Margaret Explosion plays Wednesday, March 19 at Little Theatre Café
If the temperature reaches 77 today we will reach a record set in 1903. Margaret Explosion seems to draw better in unpleasant weather. It could be a quiet night tonight. And we used a photo of Peggi and Melissa to promote the show only to learn Melissa can’t make the gig tonight. And just an hour ago we learned Jack will not be able to make it so no bass clarinet. We will perform as a trio.
“So we took over the Kennedy Center. We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things. We’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country. NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA – ONLY THE BEST,” – you know who.
These quotes still make me laugh. Is there a better way to deal with this onslaught?
Butterfly Knot party on Old Browncroft Road in 2007
I feel lucky to have experienced many of the first generations of digital cameras. My first Kodak, the DC40, took just one half meg photos. I went through a few versions of Sony’s Cybershot and the Nikon 5100 and 7100 before settling on Sony’s RX100. But back in the day the photos required a little Photoshop work before I kept them. I would then save them as .tiffs but the early Mac OS didn’t put the suffix on the files. For the last ten years or so I haven’t even been able to view the files. Occasionally I would search by file name and add the .tif to each file and click confirm, a tedious process just to see the photo. I’m probably the last person to know about “Automator.” The app the comes with the OS and allows you to batch process in seconds. I converted thousands of old photos yesterday and found a few surprises.
In 2007 Margaret Explosion was hired to play a party for the investors of Brian Strine’s “Butterfly Knot” movie. Some cast members were there and the event was held in the funky party house on old Browncroft Road. I had not been inside that place since the fifties. The place itself felt like an old movie set. I took the picture above of bass clarinetist, Jack Schaefer and saxophonist, Peggi Fournier at the bar and had not seen it since 2007.
Bill Jones in our bathroom about to have his hair cut by Peggi 2006Bil Jones getting a haircut from Peggi 2006
Bill Jones posing as Velazquez while getting haircut from Peggi 2006Bil Jones getting a haircut from Peggi 2006
Peggi often cuts my hair. She has cut the hair of most of our friends at one time or another and in 2006 she cut Bill Jones’ hair. I think he had just got his webmaster job at Lawyer’s CoOp. Peggi cut his hair in our bathroom before we had remodeled it. I especially like Bill’s Velazquez pose in the upper right of these four. Bill is gone now so these were especially sweet to find.
Bennie J. performing at the Spirit Room on March 10 2025
Bennie used to lead the drum section at the Flash matches. She often sits in with Margaret Explosion, playing one of her Brazilian percussion instruments. Martha, Bennie’s long time partner, wrote poetry before she passed and Bennie set them to music. She performed them, mostly on ukulele, to a packed room last night at the Spirit Room.
Inspired by the poetry of John Milton and Lord Byron, most of the poems are metered and rhyming. Major themes include death, love, sex and religion – often in the same poem – as well as the pain of lost love and the various manifestations of mental illness that she wrestled with most of her life. Despite the dark subject matter, many of the poem/songs were funny and irreverent. Bennie says, ” The experience of presenting these songs to an audience with honesty and vulnerability has helped me grow as a person in ways I could never have imagined.” It was a beautiful performance.
Alice Neel “David Bourdon and Gregory Battcock” at Blanton in Austin Texas
This 1970 Alice Neel painting, in the collection of the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas Austin, looks like it was painted yesterday. Except it couldn’t be. No one can paint like this today. I came home with this photo and got my Alice Neel book out, the one I picked up at the Alice Neel show at the Whitney in 2000. This painting was there. It was at that show, where Peggi and I struggled to see one of her paintings. A guy in a wheelchair with an aide in tow was planted in front for the longest time. The aide finally spun him around and we were face to face with Chuck Close.
Our first night back in Rochester we met my brother and his Vietnamese lady friend at a new Asian restaurant just blocks from our house. The place was slammed and the service suffered but we had some delicious “Tom Yum” soup and brought a papaya salad home for lunch. Maureen Outlaw and her husband were sitting behind us and we learned the waiter had been on our flight for Atlanta the day before. We laughed about the announcement that our pilot was still in the parking lot while we were already on the plane.
It was sunny today with the temperature in the forties so the park was especially crowded. The lakes were still frozen but the witch hazel is in full bloom. We’ve not heard or seen any red winged blackbirds yet but the Winter Aconite is out. Saint Patty’s, the unofficial first day of spring, is just around the corner.
Mount Bonnell, the highest point in Austin, Texas, with an elevation of 775 feet above sea level.
We saw Lady Bird’s bowling shoes yesterday at the LBJ Library along with an especially moving exhibit about one month in LBJ’s presidency, March 1968, when Peggi and I were still in high school. The Tet Offensive, a massive surprise attack, was a pivotal moment in the Vietnam War. More American troops were in Vietnam Nam than at any other time in the war. Our casualty rate was proportionally high, a nightmare, vividly recalled on multiple video screens by soldiers who were there for the battle.
The photo above is not how I pictured Austin. We walked up to Mt. Bonnell this morning and got a great look at downtown in one direction and the homes along the Colorado River in the other. We learned that just after the Civil War General Custer and his wife, Libby, picnicked up here. The Custers noted that the summit was too steep for a cavalry horse to climb, so it had to be climbed on foot.
Ellsworth Kelley “Austin” at the Blanton in Austin, Texas
Before leaving our nephew’s home this morning we searched for galleries and decided on the Blanton and the LBJ Library for the AM and then the small contemporary galleries in the afternoon. Reading about the Blanton I remembered that Ellsworth Kelley had designed a pagan church here.
Originally conceived in 1987 for a private vineyard in California, he gave the plans to the University of Texas and renamed the piece “Austin.” The 2,715-square-foot stone structure, stained glass and interior artworks are inspired by the many churches Kelly visited in France and draw from religious themes in art history. Reminiscent of the Romanesque style, twin barrel vaults intersect at right angles. Its floor plan is known as a Latin cross. The exterior limestone is from Alicante, Spain.
A freestanding, 18-foot-tall wooden Totem sculpture commands attention at the end of the main aisle. The location, form, and material allude to the cross normally placed at this spot in a church. Like all the artist’s Totems, the form also recalls ancient Greek figurative sculptures. Made from California old-growth redwood logged in the 19th century and salvaged from the bottom of a riverbed. The stained glass windows reflect light differently depending on the time of day and season. The 14 square panels are Kelly’s abstract versions of the Stations of the Cross, a series of scenes that depict the story of the crucifixion.
Kelly masterfully abstracted the Christian church and its symbols. Unfortunately he died before Austin’s completion so he never saw it. I can’t say we saw it either. They were rebuilding the weighty entry door and the building was closed. Made of repurposed native Texas live oak, it needed some repairs. We were only able to walk around the building and imagine.
It takes a special kind of person to rock cowboy boots and/or a western hat and there are quite a few people walking around town that don’t look all that special. We’re guessing they, like us, are from out of town and they just bought the gear at one of the many shops we’ve seen. The annual SXSW is just gearing up and some people are already walking around with their badges.
We talked to Rich last night and he expressed interest in going for a ride in a Waymo next time we visit. We saw one in Miami Beach and we just watched one float by while we were walking up and down Congress. Maybe we’ll trade our car in while we’re down here.
I love reading news like this while I’m trying to have a good time. “Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the E.P.A., has recommended that the agency reverse its 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare, according to three people familiar with the decision. That would eliminate the legal basis for the government’s climate laws, such as limits on pollution from automobiles and power plants.” Kathy Hochul whomped him when he tried to run for governor and Trump saved a spot for him in his cabinet of gangsters.
We’ve covered a lot of ground in Miami. The water level in the canals that run through the city is at the top of the retaining walls. People drink a lot bottled water here. There’s no return deposit on the plastic. I better stop. We’re on vacation.
Hand painted signs are the best. We’re visiting our nephew in Miami and staying in the MiMo district in a refurbished turquoise motel, one that the Rat Pack popularized in the day.
According to the historical marker in front of our place, “The Vagabond Motel was constructed in 1953. The Vagabond Motel is a distinctive example of the evolution of modern architecture after World War II. It embodies the characteristics of Florida’s roadside motels catering to tourists arriving by car along main highways such as Biscayne Boulevard. Designed by Miami architect Robert Swartburg, the hotel exemplifies the Miami Modern (MiMo) architectural style that emerged as South Florida architects began to adapt postwar design and materials to Florida’s subtropical climate.”
I was just getting over the Uber driver’s odorizer and the room smells vaguely like bug spray but that goes with the territory. We are on the second floor, overlooking the pool and it is beautiful, a long way from the frozen sidewalks. And pizza and two salads have just arrived from Walrus Rodeo.
Shortly after we moved into our Hershey home the original owners stopped by to check on the house they built in the late forties. They told us they took down a red oak out front and had it milled for the hardwood floors in our living room. They shared some pictures of the two of them (husband and wife) laying the concrete blocks for our foundation. And this one, above, taken in the winter of 1966. Schools were closed for a week back then. Our piles are almost as big this year.
A long time ago people used to give people my age a hard time for putting a flag on your jacket or t-shirt and then one day we were in a golf clubhouse with my father-in-law and a guy walked in with American flag shorts. The rules change.
Peggi was expecting a package yesterday. She was notified around 6 PM that it had been delivered but she couldn’t find it. We looked all around the house and texted our neighbors to see if it went to the wrong address. The delivery notification showed a picture, the one on the left above. We couldn’t even figure out what we were looking at. The three black arches mystified us. I took the low res photo into Photoshop and messed with the levels. Still took a while to realize it was a picture of our mailbox out at the street with the bag inside of it. Isn’t it mail tampering for UPS to put stuff in your mailbox?
Real Madrid vs Atletico Madrid Saturday February 8, 2025
I sat down to write this entry and find the devil has posted we’re going “BACK TO PLASTIC,” promising to sign an executive order to end the paper straw inititive. I feel like we’re living on the front page of the Onion but we will not let this spoil Peggi’s birthday.
We have a big, big match to watch. Real Madrid with the best stars money can buy vs. Atletico Madrid, the scrappy crosstown rivals. Only one post separates the the two teams at the top of the table. Peggi will be wearing the red Atletico jersey. And after the match we have dinner plans at Tapas 147.
Dog Mom’s bumper stickers at Durand Eastman Park 2025
Dog Mom doesn’t care what I think or how I feel but for almost a decade now we have been laughing at Trump’s antics. The guy is entertaining to his fans and his detractors. We watched his news conference today after the helicopter/plane crash and he asked for “a moment of silence for the victims” and then said “thank you” when the moment passed, as if it had been for him. He went on to blame the crash on DEI. With a new outrage everyday it is a perverse to keep laughing but a coping mechanism nonetheless.
Greed was good in the eighties but it was just getting started. Trump has so much money he is untouchable. He will trip up though and Thomas Friedman may have pinpointed Trump’s achilles heel. The beautiful coal and drill baby drill talk is head in the sand even if you don’t give one hoot about the environment but as a business model it is embarrassing. China is going eat our lunch.
Two thirds of Americans want to see major change in our political system. How about we roll back the Citizens United decision so the CEO’s can’t buy the office and then change the way Congress is elected to “proportional representation” like they have Europe. The US is only one four democracies in the world (US, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leon) to have this no compromise, winner take all system. That leaves a lot of good ideas on the sidelines.
The hat certainly threatened to upstage the affair but the bombast when the big guy made his entrance made it clear Round 2 has begun. The “Drill Baby Drill” refrain landed particularly hard after Peggi’s sister almost lost her home in the California fires. But the chorus from my title made us laugh out loud. It was perfect day for cross-country skiing.
Edward Ruscha “Ultra” 1970 Gunpowder and pastel on paper at MAG
Maybe it’s a good thing that the Memorial Art Gallery did not do a catalog for their current “Drawing As Discovery” show. It got us over there three times and each time we found new favorites. I probably photographed a quarter of the 120 pieces. I’ve been visiting there since you entered by going up the big steps in the front of the old section and this is the best show they have ever mounted. And to think that all of these pieces are in their collection. Works on paper are fragile so they will be put to bed when the show closes today.
“I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again.” Ed Ruscha
It will be a long time before we see 8 graphic Kara Walker drawings, Lyonel Feininger, Auguste Rodin, Burchfield, Picasso, Sol LeWitt, Goya, Rembrandt, Daumier, Delacroix, Tiepolo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Tamayo, David Hockney, Léger, and Morandi in the same space.
Peggi Fournier and her lyrics to “X-Melody” from Personal Effects “This Is It” album 1984
Forty years ago Personal Effects released “This Is It,” our first full length lp on Earring Records.” X-Melody was and still is my favorite track on the album. Guitarist, Bob Martin made digital copies of the original half inch, 8 track tapes and he re-mixed the lp along with with three Bonus Tracks from those sessions. You can read Bob’s notes on this project here. “This Is It – Remix 2024” is available to stream today!
Personal Effects “This Is It – Remix 2024” Available now on streaming services platforms now.
I am still digesting our recent art binge in NYC. One day in Tribeca, one in Chelsea and one at MoMA left me with a hundred new photos in my library. That’s not exactly true. At MoMA I studied and then photographed some of the same paintings from their collection that I’ve photographed before. So some are only sort of new. And now, after studying my photos I find it interesting that I was attracted to the same thing a few years back. I had photographed two of the three pieces above before. The newer photos are better and that is only because I am better equipped to color correct the white walls in PS.
As exciting as the new art in lower Manhattan was (and I felt like we had struck gold there) these three pieces from MoMA stand out. Despite the fact that their create dates span one century, it is striking how similar they are. Less is still more.
Forty years ago, on election night 1984, Personal Effects opened for John Cale at Scorgie’s. Ronald Reagan was running for his second term. Americans loved that guy, an old, former movie actor. John Cale behaved as if it was the end of the world. He was drinking a bottle of cognac that Scorgie provided, and he had a TV set on stage with him, tuned to live election night coverage. He bounded on stage, maniacally shouting “Four More Years, Four More Years, Four More Years.” It was sensational. Eight years ago, the night after Election Day, Margaret Explosion played the Little Theatre Café. Another old actor had won the presidency. This time it was like a morgue but I remember it being good musically.
On the A train to JFK we noticed a heavy set man with a big suitcase asking directions with a German accent. Not all the A trains go as far as Howard Beach where we were to pick up the Airtrain and we shared his concern. We decided to get off at the next stop and re-board a later A train. The German fellow did the same. He immediately struck up a conversation with a Jamaican woman and we listened in. She told him she too was going to Howard Beach so we followed her lead.
I took a closer look at the guys’ suitcase. It was one of those bulbous aluminum fortresses on wheels, maybe three feet high, with the Statue of Liberty and American flag printed on it. We told him we were going to JFK as well. He said he had come over on the Queen Mary and had spent a few days in Boston, Washington DC and New York City. He unfolded a paper map and showed us where his hotel was in lower Manhattan. And he traced the route he had walked in the city with his finger. Across town and up to 59th Street where he took the – and here he couldn’t come up with the word, he pinched his fingers together, looked up and moved his hand across the sky. “Tram,” we said in unison.
With delight he told us he had walked over to Trump Tower in midtown. We both groaned but he was beaming. We were impressed by the amount of walking he did and I wondered if he could have possibly walked more than we had. I looked down at his shoes and they were a worn pair of real walking shoes.
Ikebana (Escapism)” 2024 by Alexandre da Cunha at James Cohan Gallery in Tribeca
Hardly have time to post down here, looking at all the new buildings and just looking at everything. The skinny black woman in the “RAW” t-shirt, just long enough to serve as a dress. The woman in black hijab garb with clean white sneakers and a pink head scarf. The Mexican with the pompadour, tortoiseshell sun glasses and glitter speckled sweater. The young couple sitting across from us on the F train. He with a “This Is Who You Worship Now” t-shirt and she with the white dress, blond hair, red lipstick, red purse, red phone and gold shoes. All this before we got to the gallery district in Tribeca.
When Joe Barrett was doing Summer Theatre at University of Rochester he had a part in “Blood Wedding,” the Federico Garcia Lorca play about the big stuff, love, sexuality and violence. The play was in English but I understood very little of it. Years ago we saw a reading of Lorca’s “Poeta en Nueva York” in a bookstore in Madrid. The performer was accompanied by a guitar player and although I understood very little of the Spanish it was memorable because it was intensely dramatic.
Today we saw/heard “Ainadamar,” a dramatization of Lorca’s life and work in flamenco opera form at the Metropolitan. The poet-playwright was assassinated by fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War because of his socialist politics and homosexuality.
I resisted looking down at the translations and let myself get swept away by the modern pageantry. The man who played Franco, or someone like him, sang in a Saeta voice as if he was petitioning the Virgin Mary on Semana Santa. Of Lorca he sang, “He has done more harm with his pen than others with their pistols. “He is a faggot and a communist.”
Lorca, played by a woman, sang “Forgive me Father, even though I have done nothing wrong. Forgive me father for I have sinned. There is no god. Only the bull. There is no god. Only my café.”
Peggi and have been enjoying a mini news fast down here but watching fascism take Lorca out just three days before the election I could not help but think about el payaso, pictured on the streets of Manhattan (above.)
