Campaigning on fear
This year’s county-executive campaign could have been about ideas, issues, and vision. It will not be. Steve Minarik’s Republican machine has seen to that. To boost Maggie Brooks’ chances against Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson, the Minarik machine has launched a campaign of fear, divisiveness, and hate. And a passel of Republican elected officials has fallen…
‘City’ on a hill
American suburbs are schizo. That’s clear even from the dreary landscape of academic prose. Look at these two diagnoses. On one hand, suburbanites think small is beautiful. Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk put it this way in The Second Coming of the American Small Town: “[They] sense what is wrong with the places…
A Texan in Corning
As a material for sculpture, glass is more durable than either granite or steel. And in the hands of Robert Willson, hot molten glass — “rich and utterly sensuous,” as described by the artist — is richly and utterly transformed into solid, evocative, and bold forms. Willson, born in West Texas in 1912, graduated from…
Feeling bewildered at Stratford
Canada’s great Stratford Festival continues its 51st season’s bewildering variety with six productions of classic plays, all well-known but not previously performed at Stratford. Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exitteases intriguing variations out of the cliché that “Hell is other people.” Its perfect dramatic structure counterbalances three opposed new arrivals in hell who are trapped in…
Rhinos enter tie land
Last time out. The Lynx are so bad. They’re so bad, they couldn’t even draw the Rhinos 2-2 at Frontier . The last time a non-Toronto team failed to score two goals on the road against Rochester was back in June, when the Rhinos shut out Montreal, 2-0. Last Friday, the Lynx (9-3-10, 30 points)…
The Ben and Jen show
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, one of those isolated brainstorms that now and then sweep through narrow areas of Southern California, specifically, conference rooms in the region of Hollywood. Some inventive person probably suggested a movie constructed around two of the best known young stars in American film, who…
Chasing a one-armed bandit, and a box
The flying guillotine looks like an umbrella that extends into a red fondue pot on a chain. Its master is a blind octogenarian named Fung Sheng Wu Chi, and he has eyebrows twice that of even Andy Rooney. Fung’s enemy is a one-armed bandit who killed his two brightest protégés in 1971’s One Armed Boxer.…
The warped state of Third Estate
You’ve heard the story before: Friends hang out. Friends jam. Somehow it works. Friends start a band. Their parents and neighbors are sooo happy. The band inundates city dives, makes noise, makes fans, and eventually, a name for itself through all the hoopla. Maybe it even records a CD along the way. But vision…
News briefs 8.6.03
Pursuing human perfection Dwain Wilder gently handles an unfinished dulcimer and tries to explain his passion for building them. “Our world is full of a kind of perfection that has no soul,” he says. “It’s mechanical. It can be beautiful… look at these cars pouring off assembly lines. But they don’t win your heart in…
Big man behind the scenes
For close to 30 of his 52 years, John Parkhurst has helped Rochester’s fickle music motor run. On the phone with agents and managers, in the audience with the people, or in the trenches with performers and stagehands, his casual confidence and charm belie the day-in day-out obstacles of the biz. He makes it look…
No smashing allowed
So I’m standing on the Court Street Bridge, minding my own business, when I’m approached by this obviously dressed roadie-tour manager type. Seems he needs a guitar for his band (Linkin Park), so his guitarist can smash it on stage and can I direct him to a music store, please? I immediately saw red. …
Reader feedback 8.6.03
Metro works Once again county Republicans are showing their disingenuousness and ignorance. Eight town supervisors demonstrated on the steps of City Hall on July 24 in an effort to discredit Rochester Mayor and County Executive candidate Bill Johnson, and confuse the voters about his position on metro government. Greece Supervisor John Auberger’s remark that…
