The Shazam Project.

The latest in a series of Perfect Ideas Crafted by Yours Truly: The Shazam Project.

I just recently unveiled this to Deb who liked it enough, but YT realized the patter, the sell, must be improved upon for this Perfect Idea/Project to soar, to tantalize like a well-lit Vegas buffet.
Although, ultimately, more healthful and satisfying than said buffet.

The Shazam Project, for proponents of the iPhone and the app Shazam (and other, lesser smarty-pants phones):
Look at the ten last Shazamed songs on your iPhone.
Purchase, download, and burn them onto ten discs.
Share and/or swap discs with ten friends.

My own ten, presently, are:
- I Feel Love, Donna Summer.
- Stereo, John Legend
- Takin' Care of Business, BTO
- Dream Weaver, Gary Wright (longtime guilty pleasure, had to Shazam it in a 21st-C move to ownership)
- Sometime Around Midnight, The Airborne Toxic Event
- Last Parade, Matthew Good
- Berenice: Cadrò, Ma Qual Si Mira, Cecilia Bartoli
- Situation, Yazoo
- He Loves Me, Jill Scott
- Imma Be, The Black Eyed Peas.

Now that is a Perfect blend.
Time to wend toward the hallowed halls of art moderne for a meeting of brunch minds.

Shazam. Love. Burnt.

Color me pun intentional, and color me quite transfixed by this image made by Yours Truly that was once believed - wrongheadedly - to be better as black & white.
What the photon freak was YT thinking.
This is a sublime image in color.
And therein lies a happy, lovely discovery of today whilst applying in a somewhat delightful, frenzied half-assed artist fashion for a NYFA grant.
When YT got to the part about "Have you ever applied to this here federal arts awarding confection" YT got all flustered, not recalling if it was a yay - or nay.
So I said No.

My art statement was a blistering rendition and retooling of another arts statement of not too long ago. This time it seemed important to mention two of my huge influences in the special extra bonus cultural section - Ana Mendieta and Maya Lin.

Onwards.

Time to make and do some more.
Time to revel in that special energy that puts the bon in bon vivant - and head to Hallwalls for a nice evening of something raucous and experimentally jazz.

Onwards, Love - in heady arts statements and oso much more.

Yours Truly is invited by a filmmaker to hop in front of his camera with mine own to do some landscaped images around the post-industrial disaster that was once Bethlehem Steel.
Pending.
What will be important, he says, are what shoes you're wearing.
Indeed.
And on the personal landscape one knows my feelings about shoes, and the shoes around and about.

∞

Neil Young sings away the negative molecules and suddenly it occurs to YT that really missed is Dragon Boy.

Onwards.

Landscape Love.

Yours Truly indeed loves trads and onesuch is the annual writing, by YT, of The Lore and Allure of Columbus.
For an exciting new twist YT writes the following whilst in the back row of Hallwalls black room - a.k.a. theatre performance claustrophia chamber for the Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core gig for yours truly is a masterful multi-tasker.


Thinking of the nautical, historical, and nonsensical as Larry and team of four others recreate his - and those of free jazzerific others - jolting and multi-layered compositions seems appropriate.
And within the sound waves audience members just in front of my flying little fingers cannot hear a jot of the mad Mac keyboard clicks.
A Triumph.

If YT were to be one of the musicians, and do not all audience members engage in some degree of transference of audio-visual and wishful, she would be the drummer - either one, for there are two.
YT would have no patience to be the sax playing Ochs, but Satoko Fujii, playing keyboard (YT cannot bring herself to ever write the word synthesizer after mourning the loss of vrai drumming in the early 80s and all) and piano is quite electricifying.

So about Columbus.
Like Jesus, he was probably a Libra.
YT has just celebrated another 10/10, and sometimes the birthday falls on this curious U.S. holiday. YT shares 10/10 with my niece, Katharine, ReUse founder Michael Gainer, a former neighbor (Marilyn Rutstein), and others, like the one-year old baby met at this past Saturday's wedding.
And also like YT, he is Italian - whereas YT is that and Polish. A hearty Middling City blend.
Columbus's gig was exploration on a boat and just as the lunar surface was recently crashed into by NASA in a frantic search for the presence of water to replenish what is quickly - astonishingly - dissipating, he was searching for spices, newness, and more land to colonize for grandiose hopes and schemes.

That children are still taught the names of his party's three boats is also astonishing as most people don't know about nutrition, how to properly operate a motor vehicle, how to speak a second language, or how their city/state/federal governments operate, or how to get their complacent asses to a voting booth.

Of course Columbus did not discover the Americas; what he did was colonizing, good self-centered colonizing to the chagrin of tens of thousands of native people.

But less about Columbus and more about YT.

When people discover, like Columbus, that YT loves Westerns they always ask Why.
Like kabuki theatre, a western is a simple scenario: movement across a forbidding terrain, struggle of man v. man/Nature, landscape longshots, the formation of order/civ/towns.
(Larry Ochs, long pause, I'm thinking. One more before we take a short break.)
All musicians take a Short break, no matter the length.

Maybe this is why people dig the Columbus story.
A man and his crew and three boats hit the seas and land upon a place and six hundred and sixty or so years later we still find ourselves squaring against Nature, ourselves, the forces of the universe.

Universal, Particular Love.

Latest in the Accidental Frame Series, on 9/9/09 to be more precise than this firing-off.

Spent time yesterday pre-BigU football season opener documenting the practices of tailgaters - with a writer in tow.
She will be creating a slideshow for the web of the captured images and quotes flying through the air like proverbial footballs.
Some played football, some kan-jam, some beer pong.
Yours Truly has never tailgated so finds this a curious practice as there's food to be had inside the venue.

A favoured, documented menu was created by the blended family (half for UB, half for Pitt) that consisted of Rice Krispies Treats and margaritas.
Another fav was the site of the homemade cooking cart where a guy who calls himself Tumbleweed made Dutch oven eggs.

Post-gameshoot went to the region's diverse and vast food emporium (where one is as likely to find patio umbrellas, scented candles, as well as scallions) for provisions and a semi-annual Diet Pepsi.
At the fountain drink dispensing station YT encountered DP that was mainly soda water. Dumping out the cup and trying another DP spigot suddenly there was an elderly man standing to my left, with an outstretched arm holding a cup.
It seemed he was reaching for the same beverage choice so I said There's something wrong with the Diet Pepsi.
And he, in one brilliant flash, said
There's something wrong with everything.

Ah, the Wisdom of strangers.
Off to Great Expectations Book Group for sustenance of all sorts.

Love of Sustainability.

Planes.
(Immediate soundtrack: Alexi Murdoch's Dream About Flying)


1.
Yesterday, while sitting at the edge of the lake where it meets the river, and the sea (really great lake) wall, too, spotted a small reddish plane slowly wending from north to south.
Immediate memory shifted to the fore, another plane, about two decades ago.
A friend had an idea, one that Yours Truly did not completely admire, the friend's plan, not the friend, of picnicking during an air show.
An air show is so never a thing that YT needs to see.
There was a child-era rocket-fuelled showing of jets down in Georgia where YT spent all of her warm-weather months in and around Atlanta, Marietta, Smyrna and the like. This was probably enough, a single air showing of bridled aerospace power and gall.

But then the air show of two decades ago, recalled in a silent powerful flash.

There we sat on a thin stretch of grass, facing the lake, along with hundreds of other watchers.
We picnicked out of a basket, on a blanket.
YT had an uneasiness, and kept reminding the alongside pal of this, that people die at these events.

And then.

We watched as a small airplane went nose down into the lake. Silently straight into the water, and then large pieces of the plane, split apart, separating and falling individually into the water.
There was gasping, a collective disbelief, and then the scanning of the skies just above this breakage to see if, perchance, the pilot had just done a ridiculous and expensive stunt, wrecking a plane for some deconstructive expression, hanging over the proceedings in a parachute, poised for a watery landing.
But no, this was a public and tragic death, witnessed by hundreds on a sunny afternoon, who then traipsed silent and shocked to cars parked far away as more people were coming into the park for the air show that had ended with Coast Guard boats looking for a lone survivor.

And, of course, being literate as well as image-ridden, said to my friend I told you people die at these events.


2.
This day of infamy, of unfading tragic anniversary when things crashed and then stood very still.
Yours Truly was watching Henry, TonyC's dog, and TonyC was stuck on the west coast of the USA for an extra week, trying to wrangle a rental vehicle to come back as flights were strangled to a halt.
Besides watching Henry, and spoiling him, was watching the morning news on 9/11 as I spoke to a colleague.
YT believed that what I was watching was an anniversary for the World Trade Center bombing a long time ago, when terrorists pulled into the parking ramp with explosives. When Elba and her officemates and thousands more were brought by the Red Cross to the rooftop, before walking miles back down to the street.
And YT called her while she was on the rooftop and she assured me that she was alright.
But that was winter.
And the image on the television was sunny, like the day that we were in.
A crisply-lit autumn day.
It was, and as me and my colleague watched the news and the image of the burning tower in our respective homes the second plane hit.
I was 400 or so miles away, in the heart of the Middling City but everyone reached out to one another.
It became important to connect with those who are loved in the Shiney Apple - immediately.
To hear their stories.
The first time I flew to the Shiney Apple post-9/11 was about a month or so after, to see and stay with Dorota in the happy loft on Broome, and our pilot took us over the WTC site, dipping the plane so that we had a phenomenal view of the pit that was left.
That first day back, YT bought the ring that reads Compassion.
A constant reminder, it is hoped, to carry Love, Compassion, Wish.

Reminder, Love.

As is my wont, there was Yours Truly, minding mine own photographic business and documenting the amazing feats of a group of people.
Today it was IT types.

Who was the famed precursor who stated that Ninety percent of what it means to be a successful photog is the rearranging of furniture and the like.
What I would add, after a majority of life years in the business of making photons bend to my desires and those of my clients, is that the photo business is mainly talent, as well as a knack for the moving of furniture and the dispensing of fear and self-consciousness when the need arises to scale belltowers, jump onto risky window sills that open out to the world below, and scramble across floors of questionable cleanliness.

After the shoot with the group of smarty-pants was asked to document the re-org'ing of the quad outside the Big U's older, city-edge campus.
Exactly the spot where YT et many al's once rested our weary undergraduate bones in front of huge plate glass windows in the Fillmore Room where a fireplace blazed away.
Where YT picked up her daily NYT across the way, in the bookstore, and watched passersby in the quad, crisscrossing the walkways under semi-oldgrowth trees.
Where infamous precursors at UUAB (where YT was Cultural & Performing Arts Chair for four years) did folk and rock shows for a portion of the masses.
And where students frequently tossed handfuls of student papers to fuel the fire.
YT recalls a small scandal whereby a rival publication burnt to a crisp copies of one of the papers where YT worked hard as reporter/poetry editor - The Alternative Press/Alternative News Collective mentored by Tolstoy College's wondrous Charlie Haynie.
Ahhh, the mems.
And O the bulldozing crisscrossing of tire tracks as the quad is revamped, its mechanicals being modernized.
I noted a breech in the construction fence, and that it had none of the usual warnings about having to wear a hard hat in the area and such, and went around said fence to make more advantageous images of the Progress in Progress - an inescapable phrase from when the Middling City was being subtly blasted up and down Main Street to create its semi-sub-way.
Progress in Progress was a slogan that was painted on a wooden barricade that YT had to navigate around in the teen years to go to classes on this verysame campus.
YT asked the handler du jour if the large and cleared center space would, perhaps, be a lovely new fountain that might, ideally, attract some of the ducks that enjoy nearby Glen Falls Park.
He did not know.
YT asks those types of semi-unanswerable questions.

New bumper sticker concept.
The Semi-unanswerable Questions-Progress in Progress.

PiP Love.

Much earlier today, like in the post-asscrack of dawn hours, read on NYT iPhone app that thee Teddy Kennedy departed for the big cocktail-laced politico event in the hereafter.

Yours Truly mused or de-mused with a twinge of regret that I never photographed him but there is a lovely memory attached to him.

Perhaps inspired by a few political rallies that YT attended with her parents in the 70s, and the occasional hanging with the last wave of hippies at an impressionable age (a practice that continued until about the age of nineteen), decided that, upon hearing that Teddy was coming to Buffalo's god-awful Convention Center as a stop on his campaign trail, skipped school to see him.
Went with one of my best schoolpals, MarjorieX, and bussed it downtown, in our political tweed blazers that we reserved for our political activities.

Downtown we went, amid a crush of people to see not only the Democratic challenger to Jimmy Carter, but to see a real-live Kennedy. I think we were firmly set in both camps.

Being young, and cute in our tweed blazers, we were spotted and singled out by some members of Kennedy's campaign and were not only given oversized Kennedy in 80 placards, but Kennedy in 80 t-shirts, if we agreed to wear them immediately. So we stretched them over the blazers, proudly and suddenly thrust into an important background sea of Kennedy supporters.
And YT, they perhaps did not know, or did not care, was too young to vote.
But if I had had the op, and once I did, voted straight-ahead Dem.

So there MarjorieX and I were, subsumed in political fervor, merrily skipping school and truly doing something otherworldly and important. Screaming and clapping as we were so moved.

After the rally, we queued up on the street along the motorcade route and held up our placards.

The limousine carrying Teddy came to a stop directly in front of me and MarjorieX, and YT had a second-long and shared glance – between me and a member of the Kennedy Clan.

Through the tinted limo glass, across a span of thirty feet, between haggard street fighting and campaigning rockstar politician and idealistic/pome-writing teenager there passed that human energy of watching/watcher, and a shared belief in the possibility of a democratic world, a happier life and a world beyond the confines of a limited high school in the suburbs of the Middling City: a world where experience and talent outreaches privilege.

And this was before YT owned a decent SLR. These were the days of borrowed cameras, the salad days when the passion had not yet taken complete control.

Privileged Love.

Encounters of Profundity.

A scintillating new series crafted by Yours Truly for your erudition and enjoyment, much like the whole of epinw, and the ever-illustrative Accidental Frame Series.

EoP 1.
Whilst working on a story for the Shiney Happy Mag, a Pulitzer-worthy piece on some select Middling City dives and the like with Sherry as winggirl, encountered one Eric. Eric is nephew of a former boss.
Eric is a hellion of a certain genre, and tippling nearby is Eric's dad, as well as some others who had just been out boating in and around the picturesquely Perfect waters of the Old First Ward.
We are all talking at the bar, me taking important notes as well as photographic images of the scene, when suddenly Eric informs me that I am juvenile.
What Eric meant is that YT appears to be youthful - as my hair was pulled back and I was in an oso good mood, laughing with Sherry on our barscursion.
Our four eyebrows lifted skyhigh and then I asked him what he meant.
You know, he said, you're sophomoric.
Another compliment.
And YT took it as such.

EoP 2.
Whilst minding my own business and crossing the Peace Bridge, came up to the paying lane at a rakish angle as there was a rash, last-moment lane change.
The man in the tollbooth was suddenly outside his booth, waving frantically and saying something.
When I got closer to hand him dollars, not loonies, nor toonies, he, in a wild-eyed fashion, handed YT one of those individually-wrapped LifeSaver© mints - congratulating YT on attempting a great job (in facetious tones and undertones of irony), whilst approaching said booth.
Another compliment.
And YT took it as such, as I did the mint.
I did not eat said mint.

Minty, complimentary Love.

Above is one favoured image from Hurd Orchards, that magical night of feasting on the spoils of toils - much like the agritourismos in Sicily, all things on table made nearby. This shot shows the wide-open barn full of revelers, flowers, food, and one dragonfly moth sucking nectar out of red flowers.

Yours Truly accidentally deleted a recent wonderful frame for inclusion in the ongoing Accidental Frame Series, and then tried to fake it - to no avail. The focus was all too un-Zen, the tip of the cam not authentic, to my Perfect eyes. So that faux Accidental Frame was itself deleted.

One cannot force Perfection, one cannot fake the glorious happenstance.
One cannot force one to love one, one cannot force union.
And to that we must hear from Beth Orton, a seer, and poet, and speaker to hearts akimbo.

YT just this past weekend ran a photographic marathon of sorts, making loving images at three weddings.
What is most cherished about these all-day photo ops is being near people in happy flux, the blending and sometimes clashing of families and friends.
Being intuitive and empathetic these events can be overstimulating as you pick up on the vibes all the livelong day.

At one wedding YT was seated with family and friends and at each place was a fairly new convention - the b&g music mix, burnt onto discs for each guest.
The couple thoughtfully provided titles and artists.
The ever-documentary eyes of YT, scanning the oso typical titles, came to a screeching halt on track 14.
Eric Clapton covered Lady in Red.
Was a huge question.
Putting said disc into cam bag and finishing up the night's documentation, got into the awaiting Subaru and popped the disc in.
Could not wait to hear guitar god Clapton's version of this treacle, a secret and guilty pleasure.
For what lady does not want to be that Lady in Red, finally realized for her beauty, by her man.
Track 14 began the usual Lady in Red way, with those - how to say - beatbox-a-rific strains, almost primal in staccato insistence, giving way to layered ooooo's or perhaps mmmmm's.
Then, the vocals.
And then YT realized that the b&g made a musical boo-boo for this artist is Chris DeBurgh, the recording artist, and Clapton is still free from the shackles of the song's romanticism.
And YT thinks that Clapton could possibly sue this wedding couple.
I mean really.
Clapton would never touch this synthesized tune.

Just back from finishing up note-taking foray for next Shiney Happy Mag piece - a brilliant survey of Middling City dives.
A cocktail of visual convention, barroom archetypes, bad lay warnings in restrooms, and oso much more.

Lady in Red Love.

Quel week.
A spicy and savory blend of happenings, gigs, and wendings.
Took a few jaunts with Kennedy, back out to one of our fav midday Nature enjoyment joints, Reinstein Woods, where Yours Truly saw a luminous green frog among the flora and fauna. And some of the oldest trees in the state, miraculously standing as all of their surrounding areas are big box industry.
Discovered Murphy Orchards as I worked on my next story for the Shiny Happy Mag, a piece about - get this - jams and jellies.
Spent about an hour talking with Carol Murphy who revealed that she doesn't like bread, or jams and jellies.
And then I revealed that I am also not a fan of bread, jams, or jellies.
But on occasion it's necessary to eat a PBJ - as it was this week.
Bought a bag of Murphy Orchards wares that YT will certainly eat, and give as a few gifts, and it all totaled under $20.
Made some lovely images of valleys, a farm dog, some other curios.

Among the week's gigs was one of nurses in a hospital training room - and me and the AD deemed it quite inappropriate to have the faux human in the room as he either appeared too lifelike, or it was overkill to have a body in the shot.
Sometimes it is the idea of a body that is enough.
So the faux human was hustled out of bed, after being disconnected from his computer, and lugged to the hallway, where he rested on an examining bed near the elevators.
YT could not resist making some images of the faux man, including this one of his faux feet, replete with faux gangrene.

Kennedy and I also went to peer at the contents of the Aud's time capsule that was cornerstoned in 1939.
Nobody could tell me anything about the golden ring that was amongst the deed, plans, program, newspapers bound with twine and opened to shocking news du jour, resolutions, and the like.
This is all in the new Community Gallery of the Middling City's Hysterical Society. And YT, already a proud BECHS member, is joining the charter Doctor Lalli Circle to fund shows for this new venue.

Spent most of yesterday up in Canada and returned to dine and then to karaoke with a bunch of friends and acquaintances and singers. This was the last stage of the birthday week celebrations for Annie and we all sang our darnedest as we occasionally batted about beachballs that were onhand to promote 500 Days of Summer.
A nice lady also gave everyone tshirts emblazoned with the movie's motto which YT really cannot recall at this time.
And, as seems to be the case with all karaoke moments, there was a cowboy in the house.
He was of the leather hat variety.
As we left the owner gave us all verrrry friendly hugs.
I so believed in the creative possibilities of belting out the jubilant PYT by MJ (which YT has dubbed thee song of this summer), but it was a case of entering a song and suddenly realizing Holy Crap there are a lot of words in this tune.
Sherry co-sung and all in all it was a hilarious lovefest with but one klunker - Annie was most displeased that the karaoke jockey cut off one of her tunes too quickly.


Onwards.

It is a beautiful day and there are billions of pixels to be managed, a dual baby naming to attend with whitefish salad to eat, and gardens to be coerced, and another party to be fabulous at.

At Love.

Yours Truly has been in a workus maximus state all this lovely livelong day, and is about to embark on a weekend of wedding shooting. And the weather looks like it will be the first spate of non-monsoon days in some time.
YT, mind You, does not mind the overcast, photo-Perfect days.
Nor the cooler weather that brings flowers to their toppermost potentials.
The bee balm is at chin level when it's usually about two feet tall, about two-thirds of a meter methinks in Canadian.

Speaking of Canadian, heading up north to Hillebrand for a menu and hopefully tasty Canadian vino on Sunday to fete the near-Bastille Day B-day girl.

Speaking of toppermost, image is Lower Manhattan: Ninety Choristers. A Perfectly Zen moment when an op of Artistic props bounds forth from the situ at hand.
En route to a gig found this. Shot this. And so on.
Submitted this image to Hallwalls for their upcoming art auction in August and was told, in short, that the image does not fit the oeuvre of YT at all.
To my utter bemusement.
As an artist one cannot always assume absolute knowledge or explication of one's work as it's left the process and takes on its own life in the world where it is met with the thoughts and opinions and past beliefs of others.
So HW has asked that I not give them this piece and that I submit something Edgier.
YT did remark back that street work has been part of what I've been doing photographically since 1981, which led to documentary work of people's interior spaces, then zooming ahead to industrial landscapes, to street moments and street green.

The Parsons MFA thesis show, my work within, was dubbed EndWork and was all found moments and street green images.
So this is in part part of what YT does for art's sake.
And my work has never been described as Edgy.
I find it a curio.
YT will give HW another piece, they'd like a studio shot - from the interactively organic and ongoing hand series - but a new one has to be printed.
The last bit of this series was printed out on stand-outs and a work under glass is better for an auction, the trad print/mat/frame concept.

Onwards.

Trad Love, Madly in Love.

En route on foot to Solid Gold Booker brunch at AKAG snapped with the little Red Dot Cam this image of trees, the spice of visual life.
Brunch was usual Janus fete of beginnings & endings - end of holiday weekend, beginning of Sio's life as a PhD, and other beginnings and endings in the works.

Documentary image of the SGBers in attendance, snapped by Ian, ever-thoughtful Canadian boy.


So Independence Day came in like a lamb and kaboomed out like a lion, with a morning coffee at (bad-java'd SPoT) and some curious sightings that included a couple of tourists, apparently, in semi-matching ensembles.
Their tops features stars, stripes, a brief section of The Constitution.
Namely, anything that got Patriotic juices flowing.

Indie Day featured a last-moment traipse to Angola-on-Lake for a beachy party that featured a band that Yours Truly has photographed a plethora of times, and featuring Lars on drums, an impressive array of chips (YT believes Indie Day is not complete without a handful of Lays potato chips, as well as rock classique in abundance), a walk on the beach, and some pleasantly unexpected reconnections with a few old pals. Onwards then it was to Marty & Susan's for their annual roast alongside the cornfield.

I must add in a gush of literary fervor that the iPhone app dubbed cleverly Classics is a wonder - it's what the Kindle should be with its nicely-toned pages that touch-screen turn. For 99¢ one can read about a dozen classics in their entirety. New titles coming down the pike, allegedly. But what a treat to read Pride and Prejudice whilst standing in line.

Dining out with the sole sibling, the sole niece, and various first cousins later this evening for a semi-annual casual fam reunion.

Thanks to FB many cousins in the Perfect loop.
Onwards to deadlines galore.

Looped Love.

Yours Truly moments ago experienced a technical curio:
What in hell was Neil's Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show doing playing out of the website of a well-known band of hipsters.
How or why did Neil allow this, being the preeminent showman and perfectionist that He is.
Did he not realize that the Irony was flying in full force with his narrative tune the big brunt.
Well, as it turns out, YT had her pandora Neil Diamond station in the on position, and was looking at the site of the hipster band, not realizing the station was on.
It was ever so confusing and YT is relieved that Neil remains where he should be - in the Pantheon and not on some other band's site.

Onwards.

Just received this holiday wish from ChristineC:

Happy Fourth of July!!! May it not rain, and may there be Kielbasa AND Italian sausage served this year!!!
xoxo,
Christine

Very thoughtful as CC who not only sends a happy holiday sentiment but recalls that YT has told her that bien sur I love sausages as I am both Italian and Polish, creators of the world's best sausages ever.

And, to imagistically celebrate, at toppermost is my image made upon the visit by YT and AEDM to see a (miserable chop-job of Beckett words) production at Adam M Library and Dramatic Circle on Fillmore - FillMo to those in the urb.

YT does indeed love the pyro possibilities of this wack holiday, 7/4.
TA-RA-RAHH-BOOOOM-TEE-AY.

TA-RA-RAHH-BOOOOM-TEE-AY Love.

Above, the latest from the Accidental Frame Series.
A steamingly hot Middling City shot definitely not made today, when the skies darkened and a lady at a nearby luncheon table eavesdropped and, panic-stricken, asked Jana and I if indeed we were correct and a tornado was a-blowin' into Allentown.

Onwards.

Yesterday Yours Truly ran - and I do mean ran - in 3" heels in the Second Annual Shoefly-sponsored .5K Stiletto Run with all proceeds going to a charity that researches ovarian cancer.
YT, being ever-practical, dressed sensibly, and had trained a bit.
Like as in wore 2" heels the day before for eight hours whilst trailing behind the new SUNY Chancellor, another Nancy. And no word if all is Perfect in her world.
She, it should be noted, did have her own set of pumps on, some see-through stilettos.
And bright red nails.
YT asked Vincenzo to wrap my ankles to prevent any breakage or wobble and it looked, when he was completely done, like I had spats on.
Charlie of BuffNews fame did a fab job catching ladies mingling about on the start line just moments before the starting gun. Really a noise device such as is used to clear campers out of the waterfront.

YT is hearing now that - hooray - the Supreme Court ruled that the search of the thirteen year old AZ girl "went too far" and there was an 8-justice majority. Souter: It was reasonable to search her bag, her outerwear, slim basis for strip search ... there is also a limited danger of ibuprofen, this was extreme, and wrong.

Off to a diverse night of attractions - the Spree Best Of shindig at Shea's, and then Walking with Dinosaurs. YT works on the Best Of issues, is a panelist that sits in on a handful of meetings discussing what is what, what is bestest, and toppermost in the MC.

Time time to fly.
Not run for a while.

Love of good decisions.

As William Blake was wont to say
Exuberance is beauty.

There is much exuberance wafting about these days.
As of late a spate of gorgeous moments, music, memories-to-be.
Or is a memory-to-be suddenly a memory when dragged into the open air.
Indeed.

Jetted off in a flurry to the Shiney Apple last week for a marathon of art making, gigging, Beckett, Band of Horses, editing, visiting, and viewing.

Shot ports in Battery Park, a lovely place if you ignore the faux statuettes of Liberties, the molten ice cream cones, and profusion of memorializing.
Had just purchased myself some Perfect parfum and I do hesitate to give away what it is. Yours Truly nearly purchased it for its bottle, a sweet glass number with true golden bees screened around the bottle. Having a bee thing and all. That the scent inside the bottle is all mystery and lovely is a super bonus.

Went to Studio 54 with Justy to see Waiting for Godot (and please it is GOD-oh) with John Goodman, and Nathan Lane. A triumph.
Didn't know Bill Irwin (yet) but now do and he is a solid Didi to Lane's Gogo.
And Goodman is now embedded into YT's mind as thee Pozzo.
We sat in the second row and so were spat upon by the cast, merrily.
We were not underneath where the oversized coke spoon of yore was foisted up into the expansive historical ceiling.

Here is the production's tree of second half, with its merry seven or so leaves of green.
Afterward Justy and I headed to one of our fav haunts, ñ on Crosby for tapas, handclaps, various bevvies.
Next day was edit time on the rooftop of GPH, always Perfect.
Then on to visit with DKNY, and then dinner with ShineyApple'Phew at another haunt, Souen for health-on-a-plate.

Onwards it was then to Band of Horses for a much-anticipated gig, all acoustical, at Carnegie Hall. We were in first row of Dress Circle, a confusing name but what this entails is that we were essentially floating in the center of this acoustical confection. Openers were Arbouretum of languid melodies and lovely voices.
Then.
Then.
Time for BoH.
So anticipationalized, and so excellent.

YT took notes and here are some stats:
20 songs, 2 hours, three encore tunes, 3 guest musicians, 1 guest musician on grand piano, a guest femme fiddler gleaned from Pete Seeger's grandson's band. Her playing and harmonizing augmented and fit. Oh, and 1 beside-himself biggestfan behind me, ShineyApple'Phew, AllenF (aka Rachel but thank our stars she did not show), and ethereal StaceySongstress, groaning his devotion - and request for LDC until those around him finally convinced him to quiet himself. Until next eruption.

From my small purple n-book, NB.

My goodness, hello everybody.
First words out of Ben/lead.

Some songs were pepped up doubled-time, others slowed slower slowest, like Wedding Song, becoming a dreamy waltz. Window Blues became a subtly rollicking swing.
And of course they did Funeral, their best known, which drew a few tears, as No One's Gonna Love You nearly did except YT was too busy for a moment jotting down pomes pennyeach and fiddling with the iPhone Zippo lighter.
Great Salt Lake was explosive, as written.

Merch. Did acquire a nice sage green t. ShineyApple'Phew did want the BoH frisbee and YT did attempt to get it for half price but the lady behind the merch table, a CH volunteer, would not budge. It was $20, too much, YT believes, for flinging the 'bee.
Arose before the asscrack of dawn and jetted out on the first JetBlue flight, still hap-hap-happy from hearing BoH.
Landed and hit ground running, literally.
Had a gig and then visited with visiting musician pals, including CelloBoy.

Later that day, Friday, visited with olds & dears, including Cheryl and Liz - pictured in the dreamy late-day light from the appointed joint's large plate glass.


Next day was more gigging, and then a gig of musical proportions to see Great Lake Swimmers lead singer, Tony Dekker, solo at thee Terrapin Point which once chunked off killing a bunch of Victorian Era sightseers.
Heady and I fell victim to my sometimes-faulty internal GPS and I got us to another empty stage alongside the pathetic Hard Rock Café where YT took Liz a long while ago to its grand opening festivities that featured Goo Goo Dolls, and Soul Coughing of where are they now status.
So finally the right streets were taken (First Street, not first street, par example) and we were suddenly sitting in front of the small stage where Tony D was singing some beauty.
And then he stopped.
So we'd missed about 99.9% of his gig.
After that YT was quite sad and all and did approach Tony D to see if he just might be into the idea of serenading me, Heady, and Noah for 1 or 2.
And he did.
Under a Terrapin Point tree.
It was quite dreamy.
It was not a GLS tune but one by the ol' Carter Fam of Johnny Cash in-law fame.

Onwards.

Today is Bloomsday, a fact appropriate to epinw which runs on precious Beckett fuel.
YT will be reading a portion of Ulysses tonight with AEDM, Jana, Mish.

Exuberant Love.

Above is one of the falcon near-fledglings who began its hatch & fledge on the southern campus of the BigU.
Arrived at base of tower to discover a difficult angle so meandered to find this better angle, surrounded by birders with binos and men who work in the building below the tower with their own binos.
Up in the tower were, reportedly, three men of the DEC who had been harnessed to a metal ladder and who made the long climb in near-darkness.
Yours Truly, ever intrepid, asked if it might be possible to also make the climb.
The answer was a resounding, unwavering No.
Even after YT explained that there have been other vertical trips of such steepness/photo-operativeness/import.
YT cites past climbs up creaking and semi-non-existent stairs/ladders inside church belltowers, grain elevators, climbing scaffolding built over the Middling City's former Buffalo Savings Bank golden dome.

So, (im)patiently YT waited and waited to see - finally - a hand reaching into the falcons's nesting box to net the fledglings one by one.
They were each banded for their safety and the like.
This took a long time and what we could see on the ground was a white bucket appearing, disappearing, and reappearing in a window pane.
Then a parent falcon swooping in to perch and whoop when it was discovered that the chicks were MIA.
And then the happy reunion.
And then a happy photo op with some men of DEC, sweaty and harnessed.
And, as promised, one of the men of DEC was highly Cute, as promised by a birder lady.
She stressed this point, as well as others about falcons in general, several times.

Tomorrow is jetting off, merrily, for work and fun in the Shiney Apple.

Tomorrow night Justy and I see Waiting for Godot at Studio 54.
Have not been there since attending a gigantic, fantastic HipHop party there in the early 90s. Cast includes John Goodman and Nathan Lane.
Seats seem to be fairly excellent.

Details of Sam Experience to follow, You can bet your B'Way Dollar on that.

Shining, Happy Love.

Noah Allen est arrivé.
Today, 6/3/09, he showed his happy little face.
Yours Truly, along with Jeremy, Toni, Maria, and various medical types, ringed Heady who pushed for one hour before her deliberate doc decided it was time for a c-section.
YT is about to see Heady again, who was in recupe mode.
More photos forthcoming.

Love Life.

Yours Truly did not believe the sign, not being a natural skeptic, but believing that the fishmonger was preying upon Middling City pride and such.
YT, peering into the case in Exhibit A (aka the photo at left), thought this was a laugh, a kick, a biota-driven bit of whimsy.
Buffalo Fish, hilarious.
Following this illustrative visit to Broadway Market in formerly incredibly thriving Broadway-Fillmore District, YT did some quick R&D of sorts.
There is indeed such a thing as Buffalo Fish.
Not to be served up with sides of Buffalo Fries, and Buffalo slaw.

Onwards.

Did some power gardening here & there over the past few days with dahlias taking the species lead in all things planted.
Amongst others were eternal favourites: nasturtiums, moonflowers, lobelia, pumpkins, elephant ears, canna, and more more more.
Plants and seeds.
YT does always, annually, experience the wonderment of wonder upon gazing at a cart laden with plants and possibilities during every garden centre/growing opportunity center visit.
Suddenly the cart is teeming.
Upon checkout at garden shop stop numero uno checkout lady said Well that looks like plenty for now.
Indeed.

Onwards still.

Tomorrow YT will be accompanying Heady to l'hopital for the delivery of baby numero duo for good vibes, and photo documentation.
YT has already made the executive decision that all will be ambiently lit for who in h-e-double-hockey-sticks wishes to arrive into the world in a barrage of flash, red carpetlike bluster.

Big Green Love.

Well. Well. Well.
Here is Yours Truly with newest pal, Prime Minister Odinga of Kenya.
This image was made by the Big U's Law School Dean, a special request by YT.
We three were in a brief moment at a brunch on the 24th and in a flash I asked the Dean to make the image.
And voilà.
Odinga has a great sense of humour and travels with his handlers - his wife and daughter.
I photographed him all last weekend.

Things have been merrily hectic as of late in the Middling City and today Heady phoned to let me know that on Wednesday her newest baby will be extricated.
YT will be there, coaching–and documenting.

Onwards to special deliveries.

Love of all things documentary.

This here's Yours Truly's favoured YT-crafted image of Marshawn Lynch the other day at New Era Cap Co.
YT enjoyed watching him watching others in the room - like YT he is a professional watcher.
Photogs and defensive linemen have a nose for news, so to speak.
Is he in fact a defensive lineman or did YT just pull that our of her arse erroneously.
I do wonder.
I do not wish to Google.
Perhaps he is a tight end.
Perhaps a corner launcher.
That last was a test for there is no position called a corner launcher.
YT does know that Marshawn Lynch gets the ball and runs like hell, reportedly at times off the grid so to speak, off the clipboard of his coaches.
He is as improvisational as a well-tested, tried and road-true jazz musician.
In terms of his cap YT was impressed that he was apparently going the route of the New Era 20's-era worker cap.
But by meeting's end he was then veering toward a soft model of ballcap.
YT gave some thought to the possibilities of designing her own New Era ballcap.
Should Dana or anyone else over there call YT to say Hey Nance, come on down and design something special, YT has this in mind:
Green on green, some nice embroidered 10/10's, some other important and significant iconic objets.

Onwards.

Onwards to deadline fun.

Love of Football Terminology, faux and non-faux.

This delightful and informative epinw blogpost is all about apps.
And not that kind on page two of menus of note.

Utterly minding my own business - yet again - found myself in a common photog moment (waiting for some files to export) - and, to optimize productivity and such, found myself searching iPhone app store for LightRoom.
LightRoom, as You may know, is the recent new software tool that Yours Truly has plunged into and is slowly mastering.

It's been about six days but LR is not the bottomless pit that PhotoShop is.
Thankfully.
It's for photogs and more than any other app emulates the language of temperature and the like.

So YT searches iPhone app store for LightRoom, out of curiosity.
And up comes a free app called Photon.
Promising.

Here is documentation, in real and Warholesque time, of YT exploring this new app.
As, delightfully, a guilty pleasure tune comes on pandora - Dave's Grace is Gone.

1. Push Photon icon.
2. It wishes to use my current location. Henh.
3. OK.
4. (thought) Why in hell.
5. Create new account. Come on, this is a fun photo app, I thought.
6. Jeez. Link to confirm sent to yahoo account.
7. (time lapse) All things are a green light g.o. go.
8. (more time lapse) After looking at online version of this app am horrified to discover that it creates access (albeit Private) to my harddrive. YIKES.
9. Deactivate app quick fast in a hurry.
10. The End.

Quickest download to deactivation in history of the iPhone.

Love of Security.

Quel day.

Finally feel like things are way underway and under control with newfangled and most excellent LightRoom - post-SOS fix by LukeC.
Heading out shortly to see a Sam play with Annie - Endwords at Adam Mickey's where annual Dyngus magic happens.
A nice warmup and prequel to seeing Godot with Justy in the Shiney Apple in a few weeks.
Time for poesie, breath - kind of like yoga, but it's dramatical.

Above is the sig of our President v44 and Yours Truly was most inspired and awestruck by its inherent artfulness.

Spoke with Brucey earlier about art supplies - namely Yupo, mastic crystals, and the like. Will bring a sketch pad to the Sam event tonight as sometimes his words can be oso inspirational.

Last night's all-gal gathering chez CJ for her b-day was full of good friends, and hilarity.

Onwards to the theatre.
In the Polish rec hall.
On the Middling City's fabled east side.
On a semi-balmy night.

Eternal Love of Sam.

Finally the big, LED-fueled word is out.
The Peace Bridge, it was printed in the Middling City News, is superbly lit with chaser lights - much like venerable and encroaching Pano's resto on the Elmwood Strip.
Yours Truly several times drove along the 190 to witness the Peace Bridge in blazing technicolor©.
And when YT asked others if they had seen such a lighthearted display they had not.
This happened three times - and three times I beeped my horn heartily to let whomever might be up on that bridge tweaking (and listening) that one enthusiastic motorist like totally gave it a non-hands-free two thumbs up.

Onwards.

In the midst of editing out the proverbial wazoo yesterday took a brief ten-minute respite to watch the vid of our delightfully left-handed and handsome president deliver his comments to those black-tied and little-black-dressed correspondents at their annual dinner in WDC this past Saturday.
A favoured quote:

I believe my next hundred days will be so successful that I will be able to complete them in 72 days," he said to a roar of laughter. "And on my 73rd day, I will rest.

And here is the link, Your homework assignment du jour is to watch, and chuckle along with the infectious (ooh, perhaps poor adjective in these troubled H1N1 times) chuckle of Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0GwZFAV1Lw

YT documented thousands of wondrous minutes this past week, as is my wont this time of year - including commencements. Commencements in the parlance of YT are always referred to as BigC's.

At one of the biggest BigC's, a pre-BigC warmup in the shape of a dinner to introduce various honorees to one another, YT witnessed a poignant moment.
Nobel Prize Winner Doctor Herbert Hauptman gave remarks after receiving (unofficially) his honorary doctorate from the BigU and stated that he never thought in his lifetime (he is 92 years old) that he would ever see an African-American president in this country.

The other honorary doctorate this year was former SNL writer Alan Zweibel who hilariously compared himself to Hauptman. He noted that Hauptman studied the atom, and he has a son named Adam.

For your delight, here is an image of YT with Zweibel, as You would expect good fun to talk to with a slight shy streak.


Love of Occasional Documentation of YT.

This just in.
Above is primo example gleaned today of Buffalo-ese sweeping this madcap internationalized world.

Yours Truly considers this A triumph.

Also a Triumph is that today on BBC, or was it CBC, YT also gleaned the press corps at the venerable White House is standing patriotically and respectfully for Obama, whereas they did not for ol' Whatzizname.

YT, in a May flurry of events that does not include imbibing of 5-O May-O beverages, is ending this epinw post with a tip of her laptop sobrero to You.

More Love later, Love.

Image from CEPA Gallery Visions of Greater Buffalo charity auction event this past Saturday night. Yours Truly, wearing fav green belt, in a self-port milieu, next to Sherry Burns.

YT wishes that she could recall with absolute clarity just who in H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks it is who is her pal who revealed that they Love their dentist.
And, in reply to their expression, YT stated that she feels the same.
One should Love their dentist.
YT had the verysame dentist from childhood until late 20's, until his retirement.
I adored him.
He was a lefty (as most good men are) and was prone to getting tangled up in a good story (always egged on, as they say, by YT), lowering his mask, leaning back against a counter, arms crossed.
He worked in the Brisbane Building of downtown Middling City and YT always loved going there and going up to his office in the shambling elevator.
The waiting room furniture never changed, there was a faux lemon tree.
YT has some signage from her childhood shoe store and desperately wishes that she had the faux lemon tree of her childhood/near-lifelong dentist.
Onwards.
So there was the retirement.
Then there was another lefty dentist who acquired some of the practice.
But as wacky of a sense of humour that Dentist2 had, the drive to his office was a bummer.
So then there is Dentist3.
A delightful Deadhead and he just simply adores YT (a fact intuited but also backed up by the receptionist who stated today that Some patients are ... you know. But others are just so nice to see. When I told Dr. Deadhead that You were coming in, he said Oh good.
Dr. Deadhead and I talk music - concerts, recordings, and the like.
What we've seen, You know.
I told him that Phish hired YT for images for one of their live recordings, at Darien Lake.
And Dr. Deadhead and I, as it turns out, were at one of thee finest, earliest Phish shows in 1990 - at Arena Rollerskating Rink in the MC.
Dr. Deadhead today removed the last of my silver fillings and now I am like a house rid of old lead paint.
(sidebar: So loving Kings of Leon once again, immediately.)
Dr. Deadhead so juiced up my jaw with novacaine that YT is still a little tingly from that.
Fercrissakes, Dr. Deadhead, sometimes less is more.

Less Love is never an option Love.

++
This just in.

Latest of the Accidental Frame Series.

Yours Truly is returning to Street Green Series as it is the season of streets springing to life with green.
Above made along Genesee Street in the Middling City, post-gig.

Writing of sidewalks, three vignettes:

1.
This morning saw a curious bundle of pussy willows, branches all of same length and tied neatly with red string.

2.
In a suburb of the MC, also this morning, saw a sheared-off ten-pound weight sitting end up underneath a mailbox.

3.
Saw, today, a sight much more common in more x-l cities - the broken and abandoned umbrella, black, upside down and opened.

Onwards.

Last night attended dual birthday party for Susan and JT, at Broady's home in picturesque Allentown. YT, as was promised, brought a piñata to the party, a nice skull model filled with airplane-sized bottles of liquor, appropriate candies, lip gloss, and a hula bobble head girl.

As YT had just run a marathon day of typical Friday proportions, arrived later than planned to discover some disgruntlement. A party. A Friday. A piñata. Fercrissakes.
After some initial shit was given and the like, got everyone together, with help of Liz, outdoors to wack the crap - literally - out of the papier maché skull. Much to the chagrin of an early-to-bed next-door neighbor.
But the goods were finally wacked free and indoors we went to enjoy those items, and more cheese. Including a most pungent variety that Deb had brought, presumably from the foreign soils she had just visited.

Tonight more more more.
How do You like it. How do You like it.
YT was just informed via SherryB that YT is nominated for Best of Middling City, as Best Photog, by the paper where she toiled most diligently as a founding staffer in 1990 and worked as intrepid photo essay columnist for fifteen years.

The past, oft-repeated words of nominees the world over appeared in the mind of YT:
It's an honour just to be nominated.
And so it is.

It is Love, Love.

And who, You query, is this.
Well, Yours Truly shall divulge.
This is Uma and she is just about the most serene caninus fervidus You could ever hope to sniff. YT made these Uma ports, along with some of Uma's handler, earlier today.

YT is practicing some Band of Horses yoga before embarking on yet another night of jazz, some pals from out of town and out of the country. Same tomorrow evening. An aural treat of free jazz proportions.

Today, whilst motoring down Oak Street, YT was nearly in a head-on collision with some geriatric Deadheads who wanted to drive down the one-way Oak Street in the wrong direction: whereas the street heads south they really really needed to head north, by golly.
YT, having survived one crash via an asshole downtown, began to lay on horn and then flail at them. They still wished to proceed in a northerly fashion.
YT was close enough to their equally-geriatric van to note that the Deadheads had a handicapped hangtag, were each wearing raucous tie-dyed t-shirts and one of the couple had some sort of hat on.
They hesitated, not believing, then finally stopped.
As I passed them I motioned that THIS IS A ONE-WAY STREET YOU FLIPPIN' ...
anyhoo they motioned back in a manner that we humans can really excel at, in a manner in a flash of CHEESH, as if I was stepping on their hi-jinx.

Kennergy was down at sadsack Exchange Street AmTrak station to pick up some musicians for show #1 and was suddenly perplexed at the large number of homeless people, folks wrapped in blankets.
Then, suddenly, noting the presence of hemp and tie-dye recalled that the Dead plays the Middling City this fine evening.

Onwards.

Tomorrow is Earth Day and for the occasion YT is singing, so like non-sotto voce, the theme song from Big Blue Marble.
A show that taught us that we are all the same.
All the stinkin' same, on this same mass surrounding a ball of fire.

YT is going to see Waiting for Godot once more.
Next in the Shiney Apple, via a director who knew Sam.
So it has a cosmic stamp of approval.
But for the non-bare stage.

Onwards once more.

Love of jazz, elevated and percussive.

My latest self-port, part of a sub-group of self-portraits made in dance studios.
No, this is not metaphorical, like Yours Truly is always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
Nor always the photog, never the twirling dancer.
For YT prefers to ever be the bridesmaid, ever the photog.
The Clash (specifically Janie Jones) is presently on my pandora Feelies mix and it's as rejuvenating as this nice cuppa tea - both British.
Coincidence.
I think not.

Last night's gig ended at the appointed hour and a word about the gig.
A few people who I know were at said gig and marveled at my mad wrangling skills, namely, how YT is able to turn a group of conventioneers/reunionists into a cohesive group displaying excellent body language skills.
Most of this YT attributes to a decade of camp counseling, working with some of the toughest and, at times, saddest kids on the planet.
A decade of prepping, planning, crowd control, pop psychologizing, step-momming.
After that all of You are a breeze: conventioneers/reunionists, shy/displeased/out-of-town wedding guests, over-sugared children, rock & rollas, and the like.

So the post-gig gig was that of Cecil Taylor, jazz pianist and irascible person in general.
I arrived for the final 10 minutes of his first set, receiving updates from a few folks in the audience.
After those 10 minutes there was an intermission of crowd-challenging proportions: Cecil (in comfy sweats) left the stage and resumed the sipping of Veuve Cliquot.
In his rider, in his major agenda.
His intermission was approximately 1.5 hours and about 1/3 of the audience lost their mettle and split.
I likened it to the watching of certain Andy Warhol movies.
And now, upon further introspection, it might be likened to the climbing of certain mountains.
You presume there is a course, a zenith, a purpose, and an ending that is logical.

So Cecil reappeared, read from some medical treatise.
Then sat down at the piano and took we remaining listeners on an interesting journey.

Thanks Hallwalls friends for allowing me to come in gratis for the second half. I'd been in their offices running a show-related errand earlier in the day and explained I'd be coming late from said gig.
And thanks, too, Hallwalls, for serving some decent post-extended workday, jazz-enhancing vino.

Onwards.

Love of all things spontaneous and non.

Yours Truly saw two quite incredible imPerfect situs yesterday, both involving trucks if You can freakin' believe this.

1.
Driving down Kenmore Avenue to a gig, minding my own business (of course, You proffer), was suddenly behind a truck behind a city bus that had stopped in its tracks.
The truck pulled around.
The bus was still, flashers flashing.
Immediate Middling City thought: OFCOURSETHATBUSISNOTWORKINGPROPERLY, it's MC transpo.
Passing the stopped city bus Yours Truly spotted the problem at hand - a downed power line at a rakish 45º angle as another truck, an oversized semi, had brushed the power lines and got stuck on them and then sheared the power line's wooden pole in half.
So, being ever-intrepid, sussed out the situ and drove underneath the power lines, figuring that the compactish vehicle would make it through sans worry.
Later, coming back from the suburbs, drove back down Kenmore Avenue to see that police of all stripes had that section of the Avenue blocked off, a number of signifying items in place.

2.
Later, still in the yesterday category, whilst driving with Kennergy to Nature for a Shiney Happy Mag story on Urban Nature treks, witnessed this moment.

YT has actually seen this scene before, where a semi does a crazy swinging around maneuver that looks like a left turn to suddenly crush a car or two on their left sides.
A bummer all around.

3.
In the Old First Ward there is a trucking institute of sorts so there all kinds of hacks, wannabe truckers learning how in h-e-double-hockey-sticks to accelerate, decelerate, BRAKE, and avoid killing innocent motorists and the like.

4.
Driving, ever a source of good old-fashioned adrenalizing moments.
And photo ops.

Love of

Snippets on this Good Friday.

1.
There Yours Truly was, truly minding her very own business, meandering back from a coffee expedition to Grant Street of all places, and heading in a southwesterly fashion. Suddenly it became of immense import to divert to LaSalle Park to make some images of ice on the water, in lieu of preparing the box of tax crap for the nice tax man who YT does not know but who was referred by Dorota and who is now lovingly referred to as YT's tax guru of sorts.

2.
Yesterday after a gig and shopping for some birthday gifts for tonight's SGB birthday throwdown, went to get a pedi at some joint in the suburbs, probably former marshland. As is my workaholic wont, laptopped the entire time. It is important to YT to make productive use of this time in midst of Asian arcana, oversized vinyl chairs installed with rollers and pinchers, curious signage and other women on the g.o. go.
At the end of the pedi the nice man at my feet required my attention, pointing at my large toes. Yes, I said, nice job.
He looked flustered and walked away. To get a dictionary, YT presumed.
He reemerged with a faux nail display with all sorts of strange hashmarked nails - art.
I pointed vaguely at one and he said Flower. Flower, I replied.
So back to work and when he was done he tugged at my rolled-up jeans.
I looked down and lo and behold he'd crafted tinyflowers with toothpicks and sparkles and paint. A tiny triumph.
Quite a master miniaturist of floral pedi creations, he was quite proud of himself.
And then YT proudly showed off her toes at the dinner party last night.
After first inquiring who'd like to see my toes.
NOBODY scowled Liz.
As YT unlaced her bitchin Pumas.
The girls did marvel at the Asian man's handiwork.

3.
Time to make and do, wrap and roll.
Off to fete three at once over birthday dinner, an artist pal's exhibition, some arcade games, some meeting & greeting.
And tomorrow, another visit to Broadway Market to make some stock images of all things sausage, butter lamb, and lily.
Another fine band name.

Love of naming bands.

Above is a festively flowered-up cart at the co-op yesterday and Yours Truly could not - once again - resist buying more hyacinthius domesticus to get full spring sniffs.
I also bought one of these purple plants and left it, with a card, for Robert & Steve, outside their apartment door.
YT is completely numb and heartbroken for them and their families after the car wreck that Steve had on Monday night on the thruway, when his car skidded and went down and embankment. Steve's two children were killed.
YT will be going to the wake and funeral and there is nothing sadder than a funeral for a child.
If I had seen, ever saw, a car near me on the thruway going off the road there is no way in H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks that I would simply call and keep driving.
YT, being the consummate big sister/camp counselor type, would have stopped, parked, and made sure I could do as much as I could.
I would never call and proceed.
YT in the past has aided people all over the world in perilous and not-so-perilous moments - and angelic strangers have done the same for me.
One moment that immediately springs to mind is a woman on her bicycle in Amsterdam who slipped on ice and had a head injury.
YT not only stayed with her assuring her that she'd be alright, asking someone to call for help, but made sure that her bags spilled all over the scene were not stolen.
This is Karma, and this is what we're here to do: share our strengths.
∞
YT began epinw on a day of chosen significance, Good Friday, the alleged birth date of Samuel Becket, 4/13.
Tomorrow is Good Friday but it is not the 13th.
Yesterday was the anniversary, 15 years, is that possible, of the suicidal death of Kurt Cobain and YT recalls that moment with complete clarity: where I was, how I heard the news, and the impulse to tell others around me of the horribly shocking rock & roll news.
Yesterday was also the Faux Birth Anniversary of YT, as YT was a year younger than her classmates and that was a social disadvantage. So YT, with the assistance of Loomis, created a lovely faux bit of identification that, when asked, would grant entrée to the public social gatherings of my classmates and the like.
∞
YT has just finished a gig that involved documenting some earthworks of a non-artful sort: a state-sanctioned improvement involving giant holes and PVC pipes. This necessitated the handy standing-on of trusty little Subaru.
YT forgot the SPF 5K so is now a shade pinker.

Pinker, Purple, Gracious Love.

Image from meandering through the newly-improved AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario) which has now a capping of Frank Gehry goodness and a Vaticani-reminiscent complicated staircase to boot.
Whereas the AGO of yore was kind of musty with a smattering of good bits in the collection and some curios that you would marvel at for a short while, now it is, as Yours Truly is wont to say, A Triumph.
Inside there are some traveling shows and a Whitney-esque comprehensiveness to follow along the various decades of art making and doing.
What is beyond the Henry Moore which was once the outer wall, is now the expanded facade housing what is called the Galleria Italia, a dreamy space of wood and windows and filled with tree-related art by Penone.
Favoured & featured piece shown is a large tree gutted except for an intra-arboreal work, a small tree.

Time to leave TO, now pop. 2.6 mill.
Cranes and clouds in the sky.

Northwestern Love.

Post wedding gig on Saturday Night met up with Mish & TD at Big Orbit to see some rock & roll - Dear Leader - a gig that ended early to keep the neighbors oso happy.
Rich Wall (below) did his managerial/lighting thing and, as always, eerily resembled lead singer Aaron. TonyC was there, who merrily handed Yours Truly an Amstel Light upon entering the venue stripped of all art on the walls in preparation of rock & roll mayhem. All stayed constrained with some hippie-style girl choogling in front of the stage. Rest of weekend was not rest at all with editing, a jazz show to watch at venerable AKAG, an all-girl brunch at Left Bank, a dinner later at Left Bank, and oso much more.
I did see MikeC (cuz of TonyC) and did inform him I'd be at his resto, Left Bank, twice on Sunday and that I'd like a prize. He said No.


Speaking resto speak, partook in the Middling City's version of Restaurant Week last Thursday, supping a late sup at Bacchus with Heady. Their curious rendition of RW was 1 choice of 5 choices of a glass of vino, 1 small plate, 1 dessert choice. In lieu of that Heady and I opted for a better combo platter. It was a primo night out with the room full and vibrant, but their RW concept was a little weak. My experiences in the Shiney Apple for their v of RW is that most places offer full dinner entrees, limited but full-portioned, and let diners fend for their own tippling/desserting selves.

Fending for one's own dining self, Love.

One image that was floating about the desktop, from the Los Angeles/Beverly Hills/Little Laura foray.
Lest you need anything horn-related in LA.

My Letter to the Middling City News Editor appeared yesterday and got some emails from people giving me e-pats on the back for speaking up regarding an insensitivity matter that several read/see but don't feel compelled to speak out about. Several are employed as freelancers, and depend upon the MCN for reviews and such and don't want to nip at the sole inked-up hand that feeds them.

Just downloaded Andrew Bird's newest, Noble Beast, in preparation for the TO gig Yours Truly will be seated amid on Friday night - Heady's b-day. Gave her a gentle, photon-related nudge about doing her pregnancy portrait: YT loves doing this genre of port, it's important self-documentation that some people let slip on by.

Got a text from a newsboy last night that a kid who was racing out on Beaver Island (about 15 or so miles from the MC, a beachy place of modest proportions, but does include the lovely River Lea) died after his volatile, air-borne crash. It did make YT recall how in her teen-fueled high school days (specifically, that strange limbo of one's senior year) Marie and I would take out her souped-up Chevelle (with a 442, I recall) and just drive muy fast out on that verysame road. And, one late afternoon, another driver (a teen boy) challenged us to a race. We did. To no ill effect. That was one of several racing scenarios of Young YT: the others featured the impromptu race track on Ohio Street and scads of motorheads, including Nick Beat and his Opel Manta.

Onwards to pixel pushing and deadlines of journalistic and artful matters at hand.

Muy Pixel/Portraiture Love.

Traveled with Kennergy to Northampton and another notable North (as in Adams) once again, in the Mass, to make & do, look & work.
As Eremite has sold his big old home we stayed in one of the rooms-for-hire places that I wrote about for my NoHaMa piece for the Shiny Happy Mag.
Image numero uno, the toppermost, is an exterior shot of the sprawling and mind-enhancing Mass MoCA, my second visit there.
There is an incredible installation by photog Simon Starling with ultra-magnified silver molecules, ultra-magnified stereoscopic images of Chinese immigrants who were imported to North Adams (home of Mass MoCA) to work in a factory that stood where the Mass MoCA campus now does.
Upon entering the expansive arts venue, a former factory, had the nice front desk lady remind me what was fabricated there at Sprague.
Capacitors, she said.
I thought to fabricate my own understanding of what in hell a capacitor is but opted for the big Q.
Capacitors, it turns out, store electrons.
And Sprague made the switch for thee H-bombs of H-istory.
Bad H-istory.
∞
The lines and spaces and concepts of Sol Lewitt are gleefully, thoughtfully drawn on nice white walls there, ready to be marveled at.
For your edification see image at right.
Whilst trundling through Mass MoCA came upon an installation and made my way through a little faux grassy knoll replete with music, some Gilligan's Island-worthy benches, some unstrung patio lights.
And, off in a corner, the sleeping artist.
Yours Truly sat there looking about making sense of the jumble before her, including a few computers and attendant circuitry.
After a few moments YT realized that the artist was simply exhausted and the installation was incomplete.
So moseying along was in hot pursuit.


Jubilant round-up of the journey's art sights.
1.
Finally saw Smith College Museum of Art which had Lauren Greenfield work hanging - two of her femmecentric series. LG has a lovely sense of light and her people always feel real. Upstairs had an excellent shoe conversation with a guard guarding a small gallery. She complimented my very new J-41s that I'd had for a whopping hour or so. She said she'd thought of purchasing them in black but couldn't commit because of the contrasting band across the top of the foot. That was the selling point for me, YT stated. Then I went on to point out other lovely features, including map of the Berkshires underneath. She was wearing Pumas. I pointed to the bag in my left hand stating that my own green Pumas were in that very bag. I also found, I told her, the comment of the shoe salesman to be most curious as he said How many pairs of black shoes could someone own. Not enough, YT stated with complete and utter conviction.
2.
Mass MoCa.
Full of wondrous sights - art and architecture. Walking distance from Porches hotel, excellent Gramercy Bistro, and a curious package store selling odd snacks.
3.
Williams College Museum of Art.
Nice compact arts venue full of grandeur and some lovely surprises. Sol Lewitt work makes an appearance here as well - drawn on walls as well as the sculptural pieces.
Nice room of examples of work by workaday photogs. Had a good time reading some of their collection of historical docs, like a copy of thee Declaration of Independence, not the fancy-schmancy copy that everyone signed, but one of 25 copies meant to be passed around to the VIPs and framers. Here they have a piece by the femme who invented cyanotyping, who used the ironific process to document flora.
4.
Clark Museum in historical Williamstown was another newbie surprise to YT. Some more surprises on the walls. The Singer sewing machine fortune translated into thousands of purchases, including some Toulouse-Lautrec prints and what made it all bigger and better and best was the inclusion of some historical documentary photos from thee place, Le Moulin Rouge, the ladies, and some work by other artists of the same era capturing the effervescence.
∞
Today/night documented the wedding of two favoured people, two I've known for a long time. One I've known for three decades, the other two.
YT went up to Niagara-on-the-Lake to capture the vows alongside the lake under the sun, a happy gathering. Onwards then to a dinner to celebrate but not before reaching the Peace Bridge with my very brand new pocket-sized birth certificate to show to the border patrol person in his booth. He was not overly impressed. He also wished to see my driver license. YT had just noted that this semi-impressive new card (all black and shiny with hologram of the Middling City's seal upon it) was not on thee list of acceptable docs to present in such circumstances in the near future to not be hauled off for further questioning and possible tears.

Onwards and Onwards Still.
Artful, Loveful Love, Love.

Snippulations.

1. Yesterday whilst perusing the Middling City News and multi-taskingly having tea and kissing dogs chanced upon a theatre review. In most usual circumstances YT does not read theatre reviews if the play under the microscope was not sat through by YT. But it was a production by Buffalo United Artists and YT is a pal of founder Javier Bustillos.

There, amid the dissection and such was some phrases that oozed ethnic stereotype, the last remaining unchecked sort - Italian American bashing.

The reviewer, who has been noted as having made other blunders of ethnic stereotypical proportions, stated that the onstage action was "strained and repetitive even for the often heedless passions that can run rampant in Italian households."

YT did a stop, and restart of this phrase. And then immediately stopped the onhand multi-tasking that was truly just a bit of R&D for the pieces YT was about to write for the Shiny Happy Mag. YT fired off a letter to the editors of the MCNews and then sent the article in question (offensive sentence highlighted), along with my letter, to a list of media friends, writers, and others of Italian-mix.

Today YT received a call from the MCNews to verify not only my whereabouts but my heretofors and ID. Yes, it is YT, I stated. We will be printing your letter within the week, YT was informed.

And, for Your edification, here is my letter to the editor.

I had to reread a phrase in the Sunday, March 22 edition of The Buffalo News, a review of the Buffalo United Artists play “In Gabriel’s Kitchen” by Colin Dabkowski. The phrase in question was a jolt in an otherwise innocuous piece.

In this short piece, that glowingly announces the new home of BUA on Chippewa Street, and in the very issue in which News editor Margaret Sullivan states, rightly, that “newspaper journalism protects our freedoms and guards our way of life,” Dabkowski pens a phrase dripping with troubling ethnic stereotype.

While mentioning that several moments of “In Gabriel’s Kitchen” could have used some deft edits to shorten some onstage arguments, he goes on to say that these dramatic arguments “seem strained and repetitive even for the often heedless passions that can run rampant in Italian households.”

“Heedless passions?” “Italian households?” Oh my. In our historical era of both democratic revamping and change, as well as ongoing international wars and lines drawn for tribal reasons, it seems that most journalists would be more careful to pen such a careless sentence. This sentence could be easily read over, but it does much to re-instill generalities.

Onward.

Seems a little sensitivity training might be in order here.
A pal was asked to attend such a genre of meeting of minds recently for a dissimilar reason and she did inform me and some other femmetastic pals of some facts and concepts gleaned over those several hours. I asked her for a recap today, as I recalled there was a handy acronym. A very forgettable acronym, apparently.

She emailed back that it was EASY.

She writes:

E.A.S.Y. is as follows:
E.xpress (example: "Nancy, when you throw strawberries at me it makes it difficult for me to work.")
A.ddress (example: "my clothes are getting stained, it's a waste of good berries, and i like blueberries better.")
S.ay (what you would like to have happen) (example: "I'd like you to stop throwing strawberries at me while i'm working."
Y. (ask a Yes or No question) (example: "Can you do that?")

Oso handy.

Love of the Sensitive, Love.

This is abso-freakin-lootly my fav image that I crafted during the Saint Patrick march down Delaware Avenue this past Sunday, which Yours Truly watched with pals Jen, Jamal, Sherry, Annie, Alan, and Liz.
Sadly, YT was only armed with a cam and a dream, no silly string.
This parade can be oso much more, have another dimension, when there is a can of day-glo green silly string to be squirted in madcap high-five fashion.

Today is Saint Joseph's Day so therefore a call was made to YT's pops - my main Joe.
After a schmmmooozzee for pro photogs, off to a Saint Joseph feast at 888.

Viva San Giuseppe Love.

Yonder image is art, an ongoing series of found numbers of note.
10 being one of the magic numbers.
10/10 being the day of my emergence.

Yours Truly is oso elated as Shepard Fairey has become an art star.
YT met Fairey on the dark and historical streets of SoHo one late night on the way back to the Broome Street loft and talked about his work as he was busy wheatpasting Andre the Giant posters on late night walls.
At that time he gave me two Andre the Giant posters and a handful of stickers.
And who, You ask, is Shepard Fairey.
Well, I shall tell you.
He is thee artist who created the Obama Change/Yes We Can/Yes We Did portrait in reds and blues.
He also has a retro in Boston at Institute of Contemporary Art.
His work has aura, as does he.
Something a starspotter such as YT could tell all those years ago on the SoHo streets.
Yee ha.


Fairey/Andre Love.

Yours Truly has been enjoying the local transpo.
For that is where you actually talk to denizens; in a taxi you get the often-skewed landscape observations of the cabbie.
The 720 has been a trip fav of YT, a good solid all-purpose bus.
Met a security man from the Getty Center waiting outside the Getty and talked with him and a gang of 20-somethings.
I forgot to ask for a transfer, or did not know that I would be needing a transfer, so the nice Getty security man gave YT a token, Compliments of the Getty, he said.
The bus wended through UCLA, through Westwood District, then at my intersection of Change noted the Armand Hammer collection so perambulated through there.
Where some two-story high bamboo was observed.
A triumph.
Yesterday bussed to Culver City from Beverly Hills (where Little Laura and I rest our end-of-night weary heads) and saw the Thomas Beale show (image at toppermost, my fav of the show) at Kinsey-DesForges.
Another triumph.
Absolutely delightfully constructed and joined pieces of shell and wood.
He's the genius behind Honey Space in Chelsea so had to visit this show.
The other galleries were so bizarrely all over the arts charts - some really jawdroppingly awful undergrad-style painting, some wondrous paintings, an artist who loves John perhaps as much as YT and entitled his show I Am the Walrus.
Inquired as to the price of one of his pieces made from the distinguishable popular port of John with added googly eyes.
Size: 8x10.
Price: Four thousand five hundred, the gallery girl stated.
Reaction: Oh.
∞
Today back to the Museum of Tolerance as yesterday they would not tolerate one single more human in their large space.
So back to the street and the bus and the map.
A fellow bus rider day numero uno instructed me about the joys of 1-800-COMMUTE here and when you phone a nice lady listens to where in hell you desire to go and your preferred arrival time. Then, miraculously, she tells you your buses, times, everything.
Coming from the Middling City this is a marvel.

Today will be seeing Jodi at Museum of Contemporary Art.
Yesterday night ended the night at Viper Room, a small dark hovel where a hiphop band was taking the corner bar, and barworkers were oso friendly.
And, most importantly, the doorman, Dave, let me and Little Laura in pro bono as his guests, stamping our wrists and opening the special side door, really the front door on Sunset.
Tonight more fine dining, more adventure.

Adventured Love.

+ +
Stuffed alligator in the Beverly Hills showroom front windows of Nieman Marcus.
Gate 1 in Culver City, that curious industrial, wide boulevard string of good and bad.