PopWars – Page 204 – Coke vs. Pepsi ~ that sort of thing.

November 25, 2007August 30, 2019

Dangerous Curves

Edward Weston Nude in Weston show at the Getty

LAX had free wireless access but we didn’t have any time to kill. We were ten minutes into our trip to the airport when Peggi realized that she had forgotten her jacket with her house keys and drivers license in the pocket. So we waited by the side of the road for our brother-in-law to speed the jacket to us.

Now in Chicago I have the option of joining the Boingo Wireless network here for $6.95. Forget about that. I’m not that wired. We are traveling with my mother-in-law and she did some sort of frequent flier upgrade with the tickets so we sat up with the fat cats in first class. Plenty of legroom, free drinks and and a hot meal. There is a thriving class distinction in this country. We read the NYT and I dove back into “On Photography.” I am really enjoying Sontag. “Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents’ pots and pans — the used things, warm with generations of human touch. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A feather weight portable museum.” That from 1977 and “photography itself increasingly reflects the prestige of the rough, the self-disparaging, the offhand, the undisciplined — the “anti-photograph.”

This will be a nice addition to the Funky Signs section on the Refrigerator. This car looks like it is built to handle the curves in the Hollywood Hills.

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November 24, 2007August 30, 2019

Forecast: Haze

We checked the LA weather online before leaving Rochester and it said, “Haze.” We woke this morning to news that the Santa Ana winds were responsible for new fires in Malibu last night. We took a long walk in the hills across Beverly Glen canyon from where we were staying. Walked by Rod Stewart’s house, Frank’s former pad and Barbra’s palace and then climbed the hills to 10050 Cielo Drive where the Tate LaBianca murders happened in 1969.

Smoke from the fires in Malibu drifted through the canyons in LA this morning. This is how it looked out our bedroom window.

We are having dinner at the Getty with my in-laws. There is a traveling Weston photography show there, two outstanding Rembrandts and a beautiful Goya bullfight painting. We’ve been here before. We’ll be up there for the hazy sunset too.

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November 23, 2007August 30, 2019

Orange County

We watched Orange County last night with Jack Black, Catherine O’Hara and Colin Hanks as family and Schuyler Fisk as the girlfriend. The tagline for the 2002 movie is, “It’s not just a place. It’s a state of mind” and sure enough this film could have taken place anywhere. It is a very entertaining slice of life. Five stars. Perfect fair for a family gathering. My wife’s mom was the only one not laughing. We took a 4 mile walk in the Will Rogers State Historic Park. It was a beautiful day for a walk but I think it’s always a beautiful day in California so that’s not saying much.

Will Rogers Park looks like all scrub brush but there are some beautiful trails that hug the hillsides and keep you out of the blazing sun.

Our nephew, Andrew, asked if we wanted to go the the Hammer Museum on the UCLA campus. We saw a show of Francis Alys’ work—mostly video installations of his performance art called, “The Politics of Rehearsal.” An old red VW bug tries to drive to the top of a steep, dusty hill in Tijuana only to roll back and try again while a band stops and restarts a song. A stripper continually removes her clothes and puts them back on while Alys is heard off camera discussing Mexican politics. And in a collaboration with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alys uses rehearsal footage from a scene in Inarritu’s film, Amores Perros, along with outtakes, alternate camera shots and the final take to again illustrate his zen-like idea of enjoying the ride and the opportunities for renewal instead of focusing on closure.

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November 22, 2007August 30, 2019

Beginner’s Mind

Andrew with his medium format Kodak camera

I fell asleep at nine or midnight NY time and then woke up at six (LA time) and read my nephew’s ” Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” book for a few hours before heading downstairs for coffee. I love it. “For Zen students, a weed is a treasure.”

We walked up Bel Air Drive today until the road ended. And then we walked downhill to Beverly Glen and then back up again. It is a beautiful day. I just checked in Rochester and watched a camera animation of the sun going down over Bishop Kearney High School. We had our first snowfall there. Peggi made Challa bread with the kids when they were young and it has become some sort of tradition on Thanksgiving in the Meyer household. So she had them braid the dough again and it’s in the oven. “Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.”

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November 21, 2007August 30, 2019

Elements of Erotic Feeling

We transfered planes in Chicago and found our new seats but one of them was missing. Only the metal frame was there. Apparently someone had puked in that seat and they were replacing it. The Mexican attendant asked if we wanted her to spray a product on the arm rests to combat the odor. We decided to stick with the faint scent of barf. The oversize couple in front of us put their seats back immediately on take off and our quarters lost half their cubic space. The guy bought a pizza on board and his wife had a big sandwich and a macaroni salad on her tray table in a matter of minutes. The stewardess served coffee and gave us a napkin that read, “More legroom than any other US airline.” I asked if this was a joke and she said, “Totally.”

"More legroom than any other US airline” — “More legroom than any other US airline”

The two in-flight movies were so lame we could glance up every fifteen minutes or so without the audio and not miss a thing. My wife was reading “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho and I was reading Susan Sontag’s rant, “On Photography.” “Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world—all these elements of erotic feeling are affirmed in the pleasure we take in photographs.”

We took a walk in Bel Air and I grabbed this poignant shot of tourists on a star hunt.

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November 20, 2007August 30, 2019

Free Range Turkeys

These guys were waltzing around our neighborhood. We are headed out to LA for Thanksgiving in the Hollywood Hills. My wife’s sister will be doing the bird but the turkey is always my least favorite part of this meal. My favorite part used to be the stuffing but I now I like the Brussels sprouts if they are on the menu. I really don’t care for football either but I am thankful for the harvest.

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November 19, 2007August 30, 2019

Bang Bang

Billy Bang performing at the Water Street Music Hall in Rochester, NY

Billy Bang was back in Rochester last week. He calls this place the sixth borough. He had a new drummer this time but Bang introduced him as someone who had played with him on recordings in the past. They did a beautiful version of KIA MIA one of Bang’s Viet Nam albums and a song that Billy wrote for Sun Ra. The first time we saw Billy Bang was out at the old Red Creek when he was playing violin in Sun Ra’s band. This was somewhere in the seventies.

Chopsy at Water Street *Music Hall in Rochester, NY*

We have seen Bang so many times over the years. He was in the Bop Shop atrium with Kahill El’zabar and once more with his own group. He has appeared twice at at the Rochester Jazz Fest and we saw him at the old Montage, downtown. Then he performed live with Garth Fagan Dance out at a Greece High School. And then he was at the Water Street last year. He is always fantastic but more so on some nights. He’s best in a small setting when you are right on top of him. He eggs his band on and they try to keep him grounded. On a good night he will just tear the roof off the place. Billy Bang finished his set with a version of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.”

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November 18, 2007August 30, 2019

Who Is Faust?

I first met Brad Fox in high school. His father had paint by number clown paintings all over the house. Brad’s parents were getting a divorce and they were trying to figure out what was up with their son. They had Brad take a bunch of tests and one of the questions was, “Who is Faust?” “What does that have to do with intelligence?” Brad would ask. I didn’t know who Faust was either and I never found out until I saw F.W. Murnau’s 1926 formerly silent film, Faust, with music by the Willem Breuker. This is a match made in heaven. Willem Breuker Kollektief has been to Rochester at least ten times in the past. Willem can’t travel with the band anymore because of his heath but his band sounded fantastic in the Bop Shop atrium last week.

William Breuker Kollektief at the Bob Shop in Rochester, NY performing music from Faust

Their next stop was the Dryden Theater at the George Eastman House where they were performing the score to Faust live. I wasn’t able to make that show so I bought the dvd of the movie from the band. The movie is incredibly rich looking for an old black and white. The set designs are stunning. The short ceilings and small doors frame the actors like a fanciful puppet show. The special effects are dreamlike and artful. This movie is timeless and holds up to anything made today. Willem Breuker’s score covers a lot of ground and is equally timeless. The band is so musically fluent, they are able to turn on a dime and keep up with the devil in the midst of the plague and a metaphysical conflict between good and evil.

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November 17, 2007August 30, 2019

The Butterfly Knot

Margaret Explosion played a party after the screening of Brian Strine’s film, The Butterfly Knot. It was a pretty cool gig. It’s always good if the band has a good time. Bob Martin was out of town so Jack Schaefer sat in with us on bass clarinet and guitar. The party house was perfectly funky. It’s been around since the fifties and used to be called, “Valley Echo.” We made a note to rent this place for a party. Matt Pfohl, the film’s co-star sat in on drums and rocked the house.

Ken Frank on bass, Matt Pfohl (star of Butterfly Knot) on drums and Peggi Fournier on soprano sax. — Ken Frank on bass, Matt *Pfohl* (star of Butterfly Knot) on drums and Peggi Fournier on soprano sax.

The movie was shot in the Thousand Islands and cuts a deep groove. The soundtrack is in flux while the contracts get ironed out but it is all seventies stuff like Gram Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris doing the Bee Gee’s “To Love Somebody.” Blind Faith and Nick Drake were in there for the screening but may have been dropped by now. John Martyn has a track and his wife, Beverley sets the mood for the pot scene. I guess the ending is in flux too because they passed out questionnaires trolling for endings.

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November 16, 2007August 30, 2019

Mug Shots

The girl who ran the cash register at Red and White on Park Avenue asked me if I was going to the David Bowie show that night at the War Memorial. I remember feeling guilty that I wasn’t planning on it. It was the first stop on his “Station To Station” tour. The next morning’s paper had a front page story about the felony pot bust that snagged Bowie, Iggy Pop and Rochester’s Chi Wah in a hotel room with the weed. Iggy didn’t play here or anything. I started a job that year as a graphic artist in the Crime Analysis Unit of the Rochester Police Department. My job entailed pulling mug shots for flyers in an effort to match perpetrators who lived in specified areas of the city with the crimes that were occurring in those areas. Bowie’s photo had recently been snatched but the record was still there.

David Bowie performed in Rochester, New York in 1976 and was arrested for pot possesion after the show.

ZiggyStarBust is auctioning that photo now on eBay (Current bid US $2,225.00). He says his sick brother found the photo in the trash at an estate sale of a retired Rochester Police Officer and every penny will go to his brother. He sent the photo to the Smoking Gun first to get a buzz going. Click the photo for a blow up.

My job with the cops lasted one year and and they all lost interest in the project so I was left reading the New Yorker and hanging around. I got so anxious waiting for the day to end during this period that my doctor prescribed valium. I did develop a fascination for mugshots and have painted quite a few over the years.

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November 15, 2007August 30, 2019

It’s Good For You

I fell asleep with an unfinished glass of Guinness next to my bed and then drank the warm stuff in the morning. A sweet fruity flavor had been released. I think prune juice may be one of its secret ingredients.

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