Yesterday night Laura and I were trapped in a parallel universe of oddities, bars closed on a Friday night and other sundry head-scratchers.
I had/HAVE an AOL list of places to regard, to review and a quick glance revealed that they were not only A-list joints but ones I've hardly ever... visited. So onwards we sped on what I promised would be Loser Tour 2002. And was it. First joint, closed. Said Laura, I want to check out that other bar, Aluminum. She screamed. We walked up to the yellow-shirted buzz of borderlinely functioning guys/Aluminum bouncers and the lead guy jumped off a stool and met us halfway down their walkway. Hi, I said, wearing a summer outfit best described as Brooks Brothers meets the Gap, waving my official reporter pad, we'd like to come in and review this place. The guy nearly shouted WE DON'T LET IN OUTSIDERS. I tried hard not to burst out laughing, we turned and left and then burst out laughing a few feet away. Then the next joint was closed, tumbleweeds practically flying through the parking lot. There were a few cars also parked, I went up to the doors - locked - but all sorts of lights on inside, an LCD moving display telling me that their Buds are only $2 per bottle. But no action. We sat in the lot, planning the next Loser Tour 2002 stop when a car pulled up, sort of near us. I think the two guys in the car were going to get busy smoking pot, crack or each other's you-know-whats. Is this place still open, I asked. One of the guys, said Well, it looks pretty closed to me. Onwards. Said Laura, I won't be satisfied until we sit and have a drink in a hellhole that you and I would never be caught dead in. So we stopped at an unnamed place and had a drink after I cracked a failed joke with the bartender.
Overweight bartender lady: you need a glass for the beer?
Me: (picking up my scotch and the bottle of beer, laughingly) What do we look like?, of course we don't need a glass.
OBL: whuh?
Me: No, we don't need a glass, what do we look like? aha-ha-ha.
OBL: whuh?, sort of glancing over my shoulder.
Me: NO, we don't need a glass.
OBL: Oh, you're with someone, I thought you were saying that I was supposed to see someone standing next to you and there's nobody there...
(yikes)
Loser Tour 2002 ended on an appropriate note and then we high-fuckin-tailed it to a bar where there may be a few losers, but they're OUR losers.
Love.

Foul mood coursing through my veins can only mean one thing... back to Middling City tomorrow after NYC respite of culture and high ideas around every corner, nearly.
Spent much of today wandering and into at one point The Whitney where I looked at images from their collection including a wondrous Joel-Peter Witkin, 'Man Without a Head.' Surveyed nearly every square inch of it and there were funny tiny creases in the print.
Last night was all about the mixing of cocktails and later and late into the wee hours of AM was sitting in a silly Bowery bar, Remote, with 12 or so people of the art market world and talked with a girl Christine of interestingly tight tendrils of hair about JPW. We both remembered the print in the Whitney (I had not yet been to W show but remembered the image from a book ) and both thought the man without a head had a head in his hands. This man without a head had no head. Absolutely no head on the premises.
I thought I could nearly smell his dead skin. I want to one day meet JPW to ask him about not only the acquisition of his bodies but the touching, the arranging.
Into the wee hours were cocktails and this afternoon my kidneys rebelled and Dorota's liver cried out for mercy.
To that we both said HA, we are the bosses of you thoughtless organs.
Love.

New York Ci-tay.
Love to be here.
Was here all of perhaps 20 minutes when I found myself deep inside B&H playing with all sorts of gear... and buying some gear to boot.
The same guy was there who aided me with picking out my backpack and I bought yet another strap as the d1H comes with a neckstrap I'm convinced is modeled on sandpaper - when I wore it for the all-day music festival I thought I'd have to go in for neck skin grafting.
So I'm writing this from Dorota's swanky ACd 5th Avenue office near the FlatIron Building and I was just wandering around trying to remember the word grafting and was peering into offices all the while until I thought of the word and said 'GRAFTING' aloud.
I'm guessing I won't be allowed to squat here no mo.
Since me and boy teammates decided that we're working on theme of conflagration I see fire and flames virtually everywhere and it happily freaks me out.
Off shuttle bus (where I gained another hour+ of sleep) I saw immediately a woman with large calves and large motorcycle-worthy flames licking up her left ankle. I thought of asking her why. But I would rather imagine the why.
Love.

Perfect Nancy's Escape to New York.

Need to sit in my corner counter spot of Café Habana and read the Post and eat those odd triangles of whatever that breakfast thing I order is, slurping down a large Cuban coffee all the while. Oh, and drifting in my visual video bank to the images of Lenny in here flirting with that girl behind the counter before leaving, going to perform his rock show, flighting with his equally-luscious girlfriend, then returning to the joint and the girl's not there. Heart Break!
Need to cavort with beloved Dorota in the style that can best be described as at a rockstar level unattainable by most mortals.
Will be sitting and writing in that cyber café joint where I can write more clearly than in this Middling City for some reason.
Will be sucking in visuals for inspiration and buying more art supplies in real life simply not available in Middling City "art" stores and, dig, when you buy art supplies you want to fondle them a while. Same goes for the camera store visit, also on list.
And more pleasure. And more edification.

What I learnt this weekend?
1. Certain Rabbis hate usage of flash during wedding ceremonies but simply won't tell you so that they can openly hate you for millennia, telling many others that there's a Rabbinical thought to ban you from his temple for forever.
2. That somehow wedding cake seems to be attracted to my being and Sunday AM realized it was smeared on my suit's pants, two of my gear bags. A shoe. Why?
3. The Fixx, 80s band I barely remember, still sucks. But if you have to shoot them for your column along with two local bands, hunkering down in a nearby bar where you know Todd the barkeep, and intermittently trotting down the street to the stage and back to bar again makes the whole thing much more favorable.

On that note I race off to more more more.
How do you like it? How do you like it?

Love.