Weekly Rochester Events #273: The Premiere First Lady

Thursday, April 1, 2004

I've been looking forward to this update for a little while since it falls exactly on April Fools' Day. I had some ideas for tricks to play today (except for the first one below which I heard from someone else) so try them out if you're entirely uncreative.

• If you work somewhere that has a coffee area, fill your coffee cup halfway with cold water without anyone seeing. Rush into the coffee area when there's some other people around to witness it, fill your cup with hot coffee, then drink the whole thing as fast as you can and run back out again.
• Wear some fake arms that make it look like you have them raised in a "rollercoaster pose" and drive around town with a gigantic grin on your face. Keep the car windows down and yell a lot too.
• If you're living with someone, put frosted plastic over the face of their alarm clock so it's impossible to focus on the numbers in the morning.
• Eat at a regular restaurant. Eat everything on your plate except for one little thing ... maybe a French fry or a piece of onion or something. When the server returns to see if you'd like anything else, say, "No—but could I get this wrapped up?" They'll usually respond with "What?" Don't repeat yourself, just smile and nod reassuringly. (A personal favorite of mine.)

Anyway, last Friday I got out to Norton's Pub (1730 Goodman St.) to see a couple bands. Four + None is a fun cover band ... not exactly what I'd seek out anymore, but they at least put on a pretty entertaining show. Next was The Meddling Kids which I've meant to see since I know a couple of the guys in the band and I saw their "middle" incarnation which kinda sucked back in the Mercury Star Lounge days. Thankfully this time they're really good ... high energy modern rock. Nothing Earth-shattering, but they put on a good show.

On Saturday I was having a shitty day. I think it might have been that all-day drizzly rain stuff, and I suspect I wasn't alone ... I ended up going to Monty's Krown (875 Monroe Ave.) because that's what I expected everyone else to do. (See, it really was that bad a day ... I was originally planning to go see something new ...) Anyway, I saw The Emersons, The Grinders, and The UV Rays—all of whom I've seen before ... they still play fine and the show was good (at least loud music can sometimes drown out the voices in my head.) I think the Emersons are from Buffalo because they drew in a bunch of new-to-me faces including some really attractive women ... too bad I was in such a foul mood or else I might have been able to make an ass of myself again.

After the class on Monday I went to see the Emerging Filmmakers show at The Little (240 East Ave.) I felt super cool because I knew about seven people involved with the scene, none of whom knew that I knew any of the other ones—I was like The Kevin Bacon that day. I also had seen two of the films shown already, and I'm pretty sure I was the only one who has seen all three public screenings of Unearthed by Christina Spangler (the one about a potato with one sighted eye) in Rochester. Plus, I was happy that it was a sold-out show with about 300 people—it's a wonder what a little advertising push will do to increase the number of people up from a couple dozen people at prior screenings. I was also glad to see that Unearthed got a warm reaction from the audience, but it's too bad that when there's lots of people at any show at the Little it seems there is some technical problem—this being no exception as the sound was barely audible and the projection was a bit muddy.

Anyhow, among the highlights were A South Bronx Tale by Janis Astor del Valle about a couple young lesbian girls struggling to be themselves while facing a homophobic Bronx neighborhood. It starts out a little choppy (both literally and figuratively) but once the story gets rolling it's pretty powerful, barely leaving room for just a little hope. Farm Tours by Joanna Heatwole was good too ... it's a mini-documentary about large farming corporations driving out local farmers in this area—one of the farmers laments that his saddest day was when they decided to add french fries to the snack bar menu to make ends meet, meaning he'd have to do the job of short-order cook he was deliberately avoiding by getting into farming in the first place. Passage by Brian Vogt was a very good computer animation about a guy who daydreams through various artisticly styled worlds in an art museum. It's a cut above most of what I've seen because it actually exploits the advantages of computer animation for reasons of telling a story rather than to demonstrate a new technique. Matthew Ehlers' Who's Your Daddy was naturally short, fast-paced, and funny ... I don't think as good as his prior films but amusing nonetheless. The only sour point in my book was Spring in Awe by Martina Radwan which I just can't stand ... it's a pre-film-school quality project with a single-minded approach that doesn't say anything more than a couple sentences on the topic of war becoming entertainment.

To wrap up the week I got out to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) to see The Isotopes do a best-I've-seen-yet show of their surf-rock instrumental work. I thought The Preacher's Kids were okay with their drum/bass/three-guitar variety of standard rock-and-roll band. They're really better than that—I was letting my desire to go home and get some sleep cloud my judgement and I didn't give them a fair shot. The best of the show by far, though was the middle band: Darediablo who do this great high volume, high distortion drum-guitar-keyboard flavor of modern rock.

Coming up, I've finally got some time to myself since the class wrapped up. I already took on another task of helping out with Friday's Synaesthesia I show—what with the seeing and the avant garde and the loud and the screechy noises. I'm just glad I heard about it ... it's not well advertised, and hopefully future shows will be. I'm also psyched to see Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter on Saturday, and Amazon Women on the Moon should be lots of fun next Wednesday.