Category: Lopsided Observations

Not all observations are worth noting.

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Yippee!

Ann at work at Parkleigh in Rochester, NY
Ann at work at Parkleigh in Rochester, NY

I woke up early, like 6:30, thinking about how far behind I was in trying to get this Personal Effects cd out of here in time to get it back in time for the reunion show at the German House in a few weeks. Peggi and I did manage to pick songs from the six lps this morning and burn a copy in Toast with some cool cross fades.

We headed over to the Point Pleasant fire house at noon to cast our votes for Obama. Our route there takes us down Wisner to the dead end and through the woods to Culver. We ran into a guy with a wood splitter that swivels on its axle so you can split wood without lifting it. He told us he lived in a 500 square foot house near the woods and he offered to rent his splitter if we need it.

I took the car over to Jerome’s ignition Service to get an oil change and I put my bike in the car so I could take a cd to Bob Martin’s office to get his approval on our song selections. Bob was in the middle of a phone conference so I dropped off the cd and rode over to Parkleigh on Park Avenue to visit my sister at her new job. She was explaining the virtues of a $150 hair brush to a customer when I walked in so I strolled around the store and then stood near her while she closed the sale. A woman asked if she could help me and I said, “No”. I think she thought I was a shoplifter because a guy came out from the back to watch me. I picked up a small bag of licorice, a “Bridge Mix”, for my mom and Ann rang me up.

I rode over to our old neighborhood to visit Sparky but he wasn’t there. I rode back to Jerome’s and Sparky was there, in the garage, talking to Mike and Ted. He had a new three wheeled walker said he was gonna try to buy some of that Polish sausage and bring it by soon.

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IU IOU

Bloomington Indiana Crew 1969 including Larry Malman, Steve Hoy, Kenny Macher, Dave Jolly and Paul Dodd
Bloomington Indiana Crew 1969 including Larry Malman, Steve Hoy, Kenny Macher, Dave Jolly and Paul Dodd

We brought our plants in from the deck for the winter and found a plate from the Indiana University dorms under one of the the plants. I hadn’t thought about Indiana in a long time. I did notice that it is a swing state. It was pretty swinging back in the day.

Peggi and I sat down to watch a movie last night and I reached into our container of matches and pulled out some from the Indiana Memorial Union. You could still strike the match on the front and and the back had a list that included Bowling, Beauty Shop, Food Service, Guest Rooms and Post Office. I loved hanging around the Commons in that place. I hung around Indiana long enough to meet Peggi and then I came back to Rochester.

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Long Live Ray Tierney

Ray Tierney III at dedication ceremony in Brighton, NY
Ray Tierney III at dedication ceremony in Brighton, NY

My mom asked us to be over at the twelve corners in Brighton by 4 o’clock for the dedication ceremony to her brother, Ray Tierney Jr.. Ray owned and ran a super market here for many years. My mom and sister were cashiers. My brother Mark and I worked as stock boys. My uncle, who was also my godfather, caught me eating a whole banana cream pie in cooler. Brighton added Ray’s name to a plague in the small park in the middle of the twelve corners. His son, Ray III who is a Brighton politician and grocery store manager at Hegedorn’s gave a short speech and then invited us all down to Grinnell’s for drinks.

Tierney family mid nineteen fifties
Tierney family mid nineteen fifties

Ray III and I were talking about how many cousins we have. It’s over thirty but we gave up trying to count them. Most of them are in this photo. My grandfather, Ray Sr., got the grocery thing going. He and his two brothers had the biggest grocery store in Rochester back in the thirties long before the Wegmans took over.

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Go Phillies!

Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves
Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves

I want one of those red hats with the “P” on front and the pull down flaps for your ears. A couple of the guys were wearing them in the Phillies dugout last night.

It was warmer in Rochester than it was in Philadelphia. And it wasn’t raining here. We got a fire going and Peggi made popcorn. We sat down to watch the Phillies clean Tampa Bay’s clock and then the weather got in the way. The postseason games push the season to almost November now and it seems way too cold to play baseball but I did notice a few local games going on under the lights at Cobbs Hill on Friday night so maybe it’s just me.

It seemed like the Phillies always finished near the bottom when I was kid so it has been a lot of fun to root for them this year. I always liked the National League better and the Milwaukee Braves were my favorite team back then. Eddie Mathews was my favorite player because he played third base like me. Hank Aaron was the best player on the team and he was in the stadium last night giving an award to someone. The game got so spaced out in the rain that that they called it. I just checked the weather in Philadelphia and there is a 100 per cent chance of rain. You never know, though.

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Popwars Endorsement

Obama
Obama campaign poster 2008

I always wondered who got polled and now I know. Me. I just got off the phone with someone who polled me on who I was likely to vote for. They wanted to know my opinion, from “Very Favorable” to “Very Unfavorable”, of John McCain. That was easy. It is one week to the election so here is the official Popwars endorsement.

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Suburban Propane

Chucky Cheese's in Rochester, NY
Chucky Cheese’s in Rochester, NY

Today started with another robo call from “John at NSBA”. Most of the calls we get on our business line these days come from India and I hang up as soon as I hear the accent but John has a good old fashioned American studio voice. I have never listened to his prerecorded rap but we get this call at 9 o’clock most mornings.

After work we joined Bill and Geri out at Chuckie Cheese’s where they were celebrating their son, Sam’s birthday. Sam was wearing his Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup t-shirt for the occasion. This place is insane and that’s why kids love it. It is a sensory onslaught and the really young kids just run around like maniacs. Older kids pump tokens into the games and machines and the parents sit at tables and overeat. On the way out we overheard the hostess apologizing to the mother of an obese kid for the other kids roughhousing. We watched her give the kid a complimentary bag of blue cotton candy.

We followed a van home that had had a logo Suburban Propane on it. I was thinking that would be a good name for your band.

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Timber

Bruce O'Neill in the trees above our house
Bruce O’Neill in the trees above our house

The phone rang at 8 this morning and I was awake but my voice wasn’t. I kind of shout/sang “Bring Out The Jazz” at rehearsal last night. It was our second practice for the Personal Effects reunion. It was Bruce O’Neill on the phone to say he was going to be here in a half hour to trim our trees. We barley got any work done today. It was more fun watching Bruce in the trees.

We spent some time talking to his helper, Tom, who had just taken a buyout from a pharmaceutical company where he worked as a salesman. He spent most of his time giving golf lessons to doctors who prescribed his company’s drugs.

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Deer Nuts

Deer eatting acorns in the front yard
Deer eatting acorns in the front yard

I obsessed over the leak in our skylight for the last three days. It took me that long to pinpoint where the water is getting in. It’s a Velux window and it came with the house. They wrapped the wood frame with metal and had to bend it around the corners. They cut the top part to make the corner and stuck a tiny rubber gasket in there. Water rolls down the edge of the window, on top of the frame and when it hits that corner it builds up and finds its way through the rubber gasket into the window frame. And then rolls down the rafters out on to the ceiling where it turns the plaster mushy. It was a half-assed design held for a while and then gave out. If we get a warm spell I plan to take the window out and re-frame the opening. I’m hoping to find a better solution for the metal cladding than the one Velux came up with.

The deer around here are on a high protein diet gobbling up the acorns that are all over our lawn.

I wrote a piece this afternoon on the Hi-Techs and posted it on the Scorgies site. And I talked to Martin Edic on the phone about doing a song with us at the reunion. That conversation will be our rehearsal.

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Take A Picture Why Don’t Ya?

Beans & Rice
Beans & Rice

I remember riding my bike in the city and some kid saying, “Take a picture. It’ll last longer”. I was ten or so and I must have been starring at him. I thought of that incident today when I was making beans and rice. Peggi said, “That looks nice”, so I took a photo.

It’s really just the recipe right of the can or at least it used to be on the can before Goya reworked the label. It was called “Cuban Rice and Beans”. If I remember it right it calls for sauteing garlic, onions and pepper (I used jalapenos from our garden) in a little bit of olive oil and then adding black beans out of the can along with some oregano, roasted peppers (I used a small jar of these) and a few teaspoons of vinegar. We made Basmati brown rice and served the beans over it. There’s enough left over for tomorrow.

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Get Me Off This Train

Peggi Fournier of Personal Effects performing live Scorgie’s in Rochester, New York

The weekend zipped by and I never found time to paint so I’m thinking of taking Columbus Day off (just like the mail man) and getting some painting in then. I also want to fix the leak in our skylight if I can. It’s supposed to be warm again. It was almost eighty today but we spent most of the day down at the pool fixing the leak in our our pump.

Personal Effects was asked to play the Scorgies Reunion on Friday, November 21st at the German House in Rochester. We got our first rehearsal in last week and we dug up a bunch of old songs to teach Ken Frank (the newest PE bass player) and relearn ourselves. Most of the songs were fast! I found this slow one to try next week.

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Burning Man

Each year Earl Carsorla comes home with his dad for the Jewish holidays and we get together at Maureen’s house to watch his tapes from the last Burning Man thing. I thought it was pretty funny that someone torched the man early last year but Earl and his buddies were kind of upset with that. This seems like the kind of event Dave Mahoney would like, lots of sun, young, healthy hippy type, girls/women and some nudity. I went to Woodstock with Dave and Earl’s footage had me thinking of Dave. I can only handle so much of the Mad Max, covered in sand, voyeurism and then I want go do something but I like hang out in Maureen’s kitchen or check in with my blog in her computer room.

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Elitist?

Bowling Alley in Watertown New York
Bowling Alley in Watertown New York

I’ve been chasing down a tiny little leak in our roof for the last few years. It is somewhere near our skylight and I have dabbed black roof cement everywhere up there. It is headed into the seventies this week so I’m thinking of getting up on the roof this afternoon and going at it again so that the stuff melts and seals this thing. These sorts of projects are more fun than web work these days.

As presidents of the neighborhood pool, we scheduled a pool closing get together for Saturday. Peggi sent out an email blast to the street and so far three households say they can’t make it. Why would anyone want to be president? In our case it is a rotating obligation but what is compelling Obama and McCain to do this? McCain wants to be Commander in Chief and I’m not sure why Obama is in this race but I am routing for him. I’m thinking of leaving painting class early so I can catch the action in tonight’s so called debate.

Who came up with this bogus format anyway? The hall is full of undecided voters and they get to ask the questions. Why should we care what anyone who has not been able to pick between these two yet thinks? I know that sounds kind of elitist. Giuliani threw out huge slabs of red meat to the crowd at the GOP convention. How about they pass out tomatoes and we decide which candidate to throw the stuff at? That’s not elitist.

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A Job For Sparky

Leo's Heathkit wood splitter
Leo’s Heathkit wood splitter

Our next door neighbor, Leo, put this wood splitter together. It is a Heathkit like the stereo systems that early hobbyists built. Peggi’s dad was one of those. He put their first amplifier together in the fifties. My college roommate’s father, Harmon Hoy, built one too and his son, Steve, brought it to school with him. One of the first things Steve said to me was, “Mind if I put one of these stereo speakers on your desk?” I had been gearing up to study in college because I never did that in high school and that question and it’s implications pretty much put an end to that effort.

I borrowed the wood splitter this morning to work on the wood we pulled up from behind our neighbors house when a few trees blew over. I only got through a few pieces when a bolt broke on the handle that drives the shaft and wood toward the blade. I bought a new bolt but we will have find someone to weld the piece fitting on the end of the new bolt. I’m thinkin of giving Sparky a call tomorrow.

Peggi made dinner with the grilled vegetables and pasta recipe from this morning’s paper and it was sensational. We have a Netflix double header of “I Walk With A Zombie” and “The Body Snatcher” for after painting.

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Go Watch Alice

We spent the weekend in what some people are now calling New York’s Tech Valley“. The area stretches from Montreal to New York City and there we were equidistant from the two cities in the middle of a dead zone. That means no cell towers, no cable, no wifi and where we were, no land lines for phones.

Getting off the grid is exhilarating. I brought some old newspapers but they are out of reach here as well except for the an old issue of the El Paso Times that came in a box as wrapping for some framing that Shelley had ordered for her stick pictures. I was thinking how how cool it would be to be able to get a subscription to a variety pack of newspapers so that one day you would receive a newspaper from Tennessee and the next day it might be from Los Angeles or El Paso instead of Rochester’s Democrat & Chronicle everyday. I had a paper route for five years and developed a newspaper fix that I have never been able to shake. This may not seem as exciting an idea to most people as it it does to me.

We missed Mike Allen and his brother Lou at Mez this weekend. Mike was the lead singer for a bands in high school and I remember his brother being a great drummer. I was looking forward to hearing them do jazz standards.

On the way back into town we stopped in to say hi to Peggi’s mom. She had the Bills game on and they were losing. She tried calling her friend, Alice, to see if she wanted to join her in the dining room for dinner but she dialed Alice’s phone number on the tv remote and I watched as the channel changed to every station in Alice’s phone number.

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Keystone Cops

Shelley Valachovic opening at LORAC in Glens Falls New York
Shelley Valachovic opening at LORAC in Glens Falls New York

We took a leisurely, leaf peeping drive through the Adirondacks to Pete and Shelley’s place near Crown Point. The color was amazing. We lost track of time. Peggi thought she saw snow but it may have been a white cloud in front of one of the high peaks. We stayed too long at Cabin Fever in Star Lake, talking to Irene Baurschmidt’s husband. He was telling us that he used to do “set up” for the Invictas and he was going to do it again for them at an upcoming gig at RIT.

We were going to hook up with Pete and Shelley and drive down to her opening in Glens Falls but we were about an hour late. They were pulling out when we pulled in and we passed each other and then both turned around and then passed each other the second time. We didn’t even see them the second time and we weren’t sure that they had seen us the first time so drove on trying to catch up with them but we never did. We were right on time for the opening and Pete and Shelley showed up about a half hour later.

Shelley’s work is beautiful and we met a lot of their friends and neighbors that we have only heard about until now. We made dinner out of the little egg salad sandwiches. We were happy to that Glens Falls has a minor resurgence going on with a lot of transplanted New Yorkers settleing down here. On the Northway heading back up to Pete and Shelley place we tuned in Toronto’s “Friday Night Bandstand” on AM 740. This is a real radio show with a dj playing obscure singles and b sides along with the old familiar stuff. We only recognized about every other song or so and we were there in the first place.

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Limbo Rock

George W. Bush gives middle finger salute
George W. Bush gives middle finger salute

Just like the Soccer Moms and Joe Sixpacks, we were really looking forward to the debate tonight and it sort of disappointed. The bar had been lowered so far that Sarah won by not completely blowing it. And when you think about Dick Cheney, Palin did look pretty vice presidential. I have a pretty good track record of picking the losing limbo dancer and I hope I’m wrong this time.

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Diversions

Palin In The Corn
Palin In The Corn

How do you go about drawing in a cornfield at this scale? The articles say it took the farmer eight hours to mow his corn field in this Palin pattern but how do they work on this huge scale? Does someone project an image on the field? I might want to do some big crime faces.

Sometimes its easier to find a site with Google even when you know the domain name. And then there are always the diversions. I found the Korean Pop Wars and just added this Popwar “Word Beanie” to my wish list all on the way to my blog.

Monica emailed me from the Memorial Art Gallery today. She needs the Marlene Dumas books back that I borrowed. Excellent timing because “Measuring Your Own Grave”, the Marlene Dumas book from her upcoming MOMA retrospective, just showed up from B&N online.

A bird flew into our kitchen window this morning while I was having coffee. It’s lying upside down on our deck. I have to get out there and give it a proper burial. I promise not to photograph it. I never got around selling my 3 mega pixel Kodak when I bought the 5 megapixel Sony that I had until I bought my new little Nikon so I gave it to Pete and Shelley when they were here last. They sent a photo of a mouse that they caught in a trap. I probably won’t post that either but I wanted to acknowledge receipt of it. It’s nice to know they are using the camera. It all happens with solar power up where they are.

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Che Cosa Una Buona Vita!

We had to do a Mapquest search to locate Greece Athena High School. We rarley get over to the west side of the city and we were looking for the Performing Arts Center, the same place where Bush gave his sales pitch for Social Security privatization. The whole town is red but we were trying to forget about politics for the afternoon and enjoy the opera.

The Barber of Seville has some pretty familiar music in it. The barber’s name is Figaro and we can all sing that. I heard a Queen cover in the overture too. I was sitting in the back while Peggi attended to her mom in the bathroom. I was there for most of the first act until an usher came in and told me that my wife was looking for me. As I suspected, we would now be heading back to her mom’s apartment so that she could get cleaned up. They never saw any of the opera. I’m down in the computer room on a Windows machine. We plan to head out again, this time to Mario’s, my mother-in-law’s favorite Italian restaurant.

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Chipmunk Toss

Chipmonk at the door
Chipmonk at the door

Like everyone else, the chipmunks are slowing down this time of year. Whether they are too fat and complacent from the the bountiful summer or just getting sleepy in preparation for winter hibernation, they are piling up at our door. And our cat, Ornette, is responsible for the slaughter. I guess he thinks he is doing a good thing, bringing them up to the door, like he’s doing his share to put bread on the table. At most he puts puncture wounds in their necks and only occasionally will he eat some of the head. I’ve seen some chipmunks get up and take off after this treatment. It’s kinda gross. Today there were three of them. I keep a shovel by the door to scoop them up and then I toss them out back in the woods.

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