bank and I did it up in the mountains once and lost the car keys so those days are over. But I dig the dreamy sensation.
We’ve been checking out the snowshoe people, watching how they just walk right up the side of a steep hill they want to and how their big footprints just dart off the trail in all directions. Snowshoes are in are future. Won’t have to worry about going out of control on our skis and doing one of those violent smack downs. I think we might need special shoes to strap the snowshoes on so this might get complicated. Maybe next year.
1 CommentTime Machine
The spinning color wheel that has been haunting me for the last week was an indication of hard drive failure. At least I think it was the hard drive. It got so all I got was a snowy screen. I was concerned that the the system was corrupt and that maybe my Time Machine backups would also be compromised but Marco at the Apple Store assured me that I would be able to do a full restore when I get my iMac back. I should have just looked at the Time Machine folder on my back up drive and I wouldn’t have lost sleep last night because all the files are there. I hadn’t really poked around in there because I pictured it all compressed and unreadable.
When Marco lifted my iMac out the box he spotted the small black and white photo of Peggi, sitting behind her Farfisa and in front of a Vox amp, that I had stuck on top of the Apple logo at the bottom of my screen. He said he was a musician too. He played with friends while going to school in Ithaca but hadn’t hooked up with anyone to play with since moving here. The Apple store was mobbed and they were running about twenty five minutes late at the Genius Bar. The place was packed and I felt like I was in China with all the busy workers running around in blue t-shirts swiping credit cards in their PDAs for the well heeled shoppers. A kid was holding a seminar in the middle of the showroom. Six middle aged students sat on stools at table with their iPhones and laptops. They were learning how to sync the two.
We stopped at Talbot’s on the way home and Peggi returned the sweater she got from my mom for Christmas. Peggi always says my mom has great taste in clothes but this sweater didn’t fit her body type. She found a suitable replacement and picked up an extra top. I found a comfortable chair to sit down in and I noticed that I was wearing the shirt that my mom gave me this year. They had no WiFi in the store but they were playing great music, all black pop, two Michael Jackson tunes and a great cover of “Some Kind of Wonderful”, a song by the 1960’s Rochester band, Soul Brothers Six, later covered by Grand Funk Railroad.
Leave a commentMan Child Mayor Of Durand
Saint Francis of Assisi may have taken a vow of poverty but he seems to be diggin’ his Russian style hat, his mink wrap and whatever that small white animal is in his hands. We pass this redwood chainsaw sculpture over near where the bulldozer guy came through the woods.
The one foot or so of fresh snow is enough of a cushion for us to try the big bobsled like run at Durand so we headed over there on our skis. Peggi said, “We haven’t seen the mayor yet this year,” just as we spotted the man child with an air mattress mounted to a big plastic sled with small British and American flags on the back end and a radar gun mounted to the front end. He had just cracked open a can of Labatt’s Blue and he told us he had reached a speed of 18 miles an hour on his last run. He said he was thinking about getting a “helmet cam”.
2 CommentsCache In The Trash
Bitter cold and lots of snow – just the way we like it. The cold part keeps the snow in top notch condition. We skied up to the top of the ridge in Spring Valley and stood up there for a few minutes in silence.
I called Apple today because why not? One of my machines is still under warranty and it was acting up. Hanging up, actually, and they had me unplug the computer and all peripherals and then restart which resets my System Management Controller. I plugged everything back in and it worked – for a while. I had a hunch it was my USB hub because it would disconnect my external drives every once in a while. So I called Apple back asked if it was OK to plug a hub into my keyboard which then goes USB to the computer and they confirmed that that was my problem. The technician also told me to go into my User/Library and dump my “Caches” folder. “Drag the whole thing to the trash.” They suggested that I do that once a moth to speed up the performance of my machine.
3 CommentsDrawbacks Of A Healthy Lifestyle
I first became aware of kumquats while watching a WC Fields’ (“It’s a Gift“) with Joe Barrett when we were kids. Kumquats don’t grow around here but they are plentiful in Wegmans right now. We skiied for a few hours and took a kumguat break up at the lake. I love these things but I suspect they are bad for my teeth. Although maybe I don’t have to worry so much about my teeth anymore now that you can grow new ones. Joel sent me this link. We stopped in to visit our neighbor today and he was lamenting how all his friends are gone. We’ve heard this rap from him many times but this time he coupled it with how he never smoked or drank or used any stimulants like coffee or tea. We could really see the drawbacks of a healthy lifestyle.
Leave a commentFloating Dreamscapes
We walked through the woods with our neighbors, Rick and Monica, and their dogs. We came out on the gold course and spotted this guy swinging at a dayglo orange ball. The temperature dropped overnight and we got about ten inches of snow so today we skied up to the lake with Olga. We hooked up with Brian Williams later on and I helped him with his computer. He had the same problem my father had with his iPhoto library getting too big for his computer only Brian’s problem was with his iTunes folder getting too big his computer. I wish I could find someone to help me with my php/mysql problems.
The Democrat & Chronicle’s Jack Garner reviewed our new cd over the weekend.
MARGARET EXPLOSION: LIVE DIVE. Rochester’s most unique band offers a new collection of live tracks, recorded over four years at various local venues. ME is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea (and what sort of artist would ever want to be?). They play spacey, floating dreamscapes with smart improvisational skill, carefully listening to each other as they move forward with their own slices of mercurial, musical mood. I’m reminded of some of the Scandinavian free jazz one would hear on ECM Records over the years. Most of the tracks are relatively abstract. One cut, though, offers what surely must be the most offbeat ode to a deceased artist. Who would have thought they’d create a tune called “Sleep Michael Jackson?” — Jack Garner
It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This
Our nephew sent us a postcard from Marfa Texas. The card is a color polaroid glued to a piece of cardboard, a shot he took of a building there with a sign on it that read “Sun Ra Building.” The note on the back was typed (with a typewriter). He is decidedly “old school” and I am jealous. Maybe it’s just a y2kX reaction.
Roberta Smith had a great article in Friday’s NY Times Weekend Arts section, entitled “Time, the Infinite Storyteller“, encouraging New Year’s readers to “take refuge in art.” She more or less suggested wandering in the Met and letting the works of art mark the old and formulate the new. She started with works created in 1353 BC and finished by talking about painting. It “is also good for exploring all-too-real forms of psychic time, as in Philip Guston’s aptly titled “Stationary Figure” of 1973. It shows said figure in bed, prostrate — paralyzed really — with a bad case of night sweats or racing thoughts: wide awake, he smokes and stares, at the clock, the bare light bulb, the black sky visible through his window.”
Ken brought his big bass to the Little on Wednesday and it sounded amazing. I fully expected Pete LaBonne to surprise us and show up at the gig even though he emailed that it was too cold in the mountains to leave. The place was packed and the band sounded good as a foursome. Jeanne Perri was there with Trish from the LDR. They brought us a a bottle of a Caravella that Jeanne said was the rage in Italy. It was in a bag that lit up so we displayed it on Peggi’s amp.
I stacked the iTunes deck for New Year’s Eve with Pete LaBonne and Dreamland Faces but it was almost too loud to hear the stereo. The kids kept telling me to turn it up so I cranked it and some guests went in the the other room to escape. I had a separate list ready for when people started dancing and I may have switched to that prematurely. Chris Schepp asked me if I had any music by white guys? I put on Marvin Gaye’s “A Funky Space Reincarnation.” John, Maureen’s friend, told me he had “a perfect palette” and I was trying to imagine what that meant. Someone brought “Blue Moon” beer and I didn’t even get the connection until today. We had more beer left over after the party than when we started. I found two double A batteries in our compost and we had ten empty quart bottles of seltzer when we were done. George Jones’ “Once You’ve Had The Best” came on about three o’clock and Brian Williams shouted “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This.”
4 CommentsiEatPhotos
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.
1 CommentWhite Boy
My favorite part of Christmas was watching our nephews play “Guitar Hero” while our nieces danced on the furniture. Kids and the avatars bring new life to old songs like “Play That Funky Music” (White Boy) and the Queen/Bowie “Under Pressure”. And I really dug the chick on drums. I was talking to Frank DeBlase at the Bop Shop Christmas party and he told me it’s hard to do if you know how to play guitar.
Chris Schepp used to have a band called “The Floating Anvils”. It figures there was a real heavy metal band named “Anvil”. “The Story of Anvil” worked its way to the top of our Netflix list. I can’t remember who recommended it. Maybe Rich? The movie is almost too real. It gets uncomfortable but we hung in there because Anvil are such sweet guys.
1 CommentDouble Bonus Days
The band was hoppin’ on Wednesday night at the Little and we made the double bonus. We sold six cds and won some new fans. Mike Allen took me out to his car at break time to play some new arrangements of songs he plans to perform. He had recorded keyboard and tone generator bass lines. They were snippets but the essential parts of the songs and here he was singing live over those instrumental parts while in the drivers seat, head back and eyes closed. He did a jazzy version of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ and merged it with a blues tune so the lyric veered into a guy catching his woman (Mommy) making it with another guy. I was knocked out.
John Gilmore made a copy of the Dylan Christmas album for us. I’m afraid Bob has gone soft in the head because the playing and arrangements are so stock they put a spotlight on the Bard’s croak. His “Who Stole the Kishka” version of “Must Be Santa” is the only decent track. I read a review of “The Jazz Loft Project” somewhere and ordered it for Christmas. I dove into it this morning and love it. In the mood, I was playing a Charlie Parker lp that Roy Sowers loaned us and Peggi’s mom asked, “Is this Christmas music?” Peggi said “Yes” without flinching.
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Ho Ho Ho
We might even do a Christmas tune at tonight’s Margaret Explosion gig. Stop by the Little if you’re out.
Leave a commentPlans That Never Happened
We used the Barnes & Noble gift card that our investment advisor gave us to buy the “I Slept With Joey Ramone” book for Duane for Christmas. A virtual regift. And then walked over to the big Wegmans to buy some Chinese take to eat with Peggi’s mom. When we got to her apartment she was watching Anthony Bourdain. I had never seen the show but Peggi told me that her mom had a wild crush on him. He went to Baltimore, Detroit and Buffalo last night and I really liked the show. It was a lot of fun to eat to.
I know he was just in Rochester but if he comes back he should do a segment down at Vic & Irv’s. Our friend Duane got in town today and he helped us shoot some photos of John Gilmore’s paintings and then we went down to the lake for dinner. Vic & Irv’s is every bit as colorful and good as any of the places Bourdain stopped in last night. The chef was wearing shorts and a t-shirt advertising their remodeling plans the never happened. I asked if I good get a photo if it.
2 CommentsGluttony Calls
Winter is just getting started and yet the days will get longer and the sun will start to move higher in the sky tomorrow. The “pagan” solstice is reason enough to celebrate but then the early Christians had to glom on their agenda and now it seems like the whole US economy is depending on the Santa Claus crap. Although they deserve it the Catholics resent the Christmas toy invasion. I offer my favorite Christmas story as proof. My first grade teacher, a nun at Saint John’s on Humboldt Street, asked for a show of hands on “How many kids still believe in Santa Claus?”
Dancing to Bobbie Henry and the Goners at their Christmas show on Saturday night at Abilene was a perfect holiday celebration. That would have been enough but gluttony calls. Better loosen your seat belt.
Leave a commentA Good Night’s Sleep
A lot of whacky things seem to happen in Greece, a western suburb of Rochester. Bush visited the ideal community when he was trying to privatize Social Security. The former police chief is on trial and a couple of cops were busted for forced sex. Roderick Scott of Baneberry Way shot a 17 year old kid while he was trying to break into a neighbor’s truck. The kid was drunk and high and Scott claims he was “coming at me” so he shot him with his “legally permitted” pistol in self defense. Why didn’t he just stay in the house until the cops came?
We checked the paper this morning to find out if the “Bulldozer Guy” was convicted and he was but then we got stuck on this Greece story. We even listened to the 911 tapes. The story sort of got under our skin because when we were threatened by Jagger AGAIN, on our walk, it crossed both our minds that we could blow the dog away in self defense if we had a legally permitted weapon.
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