So today I went to Personal FX Hair Studio (646 South Ave.) and visited with Joe. I know him from Lux Lounge (666 South Ave.) and the other week he said he wanted to do something with my beard. So I went to the salon and got trimmed up and got stinky dyes and tinfoil stuck in it then waited for 20 minutes or so. I was surprised at the result and now I’m getting used to it.

Before

After

Ali, Stacie, and I went to Hogan’s Hideaway (197 Park Ave.) for dinner. I stuck with the sure bets of a good wine, French onion soup, and a grilled cheese and was not disappointed. Well, okay, except the sandwich which wasn’t grilled as much as I’d like.

After that we headed to Station 55 (55 Railroad St.) for the ArtAwake event. We were surprised to find that they charged a cover at the door — not exactly an art-gallery-kosher move. I was then disappointed to find the works were not particularly impressive. Worse was that the lighting left nothing to the imagination and there were no nooks to explore. It didn’t help all this any that there was no wine to be found either — which, among other things, can help loosen one’s ingrained bindings with America’s corporate-consumer culture. Alas, it was a big disappointment for me, and kind of kicked off the evening poorly.

So then we went to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) a bit early to catch the bands there. Unfortunately — despite it being a rather popular headliner — Gaylord, in their last Rochester show before moving to Atlanta — the happy-hour vibe was still in full-force: blaring house music and all. I only really saw the first band, Razor Wire Shrine who are an instrumental chaotic rock band with subtle influences from all over the place. I only caught a little of Fledgling Death, a thrash/heavy metal kind of band. By then the three of us were quite tired and decided to call it an early night.

In related news, The Landfill (625 Weiland Rd.) has been shut down (related because sucky Station 55 has not — it’s too milquetoast to displease the aristocracy). I recall reading it in a news clip from The City Newspaper but it doesn’t appear to have made it to the online edition. I believe it was a casualty of Mayor Robert J. Duffy’s plan to shut down house-parties, as I was pretty sure it was some guy’s house. When I first heard of that law, I was concerned it would be abused beyond its original intent: to give police the leeway they “needed” to shut down house parties when they came upon them. Now, my vision of a house party that needs to be shut down is one that is completely out of control — where the residents have lost their ability to control the party themselves.

Once again — like the shutdown of A|V Art Sound Space (N. Union St. at Trinidad St., #8 in the Public Market, formerly the All-Purpose Room) — the creative fringe of this city has had its hands chopped off. And once again, I theorize that this will push one more of these inspirational creators to go find a tolerant city. And the Mayor and all his cronies will sit around and not care about those one or two fringe people, but to me, they inspire — and I assume so of other creative people. And unfortunately that is not a column in their spreadsheet and it doesn’t compare well to tax dollars.

So, I’m left giving this advice: don’t trust the police. They are not your friends. They are not there to help you. If you see them, go away from them.

I hope this is what the mayor has in mind.

I met with the 15 or so people from MEETinROCHESTER at Regional Computer Recycling and Recovery (RCR&R) (7318 Victor-Mendon Rd., Victor) for the tour of the recycling facilities. We met with Director of Client Services Charlie McKernan who showed us around. He says their shop holds itself to high standards of recycling and environmental responsibility. They also have a fancy internal tracking system that can track parts from their source systems right to where they get recycled. The facility itself was a tech-nerd playground — a warehouse full of vintage computer systems. I was dismayed to see them go, but I do understand that for industrial applications, they are terribly inefficient. At least they are getting selected for resale and/or disposed of in a good way.

Thankfully for all of us drooling at the piles of neat stuff, they do sell working systems out of Rochester Computer Recycling Store (395 Central Ave.) and through their Electronics Café eBay Store. They accept computerized consumer electronics — mostly computers, but things like DVD players and TV’s as well but not hairdryers or bread-makers — from individuals to corporations. They even do secure data destruction.

It’s remarkable that such a cool place exists right here in town.

Tonight was The Emerging Filmmakers Series #46 and Ali and I made it to The Little (240 East Ave.) to see it. I liked ABC Movie by Elisabeth Tonnard once it got rolling and I figured out the literary angle of the visual collage that plays on “apple”, “book”, and “clock”. Fallen by Jon Noble was a zombie horror short on a budget … although imperfect, there’s a solid talent there. The real gem of the evening was Last Time in Clerkenweell [not Bathtime in Clerkenwell as I had noted ... although the descriptions and reviews seem remarkably similar to what we saw] by Alex Budovsky — it was a superb black-and-white animation set to a catchy song. It had an art-deco feel to it as well as a darker military-jingoism just under the surface.

At times, though, I found that I was being more critical than usual. I recall being able to look at a work and see the artistic merit, or a glimmer of skill somewhere, but it seems I’m now a cynic about it and judge things quickly as crap. Like Untitled by Eva Xie: I found it to be a blunt so-so metaphor on the gradient of going from a girl to a woman; its artistic technique was akin to being clever with language by removing all but the punctuation marks to make your point. “,,.,,’.:-;.” if you know what I mean.

But even that really had its merits — after all, for what is often a first-time film for someone, just learning all about making it is a challenge. It’s much harder than it appears. [You may not argue that point until you produce a short film that beats all that I've seen before.]

Anyway, I liked all the films at least a little. The Can Man by Sean Cunningham was a strange film that reveals a sinister world of bleak post-apocalyptic dehumanization. Boxed In by Joy E. Reed was a coming-out story between a woman and her mother and it did a good job of revealing some rather deep characterization. SNEW by David Lachman and Jody Oberfelder was a nifty playful piece with cut-out letters and people — a somewhat experimental piece that was fun to watch. And finally, Loose Ends by Rachel Gordon was an okay, professional-looking production about a woman dealing with dating in her 20’s.

I thought it was interesting that Karen vanMeenen had selected two films with a literary metaphor. I don’t recall having seen that before, but maybe it’s fresh in my mind what I think the bias might be.

Just a quick addition: I stopped by Muddy Waters Coffee Shop (752 S. Goodman St.) with a few of the people from MEETinROCHESTER. It’s a really nice little shop — a quiet little nook off the beaten path. The interior shows a warm, personal touch despite being rather sparse.

After having dinner with Ali, I headed out to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) later on. When I arrived, Blue Spark and Flame was just finishing their set. They sounded great: loud and powerful, like rock should be. I didn’t realize, but Handsome Jack was on the bill too. Their set was very good, but the last time I saw them, I liked them better — the chemistry just wasn’t perfect in the whole thing tonight.

Finishing up was Monotonix who blew everything away. They opened up with a flaming drum kit (paper, lighter fluid, and flames, that is). The lead singer Ami started running around and even did a bit of crowd surfing. He grabbed my half-full beer out of my hand before I realized that was where he was getting all the beer I got sprayed with minutes earlier. The guitarist stayed mostly out of the blast radius, but the drummer had his kit moved around by Ami during songs. Half-an-hour in, there’s this guy who pops into the fray, moshing with his pants around his ankles. It wasn’t long before he was streaking in his socks and being molested by the singer using the microphone cord.

Now that’s a show not to miss.