Category: Guinness Is Good For You

Half Hearted Product Endorsements

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I Believe in Evolution

Peggi under the bridge on Culver 1998
Peggi under the bridge on Culver 1998

I bought my fourth digital camera today. The photo above was taken with my first camera. Peggi was under the bridge on Culver in 1998 while I documented the underside. 4D designed the t-shirt she has on for Writers & Books.

My first two cameras were Kodaks, a one megapixel and a three. My father worked for Kodak and they came out of the employee store there. Both were refurbished and sold for about half price. My friend, Duane, worked for Warner Brothers Records and Sony bought them so he bought my third camera from the Sony employee store. That was a Cybershot DSC V1 and I loved it. It was five megapixel with a 4X optical zoom. The firmware is shot and it destroys memory cards so I gave up on it. I looked around and was ready to make a move on a Canon PowerShot SX100 IS until I held it in my hands. I felt light and cheap. The salesman at Rowe showed me a Nikon P5100 and I loved the way it felt. It has 12 megapixels and 3 1/2 X optical zoom. I’m charging the battery now.

My sister-in-law from LA just pulled in the driveway with my mother-in-law. They are here for dinner. We plan to have salmon (the wild stuff not the farm raised) and a salad. I have have to get out there and make that. I ‘m letting the girls get caught up.

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Sonic Background to the Din

Last night’s opening of “Electric Florets” was really well attended. Geri’s son Paul worked the bar while simultaneously hanging out with his friends. The big wall with a grid of sixteen oil pastel mandalas was most impressive. Geri’s painting teacher, Fred Lipp, was there engaged in deep conversation with Alice. Another fellow classmate, Lorraine, slipped in and out while we provided a sonic background to the din in the room.

During our break Katherine Denison told me the band sounded “really tight”. I told her that “tight” was a word I would never apply to Margaret Explosion. And she said, “I know. I’ve been at the Little when it’s been real loosey goosey”. That’s more like it.

Pineapples went up a dollar at Wegmans. They were $3.99 each all winter and are now $4.99. They are one of the only produce items left with a flat cost attached to them instead of a per pound cost. With most produce I enter the 4 or 5 digit code and the scale computes the cost based on the weight. But with pineapples I put the fruit on the store scales just to see which one is the heaviest and then buy that one. I can usually find one that is over six pounds. I think limes are sold this way too.

It is a beautiful day here, sunny and headed toward sixty, a perfect day for painting in the basement.

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Pop

Old pop bottles. Rochester NY
Old pop bottles. Rochester NY

I found these pop bottles in the woods near our house. I’m guessing some neighborhood kids left them down there a long time ago. I bought a bottle washer at Home Depot and scrubbed them clean with Mr. Clean before taking this photo. Now all I have to do is get that “Mr. Clean” jingle out of my head.

Pop bottles looked like this when I was a kid so they must all be fifties vintage. The empty Qualtop bottle is really heavy and it holds only 6 and 1/2 ounces of liquid. The Miller’s bottle with the slogan, “Short and Good”, holds 6 ounces and the 7-Up bottle with the “You Like It. It Likes You.” slogan holds 7. These are all a long ways from today’s “Big Gulp”.

All three bottles have “Rochester, N.Y.” printed on them. The Miller’s bottle has “Rochester Soda Water Co. Inc.” on the back and that brings up this whole “pop” verses “soda” thing. We call it “pop” in Rochester but in New York City they call it “soda”. In Detroit, where the accent is nearly indistinguishable from the Rochester accent, they call it “pop”. And it was “soda” when we lived in Indiana. I like “pop” better.

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Mr. Budweiser. We Have Your Number.

Snowman remains in April.
Snowman remains in April.


That’s the head of the snowman from yesterday’s entry on the left.

Apple was up six today. Somebody sees some light at the end of this tunnel but we’re still worried. We’re considering making extra house payments with the cash on hand instead of playing the horses. That way “if the market does go to heck in a hand basket”, as our ML guy likes to say, we’ll be protected from the rain.

I’ve been experimenting with hummus recipes that I’ve found online. I thought it was spelled “humas” at first and apparently a few other people did too. I made a batch of “humas” with jalapeños that was quite good. I’ve made four different kinds in last few weeks. I had a hummus, onion and spinach sandwich for dinner. I don’t like it when the first hit tastes like tahini. Three of these recipes have called for too much tahini vs. the chick peas. And the garlic gets overpowering fast. I like lime juice in there. Today I made the mistake of dumping all the gooey ingredients into the food processor without first putting the blade in there first so I had scoop it all back out. I’ll have my own recipe tweaked with a few more trials.

Note to the dude that drives down the dead end, Hoffman Road, and throws his 20 ounce Budweiser cans out the window: We have your number. Most of the snow disappeared today in the near 70 degree temperature and we found ten tall Bud cans along the side of the road. We are talking of making Burma Shave-like signs and sticking them in the ground down there. First one would read, “Mr. Budweiser”. Second one would probably get us arrested if we said what we thought.

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La Sirène du Mississippi

We went skiing with our friends and neighbors, Rick and Monica. We skied up the west side of Eastman Lake and back the east side of Durand Lake in the park. On the way back, Rick got a hankerin’ for Mexican so we got online and looked for alternatives to nearby Monte Albán. We toyed with driving out to El Rincón in Sodus or the one in Canandaigua but decided to try San José on Buffalo Road. I was a little suspicious because the pdf of their online menu said “printed in South Carolina” but we jumped in the car and headed out to Gates. Rick had a “Best of Incredible String Band” cd on. We found the place and a sign on the door. “Closed Until March 3rd For Remodeling”.

So we continued on to Chilango’s in Spencerport. It was about eight o’clock and there was a half hour wait so we drove back in the city to Monte Albán. We ordered Margaritas and Peggi and I asked for no salt. Rick wanted salt. Monica ordered horchata and the waitress told her they were all out so she settled for a root beer.

The waitress was beautiful. It was hard to do something as mundane as place an order with her. She was a marvel. She had dark hair, a shiny, wide, white belt, a really cute accent and amazing eyes. She brought the margaritas back and two had salt and only one was saltless. Fine. She asked if we were ready to order and we obviously weren’t so she said she would come back, but she didn’t. Some time went by. I thought we had ordered already and we were waiting for our food. Rick started getting agitated. We had worked up an appetite skiing. He asked a nearby waitress to go get our waitress.

She returned smiling. We placed our order. She came back and asked Rick if he had ordered number 18 or 19. Rick ordered a Negra Modelo and she said they were out. The food was ok. Peggi asked for more napkins and the waitress smiled and nodded but never came back with them. None of this mattered. She actually yawned while we were placing our order and we still tipped her.

Back home, Rick asked if we wanted to watch “La Sirène du Mississippi” (“Mississippi Mermaid”), the 1969 Francois Truffaut movie with them and we took him up on the offer. Catherine Deneuve, the star, waltzed through the movie like she was barely in it. She was a blond version of our waitress.

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Can I Comment On My Own Blog?

I got some flack for the photo of the dead mouse in my “b” log entry a few days ago. Frank told me he would kill a person before he killed an animal and then after our Margo gig tonight, Maureen told me her grade school students were a little freaked out by it. Am I the only one who wears leather shoes or eats Italian sausage? Our cats would have done the dirty work if we had let them in the crawl space and they would have had a good time doing it. They bring mice and moles and chipmunks to the door and just plop them there with puncture marks like a trophy. I’m using good peanut butter.

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Who Needs A Better Mouse Trap?

Dead mouse in our basement
Dead mouse in our basement

We have noticed faint scratching sounds coming from under the floor in our bedroom for a few weeks now. So Peggi picked up a couple of old fashioned mouse traps. (I guess they wouldn’t be “mice traps” unless each trap was intended to catch more than one mouse at a time.) They recommended peanut butter as bait so we gave them the good stuff, Wegmans Natural Chunky Peanut Butter. And wow did they take the bait! I set them before dinner (ours and the mice) and had two trapped when I checked after dinner. I loaded them up a second time and had two more by morning. I thought we would hear the traps snap when they went off but after I found this guy I realized the neck of the mice cushions the blow. This guy could use some teeth whitener.

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How To Draw An Ampersand

Peggi opened the box that came from LL Bean and tried on her new boots and flannel-lined jeans. They look good. We took a walk up in Spring Valley and she wore her new jeans with the cuffs rolled up. Saw some turkeys and a few deer, one that sort of looked like “dog deer” but wasn’t. We had picked out some books for ourselves a few weeks ago and Peggi wrapped them and put them under the tree. I had forgotten what they were until we opened them. I got a picture book on German Expressionism and “Miles, Ornette & Cecil”. I dove into the part about Ornette.

Our nephew, who is staying with his family downtown at the Hyatt, emailed us some photos that he took in Rochester yesterday. They stopped by the North Pole. He is staying over with us tonight and tomorrow we plan to migrate our email application and all our email to a newer old computer. And he is going help us get our pc cleaned up and moving a little quicker. And then we plan to put Leopard on two G4s that supposedly can’t handle OS 10.5. I guess you put the dvd in a laptop and boot the G4’s in target mode and install over the network.

Today, I am going to learn how to draw an ampersand.

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Your Product Is Too Good To Make A Profit

Williams Shaving Soap
Williams Shaving Soap

Last time I was in Wegman’s I looked for a refill for my shaving mug. Mine is not really a mug, it’s plastic cup that came with a thermos and I use one of those old-fashioned brushes. I only shave every two or three days and the shaving soap lasts forever. I couldn’t find the little boxes so I asked a woman who was stocking the shelves if she knew where they were. Turns out this woman didn’t even work for Wegman’s. She works for one of the many companies who have swung a deal with Wegmans to stock a certain number of cubic feet of shelf space with their product.

Wegmans makes a profit on sales of that company’s products and they also make money from the company to stock their wares in the first place. At least, I think this is how big stores work now.

This woman was nice enough to track down a store employee. I say “nice” but she was probably being paid by the hour and desperate for a diversion. You start noticing these things when you work for yourself. The real employee told me that they “stopped carrying that product because no one was buying it.” Ouch. I know why they stopped carrying it. It was a cheap ass, slow mover and it could not possibly earn its keep on their high rent shelves.

So today I stopped by Walgreen’s where I know I have bought this before and they had no space on their shelves for it. I went down the street to Top’s and they didn’t have any either. My last stop was Rite Aid and I bought the last box of William’s Shaving Soap on their shelves. It could be the last one in Rochester for all I know. I might have to buy my toiletries on eBay.

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Rick & Monica Envy

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s fireplace insert. But we did and today we put a down payment on one. In fact, it is the same one as Rick and Monica’s. We shopped around a bit. We looked at “Fireplace Fashions” and drove by “House of Fire.” That name sort of bothers me. It’s not what I want to picture when starting a fire in my living room. Rick and Monica recommended Williamson Hardware so that’s where we did our business. But then Monica told us she didn’t like Christmas and the next day we look out there and see white lights on some trees in front of their house. We dealt with the owner of Williamson Hardware. He does the installs as well. He is up at four, runs three to five miles a day and also does abstract photographs. He showed us one on his Blackberry. He is having a show at Image Gallery in April.

Our house was built in the forties and the fireplace is big. We have chopped and burnt a lot of wood. But it doesn’t exactly heat up the house or even the room. You have to sit right on top of it to feel the warmth. It drains heat from the house while we are having a fire and and the opening continues to drain heat while we aren’t. Didn’t they know this in the forties? Maybe energy was so much cheaper that it was a smaller issue. Wood burning fireplace inserts are expensive.

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Manufactured Landscapes

I checked in on ndsforfree.com to make sure the cash register was still ringing and did a little more Stumbling in Firefox this morning and then went out to blow the the leaves off the roof. Then I raked the leaves that I blew off out of the pachysandra. Tomorrow we might pick those leaves up with our neighbor’s leaf picker upper if he’s up for it. I helped my parents take down their awnings for the winter and then dashed back to 4D to meet with someone who wanted a brochure. He buys mortgages from people who are holding unpaid ones and he told us he invented a product and had received a letter from Arnold Schwarzenegger about it.

We had our neighbors and friends, Rick and Monica over for dinner to try to thank them for taking us to and picking us up from the airport. Peggi made chili with tofu Italian sausage (Tofurkey) and French bread. I roasted chestnuts for an appetizer and made a salad. We had my mother’s homemade peanut butter cookies for dessert. After dinner we started a fire and watched a documentary that Rick and Monica had rented from Netflix called, “Manufactured Landscapes.” The film features the photos of Edward Burtynsky and the settings for his beautiful shots. Most of the movie takes place in China where worker bees in color coordinated uniforms perform the the most mundane, repetitive tasks in the name of globalization.

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Tap and Mallet

Paul Dodd Mug Shot Paintings at Tap And Mallet in Rochester, NY
Paul Dodd Mug Shot Paintings at Tap And Mallet in Rochester, NY

I picture someone having too much draft beer from the “tap” and a cartoon image of a “mallet” pounding on his head. That’s the name of Casey’s new place on Gregory Street where the original McGregor’s was. They wanted some artwork for the place so Casey and his partner, Joe, stopped by to see what I had. They picked out some the “Crime Faces” from a few years back and the “Road Masks” that I had hanging in the basement. Casey used to own the Bug Jar and I took some mugshots there. He owns Mex Restaurant and I painted a mural over there. Casey is a patron. I recommend their house brew, “McBanes Bitter.” It’s made by Rohrbachs. The Beer Advocate reviewed the place and said, ” the faces on the walls are very creepy!”

Horse Lovers
Horse Lovers

The Horse Lovers were performing across the street at House of Hamas in Rochester. They did a beautiful version of “Moonglow.” That’s Ken Frank from Margaret Explosion on bass. Phil Marshall plays guitar and directs the band. Jim McAvaney plays drums and all three played with Colorblind James Experience.

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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.”

Starbus
Starbus in LA


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

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It’s Good For You

Guiness in a Tweety glass
Guiness in a Tweety glass

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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