A stop last night: annual winter fete where I par-tay with the poh-lease and the cute young one who missed his (I think) better calling as a model was there with his sporty wife. And I approached him and said Well, there's my favorite cop. Then, suddenly, in the Libran diplomatic sphere of my mind I wondered if cops like to be called cops. So during our conversation I asked Can I ask you a traffic court-related question, anticipating a surge of sighing air in my face. But no.
I said Well, I thought it would be like when I'm out and about and someone asks me to tell them all about $80 point & shoot cameras.
So I set up the I'm driving, right, down the z-curvulating street when a cop er officer does a crazed u-turn to pull me - ME! - over... and so on and so forth.
Cop pal: were you argumentative with the officer?
Me: (thinking non-aloud) wow, first question is that and not was said officer a nincompoop? (speaking) NO.
Cop pal: I didn't think so, you don't seem like the type.
Me: (thinking non-aloud) should've seen me quibbling with the man outside of the Vatican to get my souvenir way. (speaking) No, if I had run the light I would admit it and would've written the check and be done with this. So I'm fighting it (etc. etc.) because I know this OFFICER is wrong (thinking) that little rabid evil rissarassa.
Cop pal: Call me and tell me his name and I'll see what I can do.
And further secret details. Moral of scenario: cops are your pals, some of them, and cops sure know how to party in style.
Next stop last night I cavorted with mobsters and drug dealers. Ever striving for celebratory balance I am.
Mid-deadline and happily the hair smells like fixer.
Just returned from a work delivery and stopped off in the record shoppe and had thee Daryl from Snapcase aid me in finding a nice new little recording for a fete I'm hosting tomorrow night.
Invited: cops, passengers, mobsters, drug dealers, record shoppe employees and stray cats (as in real animals, not cheeseball band).
Love to you, wherever you are, in whatever condition you find yourself, always.

Johnny Depp, if you're reading this, Will you be my utmost Valentine? Dump that French bitch and BE MINE.

Living in the near-shadow of a certain circa-1950's St. Valentine's Church I wonder about this saint. O patron saint of crazed BINGO players, bad car parkers (see aforementioned) and modest stained glass windows?
No.
Valentine was one, maybe two, different people. One was martyred in or around 273 and the saintly guidebook states that both accounts of these guys "are equally unreliable." Then Chaucer of all people gets involved, although they don't mention in which part of his oeuvre mention of Valentine happens but then that gets all screwed up as Chaucer might have been talking about when birds mate mid-February, or maybe a royal hooking-up. Or it might be some remnants of the Pagan Lupercalia festival.
Anyhow, Valentine is an all-purpose saint:
beekeepers, travellers, youth, epileptics, fainters, victims of the plague and lovers can call invoke him for their very private physical reasons.
As a 70's-era rocker said:
Love you like a rock.

You know when you begin reading a Perfect Nancy blogpost which begins I was minding my own business when...
that you're in for buckets of evil malarkey.
So, I was minding my own business filing my newspaper column early, checking all facts, being so diligent, waiting for Jen to arrive so we could begin our mischief.
Diligence (OH, I should mention that I'm listening to Radiohead's The Bends in honor of the kaslosh-kaslosh in my head as my eyes move in any direction - sing on Tom, you fucking genius, wail away this hangover, suck the toxins from my cells) was replaced with debauchery in baby steps. First dinner, hobnobbing. Then the rounds of (OH, I should mention that before filing I froze my ass off waiting for the middling city's Mardi Gras micro-parade to come sailing by, wearing the odd tapestry coat with big fur trim I bought with the intention of mailing it to Dorota in NYC until I described it to her) bars and parties.
Censored highlights:
1. finding... okay, maybe not that one.
2. Convincing (I am the convincing champ of the Universe) the parole officer behind the bar at one joint that he not only should do his neat fire-breathing trick but that I should document it for next week's column. The manangement was afeared for their paper streamers and balloons. He did the stunt, I had the f5 on snap-happiest of sports readiness modes, shot away and then felt for my left eyebrow. Still there. Made further pals with strangers singing karaoke.
3. Hopped into a limo filled with drag queens, telling the driver, don't you dare leave with me in this car, dig? And as I put camera to eye more and more and more and more and more drag queens were filling the frame. I kept backing up up up in the limo, a stretch SUV limo.
4. Learning about these kaslosh-kaslosh-inducing things: IRISH CAR BOMBS which I slurped with Kelly et al as I was flailing as impromptu celebrity guest bartender, much to the delight of whoever.
Well all for now. Binges of Love.

Schedule in your disco nap, baby, because tonight is the night to be your baddest and bad-assest self:
IT'S MARDI GRAS!
This is the night, almost like Halloween, when your alter ego can and should bust loose after slipping into some party clothes and slipping a few potent beverages down. For me it's the night to photograph a slew of primo bands and to document the debauchery I might wander into.
And then, when I feel my column is under control and that I've got enough images, it's time for Perfect Nancy to become... Mardi Gras Nancy.
Love and be bad, me.
XOX

ps: theoretical question: which came first, the debauched or the debauchery?

Appeal to the Almighty, ever-able to unloose pestilence and woe:
O Mighty Numero Uno, please make those hee-haws next door who evangelize at inhuman decibels be forever vanquished from the Earth. For don't they Knoweth, Mr. Big Man, that He who screameth in your name and pisseth off the neighbors create bad Karma?
+++
Mentor #1 said that I should march into there during one of their services with my 2,000 year old arm bone - a holy relic even though it is a pedestrian - and proclaim that I'm taking over their church, heretofore known as Church of the Immediate Silence.
+++
ps: God, thanks for inventing Mike's Hard Lemonade!

Music purchases du jour:
New Jagger (his skinny ass + Lenny's skinny ass = YAHOO), Etienne de Crecy (techno pioneer from France, land of strong cheese and long handsome noses), best of CCR (everybody needs this for when the workload is piled up to one's eyebrows) and the new Chem Bros. (perfect).

Everyone, go HERE and make someone you like something nice for Valentine's Day.