Coke vs. Pepsi ~ that sort of thing.
My mother called to make plans with Peggi for driving out to our niece’s shower tomorrow. She said they were headed to a pool part at my cousin’s house this afternoon and she was afraid it was going to rain. I said “Let me check the weather” and I went to “Weather Underground. Most of our weather seems to come from Toronto so I think they will be safe for another few hours. I go to Weather Underground because it sounds subversive.
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I wasn’t going to take a picture of these orange shelves in their obsessed with state until I saw the way our Hoosier Boy box looked on them. The box was on the way to the trash after all these years. I had electrical parts in it or something. We had this box since Bloomington. It reminds me of the tomatoes we grew in southern Indiana. I’d start with one stake and then another on the same plant and by the end of the season I’d have five stakes holding up the same overloaded plant. Of course the summers there were so hot and humid they would take the life right out of a person. That is unless you were hanging out at the quarries.
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These shelves from our garage were full of junk when moved in. We piled our junk in front of them and couldn’t find anything in the heap. So after five years we decided to sort it all out, the old door hinges, motor oil, jars of nails and the industrial strength velcro.
I emptied the shelves and brought them out into the yard so I could even up the lines. I reworked the shelving and supports so they line up with one another. I know this is a bit obsessive but they looked like they had been put together by a madman. I can deal with the bright orange but I at least had to straighten out the site lines before I rehang them.
It only two two nights to do this. Not really worth an “After” shot.
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We’ve had a generous amount of rain this summer, not enough to keep you indoors but enough so we haven’t had to water the garden. And there has been just the right amount to produce a wide variety of mushrooms in the woods. We’ve seen the ones that look like donuts and the brilliant orange ones that that woman ate and – I can’t remember if she died but she got in the paper for eating them. The ones above look like tropical coral.
We live vicariously through our friends and neighbors, Rick and Monica. They take vacations and we enjoy those. Tonight they went bowling over at that place that has only six lanes on Merchants Road.
We stopped down at the pool today after our walk and we were talking to one of the neighbors about the new people that have moved onto our street. We told him we had met them yesterday but neither Peggi or I could remember what the guy’s name was. Our neighbor set us straight. He too had talked to them the day before. They moved here from Reno and our neighbor heard that the woman telecommutes to work somewhere in the bay area. He asked us if we telecommute. Peggi said, “I guess so, we never leave the house.” I am still trying to imagine what telecommuting is.
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Roman Polanski made some of my favorite movies (Knife in the Water, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant, Chinatown) and one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen (The Fearless Vampire Killers). We had “Repulsion” here for a days and it looked and sounded great. Chico Hamilton did the soundtrack and it’s a big part of the sixties action. Now that I’ve gotten rid of my cds I might try to track that soundtrack down. The dvd (from Netflix) would not play through part of the movie. It froze and then jumped ahead and we couldn’t reverse it. We tried sneaking up on the bad spot and watched the early scenes about five times in the process. They were so good we didn’t complain to Netflix or anything.
This situation came up tonight where I threw a ringer and the shoe landed under a leaner that Rick had. We weren’t sure how to score it so we gave Rick two and me three. I have to look up whether one cancels out the other. Last one thrown scores? I’ll report back.
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I’m reading William Corbett’s memoir of Philip Guston where Philip Guston is reading Isaac Babel. “Comrades let us not fool ourselves: this is a very important right (the right to write badly), and to take it from us is no small thing. Let us give up this right, and may God help us. And if there is no God, let us help ourselves”. Guston cherished going out on a limb. Isaac Babel was arrested, tortured and shot during Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge.
We rode our bikes down to the old Newport House on Irondequoit Baty. The former speakeasy is still there but it’s boarded up and in demo mode headed for upscale condos. A worker came out and asked if he could help us. You know you’re in trouble when someone asks you if they can help you. On the way back we smelled something foul in the air. It got worse the closer we got to Culver Road and there we found this guy desperately trying to mow his lawn before his mower burned up.
We gave Kim Simmons two boxes of cds to sell on eBay. He takes 30% for his effort and that seems fair. We spent most of the weekend in the garage going through boxes of junk. Our house came with junk that the previous owners couldn’t sell at their final garage sale and we piled our junk in front of that junk. I feel like we’re all pawns in a giant worldwide garage sale scheme.
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8-Tracks have to be one the clunkiest mediums ever invented for playing music but in 1969 they seemed wondrous. My college roommate had a white Plymouth Barracuda and a collection of ten or so 8-Tracks. I couldn’t get enough of Led Zeppelin’s first but the one that seemed absolutely perfect for our off campus outings was Paul Butterfield’s “In My Own Dream.”
Elvin Bishop played guitar on that album and I always figured it was him that sang the title song but Bob Mahoney straightened me out. It was Paul Butterfield singing and playing the slinky guitar part. Philip Wilson had left the Art Ensemble and he played drums on this album and a young David Sanborn played sax but the gorgeous sax solo on this track is credited to Gene Dinwiddie. In my own dream, what a place to be!
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I stopped in to see our neighbor, Leo and found him going through a pile of boxes. He was looking for his crock to make sauerkraut and he looked up at me and said, “Look at this mess. A good fire would solve all my problems”.
I am determined to straighten our garage out this summer. It’s been a dumping ground since we moved in here. I found a few boxes of 8-tracks. I would love to get rid of them before I have a fire.
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I guess I should admit it. I like to play golf. I’ve got my own rules though and I don’t use any clubs. I don’t even start with any balls. When our walking route takes near the golf course I’ll stay off the fairways and walk the woods next to the fairways looking for balls. The other day I found four and today I found six including a “Nike”, a “Nitro X Factor” and and a “MC Lady”. If I find a beer bottle I throw it back out on the fairway.
Speaking of beer, the Budweiser guy has slowed his pace this summer. I’ve checked his usual 20-ounce dumping grounds when we take that route but have been coming up clean.
Another one of our routes takes us by an entrance to the park where dog walkers park. You gotta watch where you step here. Lately I’ve been picking up these brightly colored cigar tubes. At first I pictured some guy have having a smoke as he walked his dog but yesterday we walked by a group of teens who turned their music down as we walked by. I’m thinking it might have been Wu Tang’s “Method Man”. “I got fat bags of skunk/I got White Owl blunts.”
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I do most of my clothes shopping at AJ Wright’s in Culver Ridge Plaza. I stopped in for a new pair of shorts and picked out a plaid, Phat Farm pair for ten bucks. Up at the checkout the lady in front of me was complaining to the cashier about the amount of merchandise on the floor, literally on the floor. The cashier explained that they don’t have enough employees to keep the place up. While they talked I took this shot of the reduced table.
We played an art opening at RIT over the weekend and during the break a guy came up to me and introduced himself as an old neighbor. I was his paperboy and when I was a little older I babysat for his daughter. His daughter was there too with her husband. They had all just arrived and had not heard us play yet. The daughter’s husband looked at Peggi’s soprano sax and asked, “So do you play the kind of music you snuggle up with?” He winked while asking this. I said, “No, it’s more like the kind of music you drive off the road to.”
After the gig we drove out to Jeff and Mary Kaye’s place to help them with their stereo. They were going to have a pizza party the next night and they wanted to hook their computer up to the stereo so people could dance. Driving along the river on the way home we found a station playing Donovan’s “Catch The Wind” and the dj followed that up with “Wild Is The Wind”. Talk about “driving off the road” music! We were thinking it was Antony singing it but it turned to be Nina Simone. Guess it’s pretty clear where he got his thing from. We were so taken by this song that we found ourselves in the lane for 590 South to Corning. I had to swerve at the last minute to point the car toward Rochester.
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Painter Jim Mott has updated his blog with posts on the last two stops of the local edition of his “Itinerant Artist” project. We feel very lucky that North Irondequoit was one of those stops. I was happy to read that Peggi’s tapioca made an impression on him. Jim plans to have a show of these local paintings when the tour is over.
Margaret Explosion plays another art opening tonight. This one at the NTID Dyer Arts Center at RIT is for the Arena Art Group and it’s open the the public so stop out. We’ve played here before and like the sound of this room. Here’s a song from the Edith Small opening from a few years back. Phil Marshall plays guitar.
My nephew works in a pizza joint and he’s been having a hard time with his family, the law and just about everything. I stopped in to see him and asked how his job was going. He said it was ok but he needs more hours to pay his bills so he is looking for another job. I suggested he follow his heart and try something related to what he likes. That sounded like adult advice but I was just as confused as he is at that age and everything that I liked didn’t pay worth a darn.
I know I like photographing signs and there is no money in that. I found this one this morning on Culver Road near Clifford. It’s perfect! A big piece of plywood nailed to a tree. Roof’n looks just like it sounds. You want to say it. All caps with a subscript “n” then the masterstroke, black reverse field for the phone number. They intended to center the number but ran out of room and that is so much fun to see in a sign. I don’t think I would ever hire them to roof my house but I love their design sensibility.
I started a data base of my signs last year but got bogged down with constructing php queries. I wanted to have permanent link to pages so I could do an index or link to a certain section instead of always starting at the first page and working your way through. The way my links read they are always changing depending on how many signs I have in the database. I have a hundred or so in there now with another 100 to go but I got way bogged down trying to figure out how to construct these queries and it was getting the way of my day job. Maybe I should trade jobs with my nephew.
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Webster Avenue is our preferred route to downtown so we travel it quite a bit. I read about the mud house that is being built there in City News but I couldn’t find it the first few times we drove by. It’s tucked behind another building, right near Rosedale Terrace where my mother grew up. In City I read that “Superadobes are the brainchild of architect and author Nader Khalili, who taught the technique at Cal-Earth Architecture, a California-based design center he founded in 1986.” This is the first one in New York State. The building seems to be going up under the direction of a church group because two of the people we met when we stopped by are called “Brother” and “Sister” and they didn’t look related by blood. And the worker bees are all city kids. The girl above was taking photos of us while I was taking photos of the giant beehive (and her). Her shirt read, “Before My Boyfriend Comes.” I didn’t ask.
Margaret Explosion plays tonight at RoCo on East Avenue. It’s a benefit for David and Sally’s son Oscar. He has a condition (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) that will seriously compromise his strength for the rest of his life. They’re raffling off an iPad as well. Come on out for a worthwhile event. Details.
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South Africans have this word, “Ubuntu”, for the concept that we are all interconnected. There has to be a Spanish equivalent to it because the stars from Cataln’s Barco team and the stars from Real Madrid aligned perfectly for Spain’s thrilling finale to 2010’s Copa del Mundo.
We watched this one at home on ABC and our little tv while sipping a World Cup drink that first learned about four or five World Cups ago. That would be about twenty years. It has become our tradition. The recipe was in the paper and it may have included other ingredients but the way we do it is: Wine (inexpensive Spanish Red), lime juice and sugar, served over ice.
We watched Saturday’s runner-up game out in East Rochester, Rochester’s Little Italy, at a place called “Lemoncello”. They have a little café like setting in the front of their building with fresh Italian pastries and a cozy dinning room, bar and stage in the rear. Most the people in this place were watching the game outdoors on the patio on a big projection screen. We nixed that idea right away because the picture was sort of bleached by the sun. They also had a merchandise table out there with t-shirts, jerseys and warm up jackets for most of the big teams, Italy being one of them even though they were eliminated so quickly. We watched the game on a big shiny Panasonic in their dining room while eating calamari. This was a great game with Uruguay coming from behind to go ahead before losing to Germany who we earlier had became convinced were going the whole way. But when Spain took on Germany in the semifinals we quickly realigned our allegiances to our post US favorites, España.
After the game I tried on the Spanish warm up jacket and Peggi took a picture. There was way too much polyester there for me to consider it. I settled on red, yellow and black España T-shirt and Peggi announced that she had a premonition that I must wear this shirt until the game in order for Spain to win. The shirt was a little snug and I was worried about putting it in the dryer so I asked if this meant that I had to sleep in it. I didn’t. When we walked the morning of the game I kept the white T-shirt on that I had slept in. And then, well before game time, I put the shirt on. When it was still 0-0 in the second half I began to worry ithat I had jinxed the team and at the end of regulation I was certain I had. With four minutes left in the second overtime Spain came through!
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Couldn’t help but talk a little World Cup with my brother at my aunt’s funeral service this morning. My brother thought Germany would have beat Spain if Müller had been allowed to play. I told him Spain cleaned Germany’s clock and controlled the whole field for the whole game or at least 65% of it. Forget about Germany and Brazil. Spain plays the “beautiful game.”
We were on the road to the church this morning when Peggi asked me if we knew where we were going. I had my aunt’s obituary in my pocket and took it out to read “Church of the Reformation” but there wasn’t any street address. So we turned around and googled it back home. There was a Church of the Reformation downtown but it was Lutheran so I looked at the obit again and it read “Resurrection” which sounds a lot more Catholic. We were a little late and I was thinking how people used to say I would be late to my own funeral and I’d say, “that sounds like a good idea.” but I’m not so sure anymore.
My father gave a nice little talk about his sister and their close knit neighborhood in the 19th ward. He finished with how he will always remember her smile. It seemed she was always laughing in the old days. I think she really enjoyed life.
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Every time I hear a Beatles song I think of the bikers at “Big Daddy’s” on Lyell Avenue who challenged “New Math” with shouts of “Beatles or bottles”. They didn’t like what we were playing and I can’t quite remember how Kevin handled it but it seems like he announced one of our songs as an “obscure Beatle song”. At least that sounds like something he would do.
We streamed “Stones in Exile” last night with our Netflix app. We had the iPad cranked through the stereo and the footage from the “Exile” period was great. I have the double lp out and have played it quite a bit since reading the 33 1/3 book on the lp. That corresponded with the re-release of the remaster lp on a double cd. I ripped a copy of that while at a friend’s but haven’t listened to it yet. I don’t think I can handle the new tracks that Mick tarted up.
We stopped down at Vic & Irv’s while Duane was here and he spotted a skull and cross bones tattoo on the back of neck of the woman behind the grill. Rochester’s Lou Gramn was playing on the sound system. Their onion rings and milk shakes are sensational and have been since I started coming here back in the British Invasion days. In the Stones documentary Kieth says Mick’s rock and he’s roll. I have always felt that Vic & Irv’s is Stones compared to Don & Bob’s Beatles. The Beatles may have been more musical but the Stones have better hot sauce.
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Hydrangeas around here are either pink or blue. Supposedly the color is determined by ph of the soil but that may just be an old wives tale. They are usually more fun than the truth. I’ve seen pink and blue flowers on the same bush. Maybe the pink ones are boys and blue ones girls.
Richard Margolis . The last time we were in the Pelican Restaurant on East Main we were having lunch with our old neighbor, Sparky. It’s changed names now but not cliental. We sat across from a cop who was eatting bacon, eggs and toast. He was reading the front page story on the sentencing of the former Greece NY police chief. We were meeting with photographer, Richard Margolis, who was just back from Tel Aviv. We were planning to meet in his studio but his air conditioning gave out in the heat. We are designing a book of his photos of Israel public art.
Peggi was supposed to take her mom to the doctor this afternoon but we had to cancel that for the World Cup match. We scurried down to our neighbors house to watch the Spain play Germany. We had seen Germany play four times this tournament and we were convinced they were going to go the whole way but it was impossible for us to route against Spain and we were thrilled to see them win 1-0. It really is tough getting work done during the Copa Mundial.
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We picked two more pans of raspberries from the garden. You really need to wearing long sleeve shirts and full length pants when you get out there in the prickers but it was too hot for that. Peggi made a pie and plans to make another today after the World Cup. I’m afraid Paraquay’s going down today but it would be nice to see them upset the Netherlands apple cart. We had more raspberries for breakfast. I’ve been picking seeds out from between my teeth for days. I’ve been afraid to use my Waterpik, in fear that I’ll drive one of those little seeds up my gums.
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Peggi and I jumped at the the chance to slip into the void and spend a few days in the mountains at a cabin with a stuffed moose head, a whole stuffed mountain lion, a stuffed snapping turtle and something that looked like a stuffed crow. Actually those animals were all in my sister’s cottage. We were staying in the knotty pine lined cabin next door along with my parents. We threw the contents of our refrigerator into a cooler and split right after our noon phone conference on Tuesday.
We climbed Castle Rock trail near Indian Lake on Wednesday, went kayaking and sat around the fire at night. My father bought a bird app for his iPad and my brother-in-law hooked it up to his iPod speakers so my father could play loon sounds to answer the real loon that was calling from the woods. They got an interesting dialog going but our nephew said the other voice may have just been another guy on his iPad.
On Thursday we drove an hour north up to Pete and Shelley’s place in the Adirondacks. We got trapped between a Whiteman camper with a Marines sticker on it and a drunk delivery truck driver who kept crossing the yellow line in our rear view mirror. We surprised Pete and Shelley and took a hike across the marsh and up the hills out back. Shelley took us to a wild strawberry patch. At about one tenth the size of farm raised they have an delicious, intense flavor. She pointed out a deadly “Death Cap” mushroom and some golden Chantrells that she was planning to pick when they got a little bigger. On the way back to Rochester we listened to the Brazil game as they lost to the Netherlands.
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