One day, two posts. But urgency hung in the air as I read:

"how come ME and all my Genious GLORIOUSNESS is absent
from your blog. Should I be relieved or concerned?" from dearest Beth, fellow Parsons School of Art Magnitude and Design graduate experiment subject.

My response:
Relieved that you are not the object of my snarkiness.
And concerned at the heightened level of my snarkiness.

I am at Code Burnt Siena (kind of like Code Amber, JW, for your benefit) with art angst as all is not being disseminating in a stick-to-deadline manner.
But don't fret, I'm still as Perfect as ever, wise epinw soldiers.
Today is snark and stress but tomorrow is a backpack fullah booze and pyros.
Danger Love.

Mercenary is the word that has been rolling along slowly, picking up speed, watching for cops whilst chatting on the cell to see if consensus (internal and otherwise) has it that this word is bound too tightly to a French Foreign Legion-like military coupness.
Too bad if it be.
Mercenary is the word wrapped around my 2004 resolution.
More self-centered, more self-regarding for art's sake, reading when I should be looking over the reading material or coffee cup to engage at whomever is sitting over there on the other side of the table, thinking of Numero Uno primo.
Does this mean I will no longer be nice, a vrai people pleaser, stop & sniff daisies without crushing them.
One word, one resolution, does not a personality un-make and what is resolution if not an experiment in semantics, in practices, gesture.
Mercenary Love.
And pass the Brut.

So believing in his newfound, Fab Five empowerment, the maxed-out Queen wedding planner was a-flippin' as I was fucking up the pending wedding reception's country club regal vibe by having the dining room's lights blazing for formal portraits. I disguised my paint-melt stare and, feeling holiday empathy/pity, reassured him that all would be absolutely fine by Show Time.
The bride wore a white cape.
And odd fingerless gloves.
I understood neither.
The groom wore his heart on his sleeve.
Their vibes, homemade, were truly touching and had my jaded ass all teary. Truly.
I left the gig and, in the fog, could not find my way out of the property. Half an hour later, with the Forester fog lights on, I had encircled the property twice, had gone down some false starts and had nearly driven off the road - twice.
I revisited fellow Libra pal into the wee hours and would not give him the roadmap to this blog. He threatened Google search. I said, most jauntily, and don't forget the J. You forget the J and you are shit outta finesse.
So, Your homework assignment follows:
Link to here and get busy with your summation.
Yours Truly's Nutshell (not bombshell):

Simultaneous Americano and grad school addictions. Slight derailment of career. Love and art experiments. Less booze, more workouts, thinner moi.

All My.

Joyeux Pugilanteux!
Happy Boxing Day!
Told that to a fellow restaurant regular/eater today who immediately put up his dukes.
I mean really.
Off to the annual Boxing Day fete at Matt's loft tonight, a candlelit affair with old-timers and creative types, picturesquely across the way from the wedding-tiered Niagara Mohawk building.
Six days until 2004 and the whiff of new promise(s), skangly-assed behaviour and attendant "hang-over" (and hopefully not police record), well-wishings and pro party-hops.
Shooting tomorrow includes a second wedding at a country club for a pair who hired me sight and portfolio unseen. Simply on the rec of one of their pals.
Now that is trust.
Trust and parties are the spice of life.
Mulled (not nulled) love.

Wondering if Mary Ramsey (yes mary ramsey... a palyndrome or howmever it's spelt) is in the Middling City to viola the night away on Electric Avenue, site of the tucked-away church I think named for Saint Stephen. Where I'd go C-Mas Eve to hear Mary and simultaneously marvel at the old lady's cotton candy hair with the inserted plastic poinsettia, annually. How did Mary play so angelically. How did that woman keep that plastic foliage anchored so solidly.
Trespassed on some man's property and he took note of me videotaping away as he drug his groceries from his 4x4 to his home. Stopping once in a while to marvel at the artsy type filming or whatever in hell she was doing on his soggy front lawn, aiming towards the mysterious sign, the half-dead grain elevators off in the distance.
As John Lennon says:
And so it is Christmas, and what have you done.
Difficult holiday love.

As I was reconfiguring my "work" "space" and located it, I slathered MAC's "Blade" upon all 10 of my fingernails. Oso smart, sassy, holiday fun.
Marty Boratin of DeathRanch fame has invited me once again to his C-Mas Eve soiree, an event that really puts the "hol" in holiday, as in there is an enormous amount of unspoken effort into primo snacks and ever-flowin' champagne, Marty in the kitchen, at the helm, at the oven making ever more amounts of canapes and little hot things, me helping him when I remember to between smokes, gargles of champagne, etc .
It is this rock & roll Norman Rockwell Experience that makes my holidays. Big old house, big roaring fireplace, big halfassed au naturel tree laden with collectibles, Marty/Mom cooking/sweating, a convocation of rock stars and rock types that are such an overall alternative to the family thing. Not that I don't love my family, but my family gathering on C-Mas does not include Jimmer "I'm a Brit" Phillips in the corner blathering about the Good Lord knows what while trying to pull girls onto his "Santa" lap, and Penny "Bad Penny" Ballard haranguing just about everyone and so much more.
Back to straightening up the space, working on the video, the art, the focus.
For the Love of G*D.

Allegedly, according to Liz/Editrix, the sighting of my piece which I gave her from the Conflagration series (large photo silkscreens of the twins and burning kitchen etc. on stainless steel), stopped new Albright-Knox Art Gallery director Gauchos in his tracks. Thinking this may be the work to shuttle off in slide format for the upcoming WNY show there.

Entitlement:
1. Had coffee with Jen for many hours yesterday. At one point I referred to her pending mother-in-law's home as the Folk Institute. It is one. Where at the tail end of parties people gather together, all hippie-like, and bust out things like hammered dulcimers, lutes, triangles.
Jen dubbed my joint the Alternative Institute, a worthy title. Former doctors' offices/surgery now a home (alternative space), in an alternative part of town (read: Historic Old First ward), filled with alternative music and art.

2. Last night Polly told me she's going to be an animal wrangler for a movie project being shot in and around the Middling City. A great title. We decided that I am a Wrangler of People as I'm damn good at wrangling people into situations that they'd never expect they'd be wrangled into. Examples provided upon request.

Definition love.

Holiday Distractions in this corner.
And in this corner... Nancy's DigVid Work-in-Progress.
WHO WILL WIN?

Have a new visual in my head that I'm going to try to shoot this week. If I even explain one second it'll shoot away into the snow-encrusted landscape.
At last night's former job work holiday soiree ran into some of the Middling City men of rock and so we had to re-hash highlights from Robbie Goo's party. Including my splashy (as in I caused the collapse of someone's cocktail) and faulty non-leggy re-enactment of the stripper girl's lungings at innocent revelers.
After a collective leaving to go hear a band (missed by minutes, drats) noted that Laura was wearing her sexy boots, a real invitation to disaster/broken limbs this time of year.
Not wanting to be a smarty-pants I did not point down to my Kenneth Cole boots with sensible heel - height but solid-like = no spikiness.
And since when do I get the Victoria's Secret catalogue? Who thinks up items like triple-bow thongs. Did Gisele really like wearing it or is that smile a pang of embarassment.
Off to whisk JenB off for a coffee date before my art meet-up at the world renowned, Middling City-placed Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
Before further holiday hi-jinx. Another round to Holiday Distractions.
ding ding

Whilst some believe that the big J is the reason for the season, in my Perfect book it's Mayhem.

Robbie Goo had a C-Mas soiree at his Chamelon West recording studio so I stomped in after my engagement with members of Janet Reno Fan Club, to mingle amongst the rock stars and, apparently, a few fledgling strippers who I referred to all night as Santa's Naughtly Little Helpers.
How they helped:
by galvanizing groups of salivating men,
by stuffing their tongues down throats of unsuspecting girls,
by harassing Tommy, my muse.
!!important update: Tommy is "involved with" said stripper, harassment their metier!!!
And more.
JRFC member Doug and I located a bottle of Grey Goose vodka in one of Robbie's small kitchenettes, which we promptly opened and decanted into our large plastic tumblers.
Later, hearing some Barry White in one of the recording studios, I suggested that some good ol' fashioned bumping & grinding transpire. The smoke machine (or was it the new age smoking fountain/mesmerizing unit) had stopped puffing (like the smokers out in their tent) and the dj didn't keep up the b&g music so that Plan came to a non-sexy, grinding halt.
Snippets of earlier:
* had a conversation with Jim Ramer, the advisor/creative director who finally watched my video creation and made some strong and productive suggestions. The big JR quote:
Shorter, shorter, shorter, elongated photographs.
** spoke with vasectomied pal who suggested that I never get a vasectomy after a night of hard drinking. I vowed that I would not. Visuals from my medically-minded and employed sister's description of the procedure danced in my head.
All for now and now for all.

Minding my own business I purchased some new leghair removal technology. Basically a très butch mini belt sander. As I unpackaged it I was talking to Laura who instructed me to return it - IMMEDIATELY. I didn't heed her advice and, whilst talking to her, ran the thing over my legs in floating circular motions, like the sheet of paper said. No pain, I said. Well, half an hour later there was no hair on my legs and my skin cells (and maybe hair cells) - and a hot dull pain - were floating through the air of the room, setting everywhere. A forensic scientist's wet dream.
I met a hippie pal out for drinks later. When I told him about the belt sander he stared at me with pure incomprehension. Hippies and power tools do not mix.
Electric Love.

Look, if you're looking for a present for Perfect Me and are thinking Oh, gee, I bet she'd LOVE that Lennon busybook that came out I think you'd be onto something. It's kind of burdensome with its hoakiness of interactive envelopes that are to make us feel like we're snooping through John's undies drawer. Maybe I'd prefer that you send me $40 towards a plane ticket for my own special voyage back to Strawberry Fields, which, last time I was there, was disturbingly undisturbed under a few inches of snow. Where were the candles? The flowers? The glow of undying love. I kicked away the snow in the night despite my frozen and wet feet. Minding my own business, as is my wont, tonight and driving I had this amazing revelation:
thermal sleeves from javas to go when removed and inverted and slipped over hands become super-bitchin' superhero cuffs. I know, I was wearing two of them, hands secretly off the wheel and outstretched to practice the Michael Stipe-like gesture.
I just posted a rambunctious post for grad school. T(r)ying together some doodly essay I won't name by Barthes, my artwork and the practice of looking on the fly/tourism.
Pastel plaid is what I saw when I restarted my troubled iMac DV tonight. Then a plaid of grays and blacks. Then I shot it in the head to put it out of its misery. Actual fantasy: shooting a handgun at a television set in the ON position, à la 70s rock star.
Far-flung be-cuffed Love.

Where have I been.
On the other side of this great Empire state, wowing the masses with my brand new digital video skills. I filmed a gaggle of brides in Central Park in their flowy whiteness in the middle of the parkish snow. It reminded me of the joke about a polar bear in the midst of a blizzard when someone made a darkroom gaffe and had no details in something that was blown out. Photog humour, a laugh an f-stop minute.
So during aforementioned blizzard in NYC I sledded with Beth and Phillip for hours down the stairs (yes, stairs) near the fountain whose special name escapes me. There were groups of people watching us, probably thinking they were witnessing a taping of Jackass.
But then they'd see our glee, that we were able to stand afterwards, hadn't broken our limbs or necks and would ask for a turn. It was slightly bumpy down the first set of steps, then a quick skidding over the landing, then a catch of air as you careened down the second set of steps. We warmed ourselves in the boathouse next to the fireplace then headed back out for more. This time the steps nearby leading into a dark and icy tunnel. More whoops of joy, all captured by Beth's video option on her micro-Elph camera and after seeing the passable quality I thought Hmmm, why did I buy a Canon GL2 and not use the Olympus 5050?
So back in the Middling City where I'm rushing to meetings and errands and to pet the stray cat fellas and work on school projects from afar. For in four weeks we grad people are converging at Parsons for a marathon array, display and critique. For those of you who have never splayed yourself before a roomful of people let me say this: you are on trial, your ego balloon may be popped by surprising pins of criticism and at times you have flashes of the thought I'm an artist and I don't give a flying pixel what you have to say about this.
Onwards to art.
Love.

First it was the great blackout of the summer of 2003.
Now it's the mammoth blanketing of the winter of 2003.
Coincidence?
I think not.
Every season that I'm in NYC there seems to be a great catastrophe whilst I'm here.
Winter catastrophe in NYC is four inches of snow (cars immobile, people falling, general malaise and confusion, school buildings shut down all weekend... grrr) whereas in the Middling City four inches is barely noted, people plodding in their boots in their cars as breezily as if it were, osay, summer.
Two of my Parsons classmates have never seen real live actual true in-your-face snow. One is Phillip of Louisiana who realized that
1. snow means really cold
2. parkas are a necessity and that wearing a hood means less visibility and aurality
3. two pairs of socks don't cut the snowy mustard and one must purchase true klunko boots.
Speaking of my Middling City sturdy preparedness my own new Columbia high-tech boots are in the Middling City, approximately 400 miles away from my feet which are jonesing for them. Instead I have somewhat fashionable leather boots with traction and no warmth.
Moral:
Have boots, will travel.
Snowy love.

Okay, so I couldn't get the chromagenic scene transitions to work properly and the audio is a big gigantic question mark in my mind (but I get the theory of it being such an audiophile and such) and I'm not sure how to replicate and loop a sound, and there are no titles but my 20 minute long dig vid project is a triumph.
It's snazzy mental title, Untitled Gesture.
Oh,
how many of You can state with surety, alacrity and piety that you told the nation's poet laureate to break a tonsil before his reading this past evening.
I thought not.
After his humour-ridden and at times evocative reading (he said the best inspiration to write is jealousy and, as I watched him I mumbled internally, Baby Poet your words have been - can be - will be again better than these, of this career wordist) I wanted to say Hey... X... dug it but I couldn't recall if his first name was Billy, or Bobby.
Keythought: why do grown men go by boy names.
So I was whisked over to meet the Laureate Poet and as I shuffled away was when I gave him the sonic high-five to which he responded Break a lens. Now if you knew what recently happened to one of my beloved f5s you'd know how the thought of breaking any piece of photo equipment brings tears to both eyes, a shudder to the heart as well as requisite deficit of bank account.
A tonsil is fixable but a busted piece of photo equipment is not so.
Remind me if we ever find ourselves around a campfire or barfire to tell you about the time I had an architectural gig and whilst using my car as a ladder of sorts slipped and did all that was possible mid-air in gymnastic flair to save the camera from harm.
All for now and laureates for all.
Love.

The convergence of two Perfect worlds is happening in the not-too-distant future: Johnny Depp will star in the re-do of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and I cannot think of anyone more perfect to play WW. A little pirate swagger, a dash Benny & Joon Chaplin, Chocolat mystery and Viper Room rockstar danger - how parfait.
What part of Hi I have cash money and want to give some of it to you media moguls to help me with a few things on a video did they not understand.
Called at 11 in the AM with query and now it's nigh 3PM and no return call.
Money, help, video, hello.
So apparently the errant mom across the street sort of set fire to her home as I looked out and noted five fire trucks and that many children out in front of the house, wrapped in blankets.
And it wasn't a leftover ember from holiday pyros chez moi.

Audio blogging is a new poss these days so one day You will return to epinw to see a little icon and, upon depressing it, you will see the Quicktime logo and then you'll hear a recorded message from Yours Truly.
Oh, why am'nt I doing this now. All-purpose because.
Was invited last night to a party and drove by the address left on voicemail by one of the partyplanning brothers. Saw some crack house action next to the house and there were few and far between cars on the block so moved along. Last night was a night of meandering and classic rock star loss of time. Watched some short movies by kine-kook Maya Deren this AM and read an online response to my online response to a post by one of my grappling classmates on the concept of manipulating models. As the sole journalist in the class of 15 I have no qualms about flexing my imagistic muscle of a differing take. Everyone needs a little art direction from time to time and that's that. Did a gig for a politico and his family and he, in front of his wife, said If X leaves me I'd like to marry you. I was perplexed. Flattered yet perplexed.
A few of my blogly brethren have been persecuted for blogging, losing jobs and being told to omit posts as they were deemed too interpersonal for public perusing. epinw is heavily edited and contains barely at times a semblance of the whole gigantic big picture, people are never named and I sure as shootin' don't post with any incrimination.
I have been too distracted by my new musical acquisitions to begin grad school reading so perhaps I should put the newbies away: Kill Bill s/t, Lost in Translation s/t, Beth Orton's Pass in Time, the nouvelle Pink and Love is Hell Pt. 1 by good ol' poet Ryan Adams.
Visions of sugarplums and endless digital video editing hours are dancing, moshing in my head.
Pre-holiday Love.

Fun Fact about Yours Ever So Truly:
I have never, in my pre-adult and adult span of years, seen Thanksgiving sans the hangover filter. But I have moved away from the pre-adult move of showing up at the fam dinner just in time for dessert, eyes a-sloshin'.
So there I was last night, partying like a rock star with the Middling City rock stars, after pronouncing my arrival (through the music joint's side door down the alleyway where I ran into a gaggle of pal smokers) by lobbing an ice cube from cocktail #1 at Marky Sparky Norris's beloved shiny red guitar. Two rows of Middling City rock stars turned in choreographed surprise to see Perfect Fan Me grinning. Onwards.
Had a great conversation with Roger Bryan who, at my and several others' urging, got out of Last Conservative to forge full steam solo ahead. Now he's got a band, The Old Sweethearts, and he rushed out to his automobile to get me a copy of their forthcoming ep - it's genius.
I told him last night I'm sure several tell you this Roger but get the band together and get the hell out of the Middling City - asap and often.
Kaslosh Kaslosh, sippin' on the venti Americano (Donny Kutzbach's pro recommendation) and moving along the getting-dinner-ready path.
Giblets and gravious love.

Boys listen.
When it comes to their rock careers and success (big money) they listen. To me. Maybe like Ozzy listening to Sharon/v.o.r. (voice of reason).
I have seen the old, the new, the mew-mew and you smell the dewy-eyed (to quote an old prof) attentiveness in the faces of the seeking, of the deserving. I talk, they listen. It's not about fucking. It's about their rock success. I opine. Those I am behind I'll do anything - for politicallty or visually... and that's known. Tonight. Roger. New cd. A copy. A listen. A word to another who is on the p.r. track. Words of encouragement. Always, always, always the softest heart spot for musicians.
I am struggling. I am full of musician-paid scotch and it's time to say bye.
Roger, you are a star. !
You are a star so pure that it is both a shaming and enflaming to the true.
Rock on Roger, baby rock star.
This new cd rocks.
I am in awe.
Love.

Because I care.
Because I am a culinary genius who can follow the Silver Palate agenda.
Because I want to help spread this tradition that I've made into a tradition and everyone sort of humours me that they dig this.
Because who the hell can have enough side dishes.
Et voilà:
Ginger Candied Carrots
(Sweet and spicy - a good way to prepare carrots any time of the year.)
12 medium-sized carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch lengths
4 tablespoons sweet butter, melted
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds

1. Place carrot pieces in a saucepan and add cold water to cover. Cook carrots until tender, 25 to 30 minutes.
2. Melt butter in a small saucepan. Add brown sugar, ginger and caraway seeds. Mix and set aside.
3. When carrots are done, drain and return to the pot. Pour butter mixture over them and cook over low heat for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Transfer to a serving dish and serve immediately.
= 6 portions.

Everyone will love you.
Maybe not but they will not tell you.
But I will love you for your efforts.
GCC Love.

Yesterday, while shooting the Jets/Jaguars game at the Meadowlands a star from the Sopranos bit me on the ass and I didn't know who he was. Then a celeb made infamous from the Dave Letterman Show bit me on the ass and I didn't know who he was. Then various football players did the same. I can barely sit straight today with all that ass-biting and all.
I shot and shot and shot and only once came close to being stampeded by a rather scrappy Jet... I would have fared pretty well as he wasn't as gigantic as some of the lumpier players.
I skipped out back to the press lounge during intermission for some steaming hot coffee and then to make calls. I was watching the bank of television sets up ahead and realized that quarter 3 was underway so elevatored and tunneled my way back to the field.
Back to my non-sporty portion of my life.
Serious Love.

Ferfucksake let us, collective snarky Americans, stop being all tenderheaded about JFK, who had his rockstar brains exeunted by a sniper forty years ago, when Yours Truly was only just over a month old, en route to becoming already a brilliant yet sinister presence on the highways, biways, electronic forums, cafés and parties that this great land has to offer.
A quote from the Cleveland Plain Dealer today:
"We're not going to solve it," he says, "and that's what makes it a great conspiracy."
The end. What more else is there to say. Listening to Jesus and Mary Chain, the dark brothers of Scotland, for their wisdom on the matter (to paraphrase: I'd like to die just like JFK, I'd like to die on a sunny day) before I head out into this Middling City sunny day to create an ultra-fab image for a cover of a mag and then return to my frenetic smarty-pants grad student work before I get picked up in the middle of the night by Lead Boy Colleague to head out of town on an NFL junket sweet and short and full of breathtaking pixels, it is hoped, of overpaid and overgrown men bashing the crap out of each other. Hello gladiators.
Sportsy Love.

My aislemate and I were having a helluva time in #8 (A - me - and B - him), en route to the Middling City evening. First, the headphones. Whose jack was whose? Whose snack was whose? Then he was in the jack for headphones of the woman in C. I said Gees, yet more confusion here in aisle 8. At least he had a sense of humour, and did not fart during his nap.
I bid adieu to Parsons pals, Parsons the building and all that is good and educational in Manhattan. And, despite my capturing challenges yesterday in the computer lab, all went swimmingly with shoots, equipment, attitude, etc.
So on the plane, where I had expected, even planned, to stay awakened and all jittered out on Diet Coke, I began to read a short essay assigned by the Instructress for this week. Who needs sleeping pills when there's Michel Foucault? I ask you. One paragraph, two, three, stifled yawn, up to seven and mind wandered far away, sat out on the left wing and watched the city lights below. When I saw the chapter 8 then that's where things got all nappy. Ate mediocre JFK sushi, believe it, and then saw Marcel Thimot of the concert promoters monopoly fame, who was also nursing the throbbings of a headache. I ask you, once again, what percentage of airportees are sober, tipsy, loaded and hungover. I venture a guess: 10%/15%/65% & 35%. Shit, that's more than 100% but you catch my drift.
Bach on the hi-fi, a stack of mail, just-fed plump stray cats, the swingin' Hispanic evangelists next door going full-throttle, odd overhead lights, unfamiliar spaces. Welcome Home to the Middling City Baby Poet.

Some things just never do change. Like Michael Jackson needing, reaching for little body parts, like be-smirked Bush pretending to have read famous thinkers and Yours Truly procrastinating the beginning of digitally editing & enhancing her work of art. Amongst others in the computer lab last night saw Martha the Brilliant, the PSD instructress, who had heard, via classmate Lori, that I am making a video. Yes, making, I'm thinking... but finishing is another distant story. She asked if I will be showing this work for the grad open house and I sort of warbled out a Yes. Even going so far as to describe how it would not be the unabridged 50 or so minutes but perhaps a much-truncated 5 minutes... or so.
Saw Christy yesterday and meandered over to a show by her pal Joyce Kozloff. Was going to link You to a JK site but, interestingly (artistically) enough, there are none.
Off to pilates, off to Parsons, off to points beyond before my Middling City return.
Love of Travel.

More shooting of the dv tomorrow aft lunch and Chelsea art meandering with Christy Rupp.
So the dust has settled a bit on the graduate student discussion board where two damsels in distress basically stoked fires raging and deep by mis-understanding the usage of candy cig -instead of real - in my brilliant Isabelle Series. Then one of the instigators today refused to spell our classmate Erik's name correctly, and more mayhem ensued when he corrected her and then she jumped on his shit for having an identity crisis when a K became a C. Can't the 15 of us blend into one fine body of intelligence, wit and creativity? Shit I hope not.
I imagine advisor-to-the-grad-stars Jim Ramer rolling his eyes in slightly bemused horror. But, as Yours Truly Perfectly said to him the other night, as casting director for this version of The Real World he knew who was oil... who was vinegar.
Today picked up some colorful contact sheets from Duggal, still images of Tommy and red rose petals from my first official dv shoot.
Sat in a dim Mexican hot sauce fiesta of a joint this afternoon reading Final Cut Express for Complete Morons and Rushed Grad Students while simultaneously drinking coffee and falling into a coma of procrastination.
So, reading only the headlines about Bush and Iraq I am most confused.
One day it's
Let's Get the Hell Outta Here!!!!
next it's
Another Foray into the Badass Heart of Darkness.
I could read more about this matter but have been instead reading about other places, more intelligent, seemingly, leader-types.
Love of news bits and bytes.

Ohmygod Beth, there's a man with a pompadour here.
And what a pompadour it was, heaped and starched to a sleek perfection atop the head of a 40ish art patron at one of the art ops I went to last night. Solo, looking for a place to shoot randomly the hand and eye coordinated interactions of strangers but deciding to move along (the white - wine - was excellent) but the atmosphere, including seriousminded/wrongheaded pompadours, was a bit stifling. Art ops, think revelry. This building, top to bottom art galleries, was filled to half-brim with folks who thought long and hard about which garish pair of shoes to wear, which brush to sleek over the pompadour to utter perfection.
I am off now, no comment from You, to purchase bagels, champagne, head down to SoHo where I'm shooting a couple in love in gesture in video in project in situ.
Off I go.
Production Love.

My image of toddler Isabel with candy cig has created much gnashing of teeth for two of my PSD classmates who have had little to say previously on our online class discussion board. Suddenly there they were, these two righteous women, stating how onerous I am to have photographed an innocent child with a cigarette = HOW could I?, where was the parental consent. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I wrote back a short & sweet, sweet & sour, response basically stating that the child's guardian, another of our classmates, was present, and that no childish lungs were charred during the filming. I made a reference to the rampant moral righteousness in the USofA, both of the wrongheadeds took that and ran with it down the corridor of nincompoopness. My two best classmates, Beth (the aforementioned nanny) and Vanessa, hopped on to the cause defending my artistic and moral integrity. V was right, I believe, that these two are feeling out of the loop, excluded from our reindeer games.
All for now and one for all.
Have set up times for video shoots with suspecting others. Spotted a perfect ramp that is part of my school, indoors, and am wondering how and if the guard will have to be bribed to allow shooting.
Location scouting, production managing, etc., what a racket.
Production Love.

So last night, here in the good city of New York, I came to the aid of a man lying lifelessly on 14th Street near Parsons. Me and another cell phone afficianado were on the phone calling the ol' 911 and were told not to touch the body. Help arrived but not before a few well-wishers tried to touch the body. One person, a concerned man, put his hand under the body's nose to feel for exhalation. I had a paranoic image rush through my mind of the body suddenly coming to and chomping on the hand. It didn't happen.
So help arrives. Two ambulances, one for each caller.
I had located an empty plastic bottle of methadone at the body's knees and thought Aha, a junkie. Who overdosed.
So the emt's shook the body so violently that he was yanked from death's door and he stood, very slowly, wobbly on his feet, his face bleeding from falling. I moved backwards away, watching the proceedings and noted that one of the emt's, the smuggest of them all, swept his arm in a Carol Marol-like gesture, to show the former cadaver/junkie all the worry he had caused in the arc of onlookers.
Ongoing, I am working at school, on the video project, and am meeting with the mentor/advisor in mere minutes. To show the footage. To explain myself. To explain my process. Then it'll be off to the Mac store to ponder the other things I need: more RAM, another cable, the time to edit. Oh, and the time to shoot, to gather the cast of characters and shoot away.
Processional Love.

Here is a very educational site for your edification and erudition and such, compliments of pal Paul Morgan who suggests that you have your computer's volume cranked.
Going to delve in to video, digital video, for art's sake and delve into the video realm at Parsons, also for art's sake.
So, for art's sake, I sign off for now to make the cash money to support the art.
For its sake, my own.
Also: visited the life-sized Buddha at the museum, experienced two years ago, which had me magnetized by some internal energy. Thought Oh, that was then, a mood, an inner commotion. So.
Went back to said museum, paid a visit to same Buddha - Japense Heian period, mid 12th Century, gilded carved wood.
Felt nothing and then a click in my chest cavity then a warmth that held me in place so intense that I didn't feel I could move.
I'm going to write to the administrators there and ask what is this Buddha's story? How does he magnetize? Does he magnetize others? Any other tales of magnetization?
All for now.
Buddha Love.

Masterpiece!
A triumph!
I laughed, I cried, I rode the subway!

That's what I imagine the literary critics will have to say about my newest, latest piece for the shiny-happy mag. Truly, I mean it, a triumph. It's not often that I bust open that word.
Had a discussion with Lead Boy Colleague yesterday about all sorts of photographic and psychological matters. Conclusion? Both are slippery slopes.
In e-discussion with Lori yesterday we co-thought of creating a small and select reading group of Parsons grads. First on the agenda may be the Bataille book about eyes. Been thinking, apparently she has too, based on our class work, of seeing/eyes/cameras lately.
Did I mention that my article is a triumph?
Got one of those personality revelatory evaluation forms from Gary last night and actually filled it out as I had a whole lot of procrastination to accomplish.
One of those things that assume everyone watches television, eats poorly and thinks of trashy cultural icons.
I do none of that, I'm too busy attempting to create my own trashy cultural icons.
Speaking of such, my muse/the Girlpope boy, is coming over for a shoot on Monday night so I'd best be knowing my new video camera by then.
All for now, time to slink off and procrastinate about something else.
Love of this, love of that.

As the director was giving notes I was packing up my gear, listening to his, I thought, overarching negativity. I wanted to pipe in and say Hey look, I have abso-fuckin-lootly NO patience for theatre and I wholeheartedly dug it - don't listen to him kids.
I'm not sure of the title. Way of the World might be it. I was, of course, shooting, shooting production stills. What did you think I was doing there, understudying? I whispered, as I clamored over them, That was great, really great. I slunked off to the front door of the converted church/theatre to discover it was locked and I had to reappear from the shadows to exit rear church out into a bracingly cold night. What a scent, all the rotting leaves and moistness in the air made my heart explode with rapturous life. Rapture in the dark. The title of my first romance novel. The ride that I derailed on at Crystal Beach in Ontario. No, that was Laff in the Dark. And that's another story.
Arrived at the photo lab to see Adrian still working working working at printing orders such as mine. Slipped my envelope of film through the slot as I shouted Don't work too hard, a cliche that slipped out before I could catch it. And he replied I don't, that's why I'm still here.
I began my work day at a grand opening of a business, much joviality in the air, much praise for the man who is a Duke grad who will, by golly, make this business the best business in The Land.
I am off to do more work of non-blogly proportions.
Workaholic Love.

This poor overtaxed iMac dv special edition.
Groaning under the weight of my graphic demands - crop this, post that. Are our days numbered. Only if this discly attitude improves.
Super props to Ron for coming up with a theory that is True. What makes to-go coffee so special is paper cups. I have proved this thesis. What a difference disposability makes.
It is time for Yours Truly to go off into the dark night and vote, polls close in half an hour and I don't want to roast in anarchic hellfires ruled by Republicans for eternity so for now I sign off
Voting Love.
ps: Middling City model Tom the Rockstar is musing for me on Monday evening, part of the Parsons work-in-progress.

Closest I've come to giving someone a well-deserved klunk on ze head in recent memory.
Shooting a race at a college. College has a will-do (by all outward appearances) undergrad to chauffeur me and the video guy, who I've known since his heady rock and roll days, out amongst the race course to get some ACTION shots.
So we pull away in this physical therapy major's micro-mini vehicle... of which he is very very proud. You can tell by its embellishments, his dusting of the hi-fi with his fingertips.
We crawl away from the college, he's a really cautious driver and 100 feet away from the college my suspicions are aroused. Mr. PT Major doesn't seem to realize that me and the vid guy need to get There and get back to the finish line quick fast in a hurry.
He is driving 15 mph. He doesn't know the race course. I should have bailed immediately but decide to, to paraphrase John, Give Peace/Trust a Chance.
So.
I am in passenger/shotgun seat watching his dashboard. We need to drive faster, I say.
Mr. PT says to me C H I L L.
Now I am mentally lunging for his throat.
Me and vid guy shoot race action and rush back to car to make it to finish line when the kid further freaks on us that he WILL NOT GET A SPEEDING TICKET, THAT HE'S VOLUNTEERING TODAY, NOT GETTING PAID, WILL NOT RISK A TICKET.
I say
Look...
now if Yours Truly ever begins a statement to Yourself Truly you know that it's an aural paint melting off the walls kind of statement.
... you are driving 15 mph. The speed limit is 35 here. Mr. Vid, hanging out the hatchback concurs with the pro-35 stance.
Kid tells us both to C H I L L.
We meander back to finish line when I see the first three men in the race chugging up the street, yell, Oh Fuck, open door and hit the road running...
remember we are going a mere 15 mph.
Me and the vid guy are running along with first, second and third place men and I'm thinking not only am I glad I work out 4x per week doing cardio, weight lifting and Pilates but my impulse is to yell Hey GUYS slow down.
I get the shot, vid guy gets his footage.
After the heat of the heat I find my booker and tell him about PT's freakout.
I'm not 100% fersher on this but think that kid might now be in super-detention or expelled or maybe sent down the lake to a really nice state school.
Momentary Love.

Last night's post-party revelry included an aerobic activity recalling the name of a Billy Corgan band. Hint: it's not Zwan.
After Cheryl and Ed's soiree I left with Doug, Laura and Kunji and set off to points beyond. Along the way I thought aloud: You know, I've never swept a jack-o-lantern off of a porch and indulged in age-old pumpkin smashing. Process: leave the car idling in the middling of a side street, creep up to a home, lift pumpkin and charge toward the street, pumpkin aloft. Kunji documented all with her digital camera so felonious results were immediate. I was doing all the robbery. Then I got the others involved. Doug insisted on creating a shaving cream (oh, that's another story involving a couple who would not come out and play and their automobile) target before his alofting and lobbing moment. To our great impatience. My great self-challenge was to steal away - actually I prefer the term LIBERATE - a pumpkin from front stairs where about 2 feet away a group of women were having drinks and smokes. I crept up below the screened windows, lifted up the pumpkin, realized I had only its top, put that in left hand and pinched the pumpkin with my right. A delicious thud ensued. After a while we went to another party where the owner and roomies are satanists, something that seemed appropriate for last night. But, mid-party, I pondered how horrid the black and red rooms and their various altars would look mid-day. I convinced the facially-pierced, dredded and skirt-wearing heap of a man who was the host/owner to let me touch his actual computer in his room to check my email. And then I cleared the room of Satanists by mis-pronouncing Samhain. One of them, a dabbler in filmmaking, said You pronounced it wrong with the most derision I've heard in a voice in quite some time. I said But I prefer to pronounce it like Sam Beckett... Sam Hain... They were not at all impressed.
Earlier in the day, yesterday, I was directly across from the Middling City in NYC and having coffee and a smoke when a stripper named Terri approached. And how do I know these fun facts. Well I know a lot about Terri now. Among the list: she has had her teeth done, she just purchased a Badgley Mischka jacket for $4K which she's returning to the boutique as now it's on sale for $2,300, she has 2 daughters, she worked for the UN as an interpretor, her first language is French - français - and that she knows 10 other languages, that she makes upwards of $2K per weekend dancing at Calypso and that she had just paid $10K to the Montessori school nearby for her younger daughter who does like school as opposed to the older kid who hates school and who spends all her time on her cell phone and watching Kid Nick.
I think that's plenty.
She told me she's pushing 40.
I thought she might have already seen the other side of 40.
I told her I just turned 40 and that it's a great age to be.
I told her that it sounded like she'd had an interesting life thus far.
We wished each other the best of luck.
Were those pumpkins in the middle of the street full of luck.
Does that overfed cat living with the Satanists have a life of luck.
Are my pals lucky that we hooligans took to their car with shaving cream instead of sledge hammers.
Lovely lovely luck.

Minding my own rainy day business, having a super-caffeinated respite, I looked down on the ground and received a message from - You guessed it - God.
The message is on a little yellow construction paper heart that someone carefully made by folding the paper in half, for symmetry's sake.
On one side reads this carefully inked message:
If I have no Love I am nothing.
Right on.
So as I blog this message of import to You I am concurrently missing the special presentation and thoughts of one famed John Paul Caponigro.
Flailing away on my shiny happy mag story about chopping in NYC, and it's centered around the Green Line - the ol' 4, 5 & 6 trains. It is brilliant, full of red hot tips and the like. And also slammin' images. Amongst them images made at the Michal Negril boutique within ABC Home. Michal Negril is a jewelry designer and clothing designer and musical producer. I purchased her cd last time here in NYC and upon returniing to the Middling City and to my hi-fi went to play the cd. Only there was NO cd in the package. I wrote to Adva whose name and email address was in the cd expressing my heartfelt disappointment. She wrote back and told me that the company would be sending me a new one, etc.
The package arrived from Israel and in addition to the new and improved and present cd was a trinket that Michal made. A very crystal-encrusted icon for the walls of home. A good luck charm about six inches high in the shape of a hand. Good luck.
It is a very generous gift.
Moral of the story. When disappointed be gregarious and gregarious returns to you in buckets. And lovely messages on paper hearts.
I rest my case.
Love.

Tonight I told one of the richest men in the Middling City this, as he was en route to the podium for a little mid-reception intro-ing:
And remember to smile, in my most self-surprisingly snarky voice.
So he did smile, right at me, and said, into the mic, Look I'm smiling for you.
This would be the same man who, as I was speaking to a venture capitalist (perhaps one of this great land's last) I know and who I've shot for, bragged about his Leica collection, who took my camera out of my hands to shoot me with the venture capitalist. How did he do? He probably does better with a Leica, less of a complicated machine, in his hands.
At one point at aforementioned reception a student/server asked me (well before his time) Are you a professional. Only a stone's throw from the question mentioned in Sunday's post.
I said, over my shoulder
Of course I'm a pro, can't you tell by the way I can shoot through this floral arrangement.
I mean really.
Student/servers and their silly questions these days.
Today snarkiness at the deserving.
Tomorrow I jet off to Manhattan for high times and misdemeanors.
All my jet stream love.

Setting:
Halloween-themed wedding. First-ever wedding happening at a downtown Middling City venue. The venue put finishing touches on the room 45 minutes (according to my former chef friend Paul et al who now happens to be the new venue's GM and it ain't motors we're talking here... we mean suit, tie, pressure, eyes all over details and the staff) before wedding reception, much to the Type A Chagrin of bride. Bride is dressed as a bride. Groom has changed into a devil costume. If ever there was a man undeserving of a devilish costume, it is this man.
I am the wedding's photographer (if I had a Euro for every grown man who has asked the question - drunken and non-drunken - Are you the Official Photographer (emphasis on Fish) I'd have enough to retire tomorrow to a French chateau and employ a houseboy and have enough guest rooms for all my pals.
The reception is underway. Guests are still arriving in costume when Yours Truly spots a man leaning with shitloads of attitude against a wall near the patio for smoking.
He is completely dressed in black leather, is wearing cowboy boots, aviator frame shades, a duster overcoat and has shaggy, circa 1970s hair.
I approach him not with the intent to shoot but talk.

Bob Seger, you're Bob Seger, right.
silence, more leaning.
Bob Seger, right, you're dressed as Seger - Night Moves?
silence, more leaning.
Suddenly I think No wait, maybe it's Neil Young. No, Neil wouldn't be fucking caught dead in a duster jacket. Paul Hogan? No, it's a rockstar.
You are supposed to be Bob Seger, aren't you.
"Bob" takes off his sunglasses, revealing blue eyes rimmed with crimson.
I AM MYSELF.

Later in the evening I found myself in a storage room with Paul, who whisked me away to have me paint his face Like Alice Cooper.
What exactly do you mean by Alice Cooper.
I wanted to be sure as I've known Pauly for a long time (he's one of the few who still calls me by my self-Italian-nickname Nunzia) and didn't want to drive a Halloween makeup fuckup wedge between us and our longstanding joviality.
Tear drops, he instructed, one on this side, two on this side.
I added shadow. I said, Relax Pauly, I'm in art school, I KNOW how to do this.
He laughed.
I said, No really.
Then while I added blood spilling out of his lips he told me he's getting divorced and other fun facts.
I shared one of my several theories about relationships.
I was done with the makeup and he offered me a scotch and soda. I said Only if you can make it look like a tall ginger ale.
After finishing the "ginger ale" I sought out chunks of gorgonzola and strategically-placed Halloween treats to mask the scent.

Masked and scented luvv.

Bumper cars of logic and change cavort about at this moment as Patti, thee Patti, thee only Patti, thee only wall-eyed Patti, sings Because the Night as I crave and yearn and post and am about to head back out for ding-ding round 4 rest of the night.
Had dinner with three lovelies (Kate, Liz, Cheryl) this evening and at one point snatched the comical/seriousical Middling City weekly out of Liz's hands. She tried to stop me, suspecting the brakes would be thrown on my good times. Wrong. I leafed through in smirky silence. Cheryl: We're awaiting your colour commentary, Nancy. Then it was unloosed from my honest, journalistic-raised and diplomatic pair of lips.
I was très inspired to evacuate the premises and squat in front of my very illegally sidewalk-parked car to change the sidewalk sandwich board. ARTVOICE became Fartvice.
Immature.
Sated.
I have simple goals, simple pleasures.
You should all be so lucky.
Yours in Immaturity.

Despite my somewhat dishevelled and over-caffeinated grad student condition (in case you do not know this means hair unbrushed, eyes glazed, shirt not really thinking of being tucked, curvature of the spine and wait... oh, matched socks) you do really want to be my pal as today I finally received my official and really great (despite the 50/50 blend) BLOGGER hoodie. Now I can wear my colours with pride, with urban abandon.
So that depressive singer/songwriter Elliott Smith self-dropped out of the life race, no surprise, having heard his oeuvre.
All and now it's time to race out to the suburbs once again to deliver my handiwork that makes people not only smile but pay me.
Love.

One of Yours Truly's dabblings (dalliances) is saintly historical fact or lack thereof, the miraculous administrative process of beatification and the life and high times of soon-to-be-saint-to-you Father Nelson Baker of Lackawanna-based Baker Hall/Orphanage fame.
So imagine my piqued curiosity and Catholic-induced intrigue when Mother Teresa of India is in the Express Lane to sainthood. The Pope, as I've always said, is No Dope. About to leave this un-astral plane he's shoved his bud to the front of the line. And yesterday elevated several cardinals to boot.
Imagine my glee upon reading VF contributor Christopher Hitchens's piece in one of today's Slate posts. If you have a desire link
here maintenant.
This story digs deep and reveals her unmatronly duplicity.
Amongst the piece is an excerpt from her 1979 (hooray at the Memory of Jim Carter, decidedly un-hip, cause-ridden U.S. prez) Nobel Prize acceptance speech in which she states I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself.
As I listen to John Lennon, amongst others, on cd shuffle, and among the music Imagine popped up moments ago I find Teresa to be (one of my favored words of late) just so wrongheaded.
I rest my rightheaded, really not righteous, case.
Libra Love.

Since seeing his holy rockstar likeness on VH1 (with an odd new logo, I might toss in to the fray), I am wondering how it is possible that Michael Stipe of REM stellar humanhood has begun to resemble Woody Allen of all men. Stipe was never a handsome man, even with his early 80s tossled hair (yikes, and then that frightening longer hair pulled back into a braid - the hairdo I witnessed in that thrift shoppe in Athens GA when I spoke with him that empty early morn), and his eyeliner underscored his gauntness - but Woody Allen?
It's disconcerting.
Another cd, another tour are coming from down there where vines grow visibly and the voices of men rattle basso profundo with mystery.

There's a night of Beckett/Albee near PSD/Union Square and that's on the big to-do list, experience one of the muses firsthand.

Muse Love.

Yours Truly, a Geek, a Gear Head. Evidence.
Was at the NPPA conference, Northern Short Course, yesterday in Cleveland. As in O-Hi-Oh!
Touched a Nikon D2 yesterday (eta: 2 weeks on the international photo scene), slithered around its newer, larger back-end controls and its other bodily functions, like a hungry non-poisonous garden snake.
Power: wireless transmission from camera to laptop.
Power: improved snazzadelic magnifying of captured image.
The nice Nikon repair man onsite, Michael, fixed my f5's.
Not just the loose/missing screws but the flappy grips' rubber.
Hovered back twice in an hour due to separation anxiety.
Spent much time at the Olympus table querying about the in's & out's of my 5050. Things like super secret metering items, and much much more.
Three photog speakers waxing big on the craft, the Zen of ops, rush of priviledged view, more.
Wondered how the Parsons others would find the other realm of image, of non-art doc work.

Two interesting stranger encounters.
While minding my own business.
That completely goes sans saying.

1. Writing an article about NYC shopping for the shinyhappy Middling City mag and let me tell you, it's going to be brilliant. It practically is now.
So, meandering along my concept I wander into ABC House and Whatever the hell it's called. I jotted it down, lest you think I'm a journalistic slacker. So I find, amid the bazaarness of it all, a new, brand new, boutique. Michal whatzername, Israeli designer of excellent jewelry and housewares and a few clothing items. Her man behind the counter was just oso charming, an Israeli Queen. So I buy this Michal's cd, impressed that she is such a super polymath, and IQ boxes and bags it for me. Then he informs me that I have great energy. I tell him he has a great nose, that I'm a purveyor of noses. And that is true. And that was also true, too.

2. So just before meeting the Israeli Queen I am walking through Union Square when I spy an absolute fine specimen of a man. A man with mystique, perfect for my upcoming video project. I think wow and he wanders away. I turn to see where he went as he's instantly haunted my head and *ppooff* he really is gone like a ghost on the day after All Soul's Day, the day after Halloween. So then I'm eating a sandwich. Jump cut to the sandwich eating moment. Suddenly there goes Mr. Mystique past the window. Taking this as a Zen moment of good fortune I abandon the last of my late lunch and follow him down the side street. I watch him watching things and then hopped on opportunity: Wannabeinavideo?Everactedbefore?NoI'mnotstalkingyou?
His name? John Kennedy. And that's not a lie. He's a Brit. He'll pair well with the girl I've earmarked as my girl protag.

Serendipitous Love.

Yesterday traipsed, and I mean traipsed, out to Dia:Beacon in Beacon! Beacon! Beacon! Beacon Beacon! (as the Metro North conductor shouted into the ontrain p.a.), NY with fellow Parsons geniuses: Beth, Philip and Vanessa.
We are currently studying systems in our online "course" and lo and freakin' behold there in our art-seeking midst were works by conceptual system makers Sol LeWitt. I had read about the Richard Serra torqued ellipses there and was ravenous to experience them.
It was like my Belgian workhorse experience: as they got closer, or me to them, they got larger in size, not scale, as Serra says.
The torqued ellipses are four systematic sculptures constructed of three inch thick slabs of steel which is interactive. Each of the four pieces can be entered and #3 there is a double ellipse so you make your way to the center of it via a steely corridor where above the average human's head is about fifteen feet of brown steel ellipse. As the sun comes through the former factory industrial windows light and shadow make the steel, with its own random markings, even more beautiful.
Art, ever surprising.
Grad school, ever challenging.
Coffee, ever needed.
Love.

Well, since my last epinw blogging I turned 40 and before that, the day before, to be très specific, John Lennon's birthday happened.
There was an ultra-fab party tossed in my honor and held at Big Orbit Gallery on John's b-day. While I was talking to some guests I began noting that the artwork on the walls was made by Yours Truly. I looked all around the white walls. All me. It was shocking, a gigantic surprise, a retrospective of sorts. And, as I described to members of Janet Reno Fan Club last night over dinner, like being in a room with several of one's past lovers. Intense. Self-reflexive. And so much more.
To the party I wore a Peach Berserk dress from TO, given to me by an MIA older friend, Marilyn. I have my theory that this very dress is what got the ol' divorce ball rolling in her life: her husband Mark HATED that dress, forbade her to ever wear it again and she presented it to me in a shopping bag, bolero jacket and crinolines and backup dress all in there. What does it look like? An upside down psychedelic phantasmagoric yet somewhat vintage tulip.
During my hungover condition on the 10th, thee 40th b-day day, I had to drive out to my niece's grammar school with cake and soda and cups and the like. Why? Because I did same for nephew on his b-day, my niece and I share a b-day and her mom/my sister forgot to make cupcakes and my niece said That's OK, mom, Auntie will come to school... Auntie always saves the day.
With that kind of familial pressure I loaded me and my champagne-soaked brain into the Forester and trundled off to discover that the school had no idea that I was showing up, DMB shirt on and shopping bags in hands.
The office lady had to speak to the principal and this is where the story gets really interesting, how it illustrates my truest, authority-hating self.
I had to go into the principal's office and stand before him, seated at his desk. A fat and bald man wearing a cheap shirt who had apparently been doing nothing in his office. There was the overarching vibe of non-productivity in that office.
At one point I minorly snapped and said Look, I'm a really busy person. I just drove 45 minutes out here, am I going to get into my niece's classroom... or not? While he blopped off to see the office lady in her office area to give my sister a call I called her myself on her cell phone. Hi. The school doesn't know I am here, I said very very loudly. Mr. Fatso Principal came back into his office, where I was standing and talking. It's OK, go ahead, down the hall to the left, room 111.
For the love of Educational Gods, I didn't have a blanket and rope in my hands. What the fuck? They let teens with guns into schools and not aunts with cake.
For the record I dig being 40. It means being ever-more the real.
If you don't understand this you are too young to know.
I rest my middle-aged ass. I mean case.
Love.

"Lethal injection is now the dominant way Americans are executed. It is used in all 38 states that have the death penalty except Nebraska, which uses electrocution. In 10 states, prisoners may choose between lethal injection and a second method, including hanging, firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas."
- New York Times, 10/7/03, Adam Liptak story on how the fangled drugs hide suffering

Fucking firing squad?
But, this being a democracy and all, you do have a buffet of endgame choices post-last meal.
Give me Ol' Sparky
and give me Mort.
I am hardly willing to march with Susan Sarandon & Co. but do find the above one of the most abhorrent American things.
If pro-death penaltiers were regulars on the Middling City protest scene I would stop my car and verbally abuse them much like I do at anti-choicers in front of WomenServices on Main Street.
Thanks, NYT, for this evening's blog rant.
Justice Love.

Saw the historical epic Luther with Laura tonight, it starring Joseph Fiennes who at moments looks very much like my pal Justin, who called me moments ago in a tipsy condition as he wandered down a Brooklyn street.
So in the midst of the Luther cinematic experience I'm trying out my new analytical gradstudent skills (Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: "While facing the camera he [the screen actor] knows that ultimately he wil face the public, the consumers who constitute the market. This market, where he offers not only his labor but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach." whew, there's some real gradhood for your perusal and edification. You're welcome.), transposing this Luther's story to that of MLutherK, Jr - that lusty nun at the end becomes Coretta Scott King and the men in geometric hats and capes straight out of the Catholic Church costume department represent the KKK and other American Apartheidists and civil rights marchers are peasants et al on Luther's team.

As I finally read the article that Pam sent me, concerned about me always, now I am terrified of eating tuna fish. Mercury. Memory. Mercury. Memory. What was I writing?
Love.

"What the tiger, along with a four- to five-foot reptile called a caiman, was doing inside a cluttered apartment in the Drew Hamilton Houses at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 141st Street remained a mystery yesterday. In a news conference at the scene, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the police became involved in the case on Wednesday when the apartment's resident, Antoine Yates, called to say he had been bitten by a pit bull. When the police went to investigate, Mr. Kelly said, Mr. Yates met them in the lobby. He went to Harlem Hospital with bites on an arm and a leg. On Thursday, the police got an anonymous tip saying a wild animal was somewhere in the city. On Friday, another call directed them to the exact address. On Friday night, the police found no one home, but talked to a neighbor who complained of large amounts of urine and a strong smell coming through the ceiling, Mr. Kelly said. The neighbor said her daughter had seen the tiger. Yesterday, the tiger's existence was confirmed. after a hole was cut in the apartment door."

First the Siegried and Roy tiger debacle yesterday, now this situation.
Coincidence? I think not.

Had a full-tilt art day this day what with being one of a group of featured artists at a benefit for Burchfield-Penney Art Center and think I sold one of the 13 Conflagration steel silkscreens. I gave one to Liz (sneaking it into her home during a party and installing it myself) and I don't know if I can bear to part with another. It's a syndrome following creating one-of-a-kind pieces.
After the BPAC benefit did another Penney-related, art activity: delivering work to rep myself for an upcoming show of Charles Rand Penney's massive art holdings. As a prop to us the gallery co-conspirators are having each of us sell/show more more more.
A new slogan to put in your car's tailpipe and smoke it:
MAKE EVERY DAY AN ART DAY.
So, at the art cocktail-fueled (read: turbo-powered) Albright-Knox Art Gallery, enjoying SCOTCH and a smattering of mixer, I was approached by several who wondered just what in hell has happened to my photo column WhatHasHappened. One person, a scholarly type who digs on gin, asked thee question and then complimented me on a piece I wrote for a mag about a Middling City landmark. Then he said Well, with your expertise and all and connections to the university I wondered if you might come by the building where I work and look at it and give your opinion about its architectural style.
This was one of those beautiful moments that my life seems to gather like hued pearls washing up on an autumn beach on a windswept night after a slight white wine buzz: a moment when Yours Truly is confronted with a slight dose of Surrealism and maintains composure.
He's explaining the building in great detail, inside and out.
Finally I said, in my most authoritative tone, the one which sort of propels me outside my self to regard myself somewhat incredulously, Well, I'll come by and take a look at it and tell you what I think.
What I think. Here's what I think. Lots. But I am more interested in snooping about the mysterious third floor he mentioned more than anything. Then maybe, if I get busted snooping, I'll mutter things like Ionic... Doric and some Late-Gothic flourishes over the obviously Sullivanesque Moorish touches of stately Republic lines, just to throw them off my course.
Actually now I'm on the prowl for a rickety old stage, with musty velvet curtain, for my video sequences.
During the man in the snippet's ramblings I was transported back to my days as a temp at an arch firm, when I'd eat a sandwich or something in the en plain air boardroom while paging my crumby fingers through catalogues of arch suppliers and other building-related bric-a-brac. How one time I thought I'd follow along that crafty path.
Moving, along.
Last night I told Kate (of Kate and Tom, The Apple Maker, fame) Well, Kate, you know you've had a good party when you end up with a two-foot skid mark across your hardwood floor.
I won't even ask you to guess who created said skid mark. Or to what internationally-renowned rock and roll band it happened. Or how many brazen femme dancers happened to be around in a circle when said skid mark occurred.
Most memorable, to date, post-party artifact of a party thrown by Yours Truly:
(in the famed Richmond Avenue house, where I was den mom and cruise director)
(a mere moment of many of that home's untold, screenplay-worthy tales)
From the basement, packed with oddities left behind by several, including the wacked Viet Nam Vet landlord, Ralph, I procured some antique lamp parts, including stands. One after-party-morning I discovered that one of my guests had lost a still-buttoned shirt cuff around a lamp stand.
The End.
Love.

Talked to one of my several editors today spouting forth a fab story idea. And if I tell YOU what it is howinhell do I know that I willn't be scooped.
Therefore a smoke screen:
The story for the glossyhappy mag is to do an in-depth profile of the several Middling City fluffers employed by the region's burgeoning porn industry.
Had a coffee break to the max with MQM, better known here as Marky Sparky, Boy Colleague. He bought me not one - but two - jumbo coffees and I am roasted.
Amongst other things we discussed music, the pending re-re-re-union of 10,000 Maniacs (according to Blair W better than ever + with a new vocalist to boot), the state of my grad studenthood, the state of the Middling City photo industry, our various hilarities and firings & hirings about town.
Good to the last drop, I thought nearly aloud as I just completed coffee number two, dripping the ultimate spec of it into my awaiting and exuberant self.
I must mention that Ryan Adams is a-playin over there to the east of the room and as always he's got my heart all wonky poetic.
Reading The Necessity for Ruins, collected essays by a JB Jackson, rec'd by The Man, JR. After reading from the online course's reading packet, an expensive amassment of xeroxes from copyright-cleared books, it's a fucking pleasure to read hard copy from a real soft book. Texture! No keystoned words floating into a binding's replication.
I remain.

So I'm a photo phly on the wall today in the 30th floor boardroom, actually not, as I had been Perfectly snapping photos all about said room and en route to the room, as the Canadian Ambassador to the USofA and the Canadian Consul Général are looking over the Middling Cityscape before them/us.
The latter is mentioning how the streets are designed for three times the population, that that's why there is never - ever! - a Middling City traffic jam. Then he points out the crumbling Deco train station to the east, trying to be architecturally uplifting. A small Canadian woman says Well... at least they aren't destroying it, tearing it down, yet.
So the Ambassador is being walked in to his next speaking engagment by former Congressman/Perfect Nancy buddy John LaFalce when LaFalce sees me in the front row. He marched Mr. Ambassador over, gave me a big hug and kiss and said Michael, THIS is Nancy...
Mr. Ambassador looked at me quizzically, maybe not so sure that I was one and the same as the boardroom silent gazer.
During his big talk in the former church owned by the Catholic College Mr. Ambassador quite deftly answered the former Congressman's question of the American soldiers friendily firing upon the Canadian soldiers and our unfortunate country's presidential snubbing of the post-9/11 aide that Canada supplied - airspace for thousands of stranded travelers heading to American cities.

Onwards.

I have some serious posting to do for the online class. I don't simply want to do a reworking of the ideas but have to prove I'm still e-there. I've noted that about half of the class is eerily absent. Spending the cashmoney to get to NYC/PSD is well spent as it makes the online experience less distant, helps me to connect to that nouveau world.
Met with JR for advisement and he forced those struggling art ideas out of the folds of my (then hung over) brain lobes and miasma. I think he was getting frustrated but when he talked about my pending work I kept seeing, previsualizing, images that I described. I did my best to explain my main focus or concern: to document or to create to capture the essence of life, the desire and touching that we all are imbued in. The sensuality of everyday life that is not discussed. Life energy. Sensuality. The "gravity" (to borrow one of Jim's several quotes) between people.
And then.
And then.
He had me describe scenarios... Write a play that is one minute long.
I described three scenarios after explaining that they were inspired by Samuel Beckett - spare, minimal in gesture and staging.
Aside: Sam's work is about memory, our meandering through life, our inevitable encountering of our selves, our marriage to our memories and ourselves, breath, passion for the idea of passion.
I don't want to describe the three plays I created.
Jim said Let's make a video of the middle one.
I could weep for the feeling of elation, of being freed from the boundaries I created for my creative self.
I am going to make a series of digital videos of the middle play made yesterday. Variations of gestures.
And I am going to make *GloryBe* breaks in the variations that I am also not going to explain, yet.
I left Parsons and smoked a smoke with Jim before trundling off to the nearby french joint to be greeted as the regular that I am by the Victorias et al.
And then.
And then.
I realized Holy Pixels, this camera around my neck makes videos and I made my first video. Not so good. Then I made a surveillance video, a study of a couple interacting in front of me at the counter. Because of my framing you see only a triangle of her face, mostly her eye, and her man friend's back. At some point he stands and removes his coat and it's like a giant curtain over most of the frame and then her eye is visible again.
I really dig this video.
I am on to something and I have JR to thank for this.
Now to get the cast, the stage, the video camera.
I've outlined the gestures, it's even Sam-like in its numerological concerns.
All.
Love of All.

Why Your Perfect Nancy Loves Technology: Item 316

Technology, in my non-humble opining, fucking rocks. This is due to the simple fact that pixel molecules can be transformed while in card readers into email molecules after some simple friction and commands. Therefore one is able to make an image, say, in Manhattan, carry said card of images from one point to another and "send off" images, in jpeg format, to one's editor approximately 400 miles away in mere moments.
Previously, as I discussed with subject matter, a person, in the aforementioned images, a photographer had to (and this is back in the day, about two decades and even one decade ago) rush to the darkroom, process film, make contact sheets, select frames and then make prints and then deliver these to wherever the hell they needed to be.
Therefore technology rocks.
I rest my case.
During yesterday's study session in the rearmost table in a subterranean diner near Union Square with me, Philip, Sienna and Beth, we came to the following non-scientific conclusion:
postmodernism, to appropriate what Jim Ramer said on the front steps of Parsons this afternoon, is a slippery fish.
Or what it a slippery something else?
Whatever the hell it is, it's damn slippery.
All.
Love of All.

Due to my slight mistrust in the turns of buses I was doing some late-night walking, a healthy and thought-provoking 15 blocks are so and the elegant, and true, phrase
Beth puts me on buses
intermittently chimed in my head.
But because Beth puts me on buses that are never too close to my destinations I discovered about 12 hours ago a handful of wondrous things like a 24-hour florist where lilies chosen are wrapped with topnotch cello and tied with tri-colored ribbon, on a corner lurking is an old-school diner with tuna sandwiches under $5 and I laid eyes on a building that looked, at least in last night's light, like it had dropped in from Roma.
It is time for me to lunge off to an unnamed caffeine destination where nobody knows my name (a clue that it's not the French joint where I have been shuffled to the Regular column) and force theory about images down at the same same time.
New mantra:
Grad school is what you make it.
And here's hoping that none of you Perfect readers find that echoing in any way a tag line of an armed force.
Grad school - where you're not armed and are a force to be reckoned with.
Love.

In my ongoing hunt for online course clarity (not to mention the small list of MIA readings) I found myself in a B&N bookstore, the one that sells the crappy versions of Parsons School of Design t-shirts - 90% cotton, 10% nylon. Whothefuckever heard of such a blend? These shirts suck and on the ongoing to-do list is inquiring whether I can produce another version of this shirt in a more quality fashion, or perhaps simply a closer-to-home, renegade PSD Photo & Related Technologies model.
That is probably the sartorial way to go.
So I'm in the fairly feeble (yet so close to school as to render it convenient) art theory and criticism section when, 180 degrees to the left is this perfect gem: Overlook Illustrated Lives: Samuel Beckett, by Gerry Dukes. A photo assemblage, and writings, about Sam. What a great treat, what a balm for this Perfect soul.
*
Production shots, family snapshots, some garish color photos, some ramblings, some little-known facts and a clear-up, once and for all, of the great birthdate question/fiasco. April 13th, 1906 the answer. And Dukes's book prints the birth announcementas irrefutable proof of when Sam sprung onto the planet.
Onwards.
So we, we Parsons Photo and Related Tech grads, are meeting en masse this Sunday as a study group to non-e-discuss, our readings.
Now I am digitally editing images and then finding the braincells to meander through the readings for this week for the online course/discourse/discombobulation.
Love of Knowledge.

Hints as to what I consider to be one of thee most bodycentric, unaesthetic images - experienced live - to date.
Hints:
1. it involves toes
2. it involves open-toed sandals
3. wedgey, vinyl and white open-toed sandals
4. it involves frosty mauve nail polish
5. it involves overhead, flourescent lighting.
Do you glean the picture.
I wish I had not.
For the Love of God.

But I don't want to wait until 2005 to see the Diane Arbus retrospective.
I was thinking of canceling American Photo until I got past the usual titshots to read about the Arbus show as well as the technical (painters take note: photographers talk about technical matters... f-stops, films, papers, contraptions. why? because we fucking rock, that's why) (oh, but painters are okay, too) notations about several shots. What other feature do I dig? The one where they have a famed photog empty out their bag and list everything. From Sharpies, to mints, to lenses to fuzzballs at the bottom. I finally ditched Rolling Stone. Who needs RS when one gets Spin and Alternative Press and can breeze through RS in about 15 minutes at a newstand.
Today has been a day of interesting emails, let me tell you. Just like a photo bag, all diverse and interesting: all-femme Qi-Gong classes, Olympic-style bragging by a Middling City megalomaniac, acknowledgement and thanks from someone who received his packet in one day (one day!) via US Postal Service, and a few more.
Off to make and do and venture forth to sink into grad student matters.
Love.

We live in world in which late adopters reign unchallenged as our tastemakers.
By Stephen Metcalf
Posted Friday, September 19, 2003, at 2:49 PM PT

This quote rattles about this morning as I multi-task, sipping coffee from just yesterday (Laura, my dear friend, is wretching as she reads this), procrastinate and send off jpegs to interested cliental parties.
Metcalf is writing about VH1's series Where Are They Now - Ford Supermodels, kvetching how the once-focused network has become more MTV in its fashion sense. I think the phrase 'late adopters' is grand, really jabbing into the complacent ribs of the producers and vp's out there attempting to sate celebrity-obsessed viewers. OK, I can be obsessive about the music makers of our world (in the alternative sphere, usually not seen on such networks - and the writer writes about one of the all-time favs, Flaming Lips, whose brilliant Do You Realize is appropriated for a promo and who barely have appeared save for the whatwasit She Don't Use Jelly which everyone thought was their saving commercial grace at that time before Wayne Coyne romped off to parking ramps with multiple boomboxes to create symphonies of echoed noise), and Johnny Depp, but fashion and H-Wood has creeped much too up the asses of the music world. Of course rock stars will always fuck models and vv but what about those of us who, before floating off to REM world (and I'm not talking about those men of GA), want a piece of rock and roll greatness.
Wow, there is con/destruction happenig right outside the building where I now blog (my home) and it sounds like the apocalypse is nigh. Just looked out the window facing west, from where the infernal noise is coming, and no, not the apocalypse, just some city workers who obviously don't comprehend that behind this modest window is a blogger, a churner of words, a thinker who needs to not be embedded in their workday chaos. I have enough of my own, thanks.
Love.

I put the AHHHHH! in adrenaline.
Last night I attended, late, in rockstar fashion, the well-meaning yet poorly-attended benefit in & outside of Mohawk Place produced by Robby Goo et al from his recording studio, Chameleon West. There I saw The Kid, the model-to-be, and we discussed my pending series with him which went swimmingly until he began tossing in his four or so cents about how he likes to be photographed. From what he described it could not be further from my aesthetic intent, but was interesting nonetheless.
He is, remarkably, one of thee most spatial and unanchored rockstars I've talked to in a long while and thoughts of mine drift to how difficult it might be to pin him to the schedule of a shoot. Onwards.
Off to NYC again later this week to scramble to fix the chaos of the online course.
At last night's wedding gig, deep in the ski hills of an area south of the Middling City, I met a man (with seven wives? nope) who is a self-proclaimed DreamWeaver master. Imagine my glomming, my joy, my tunneled vision that this man will be sitting with me and tossing me a veritable electronic life preserver to make my Parsons School of Design website the beautiful and lush landscape I intend it to be. Actually, this man offered to do just that, in so many words.
And then... and THEN... the kid/model/flakey rockstar also knows DreamWeaver and I thought OhHappyDay things are e-lookin' up.
I was artfully inspired this weekend by these items:
1. chance encounter with a picture book on religions that I picked up ferfucksakes I don't know when and turned Zenstyle to the pages devoted to Zen Buddhism and there on the section's first page was a gorgeous repro of Buddha giving his Flower Sermon, holding up a lotus flower.
2. in the current Art News, in the hoaky piece on ten to watch, there is a piece on Adler Guerrier, a photog who makes images in NYC and Miami - lush semi-peopled landscapes. "The images evoke a playful and fluid sense of transit." and on.
3. in the lav at Cybele's this AM there, at the top of the heap of ancient lexicon, were the exposed endpiece pages, botanical illustrations. For me, clearly. They are in my back pocket, moldering and perfect gems of the green world.
All the above are to be inserted into my journal for artwork's sake.
Grad school. A wild mental ride.
An expensive wild mental ride.
An expensive expansive wild mental ride.
An expensive expansive chaotic wild mental ride.
An expensive expansive chaotic wild mental rock & roll ride.
All.

I've examined my subconscious and am fairly certain that what happened last last night was not some sort of retribution. My elder stalker, a richly brought-up man who is perpetually slumming as a barkeep of a low-rent, scuzzy joint, and who obsessed about me at one time enough to send several bouquets of long-stemmed roses to my office, rushed out of his own bar last night with a smoking microwave oven in his hands. Muttering, as he moved towards his car parked in front of his shithole, Try to be nice and people try to burn the place down. I had left the smokey back room where my pals were still playing pool and trying to open windows and was sitting at a crappy plastic table talking to a few random people. Polly had given me a rose. I wondered what happens when a rose is microwaved. There was a microwave in the corner, unplugged. I plugged it in and set it on cook or whatever after putting the rose in the middle of it and concurrently noting that there were several paper towels stuffed in there and a rim of thick white grease was around its door. Cooked and imploded, that's what happened. Then, after a few minutes, I smelled smoke and the paper towels were smoking and I said to Mark, Well I didn't think anything of the paper towels, don't people use them for microwaving. I know nothing of microwaves and am a firm believer that slow cookin' is good cookin'. So eventually we all left the shithole and it was way time to be sleeping and the owner/stalker had been watching me and I was not certain he knew it was me or not as he was in his cups and I was purposely sending out the vibe that I was not who I am/was at that moment - a scientist, a just-off-the-dancefloor-across-the-way hellion.
I remain.
The microwave does not.
Your Perfect Nancy.

Well I'm at ol' Peace Bridge, at the one Middling City fringe, and fishing about for quarters to pay the $2.50 toll when I was suddenly startled by the manic and very loud voice of the man toll taker. TAKE YOUR TIME... FOCUS... FOCUS... YOU'RE DOING FINE...
At the end of our transaction he handed me a small plastic packet the size of those crack baggies you find on the ground. Now with his kooky behaviour and all I admit in a flash I thought he WAS handing me a crack baggy. It was one of those giant LifeSavers. Wintergreen. Tasty. I sucked on it for about three minutes and tossed it from my moving vehicle, over the side of the bridge.
I went to Orangeville, more specifically, Hockley, Ontario, to have needles inserted into my accident-addled shoulder, to be snapped and cracked and popped. I feel different now, more... focused (or was that the toll taker) and postured.
My online class is a bit of a flaming fiasco and all of us 15 are apparently in the same chaotic boat.
All.
Love.

As I was logging in to Blogger saw that one of the 10 most recently written to included one entitled Boobs Are Good. Failed to investigate that one.
The men of Blogger are sending all of us Blogger Pro pioneers Blogger hoodies for being such, a very nice treat.
Reine just sent me a very hilarious advert for a tech company, great cgi images of cowpokes herding kitty cats over the plains, wrapping balls of yarn, lamenting their facial scratches from their charges.
Speaking of charges.
Look, whomever granted me those several student loans, I'd appreciate not hearing from you for at least another few years. Why keep sending me paperwork telling me where to address any concerns? Do so in two years, okay? Thanks for your attention in this scholarly matter.
As my 40th approaches, and so does all the charming chaos of change, I remind myself Hey, Baby Poet (and all the other semi-secret self-nicknames) this is what you wanted. HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY.
Time to rock on and chase down the book that mentorJR recommends, The Garden in Ruins.
Love.

As she was in her ivory wedding gown, tea length, she opted out of crawling across the dance floor at her wedding reception alongside me and Michele. Hungry Like a Wolf. Duran Duran. Michele looked at me, Remember? I did. It was a dark and tipsy night at a gay bar with karaoke. I had been banned for over an hour for doing Leo Sayer's You Make Me Feel Like Dancin' in an authentic style of his high-high falsetto. The karaoke mc was not impressed, snatching the mic away from me as my last tortured and disco-ridden note hung in the smokey air. So, about an hour later, when I was unbanned, my selection was Hungry Like a Wolf, which I performed with aplomb (as well as bumps and grinds) to the delight of several. Suddenly yesterday's bride/Annie and Michele were crawling across the floor before me, on the gay bar's small dance floor/karaoke staging area.
So last night's dual re-creation apparently resulted in gasps from those who noticed it, according to another Michelle (note the 2 l's), Michelle Gigante, a famed dancer/choreographer/actor. Gasps. At a wedding. And their wedding photog, one I do not know but by name, snapped it all up into his Canon.
More to tell.
Suddenly, minding my own business and all, after a few more cocktails, the same Michele (1 l) came up to me to propose a new dance move. It somehow resulted with us rolling atop each other à la Madonna's Like a Virgin performance on the video music awards show of yore. This amid some other questionable dance moves by other guests, some vintage pogo-ing by Gary, schemes to catapult guests off the nature-induced wavy dancefloor by other mischievious guests and cross-genre mixing and matching.
We were busting loose, sending the newly-linked off on a plane of freeform expression and unbridled passionate movement. Giving their guest list, vendor and site selections, engendered and biographical leanings, their fateful happenings along life's path, their ensembles, the Swedish Fish favours (yes!), the deluxe florals, their scents and their whole day a collective, celebratory high-5 - all this under the hyper-planned and overhung and irascible spiritual presence of the whole site's daddy, Frank Lloyd Wright, creator of Graycliff Estate.
FLW's most triumphant building still standing there, according to Perfect Me, is the heat house, a small and semi-sunken structure which housed all the mechanicals of heating the main and guest houses. Now it is a bunkerous shell perfect for a studio with one window facing trees and a small and wide door painted with chalky lead paint.
All.
Time to caffeinate.
Love.

Speaking of blindness and veracity in advertising.
onwards
Working at Parsons as that is my wont these weekdays and inundated today and yesterday with Middling City confusion and chaos, oh so non-productive for one who must teleport oneself to another galaxy to benefit most from a graduate undertaking of thinking and art making.
Fi(r)stly.
The publisher of the paper. In a blink of a chintzy eye there was an economic squabble between yours truly/newspaper over a $50 portion of a cell phone bill, incredibly. The incentive to say hello! to a two week sabbatical ensued. This concept was greeted with a big gigantic I told you so (to take a leave from the get-grad-go) from said publisher.
Then there was his post-summer inability to meet with me because of inter-office construction. Then emails were sent by me to set up a time to meet. Today I heard from Lead Boy Colleague that the word on the street is that I quit - my job description shifted radically in my absence.
Item 1.
I am/was/will be forever and ever a columnist.
Item 2.
I am not a photo editor.
Item 3.
Photo editors edit photograhic content of newspapers.

Future: I told publisher pal that I am interested in special features, continuing column and perhaps even being a senior editor with occasional feature writing. No reply.

Dear sweet grappling blogreaders.
This is a time of transition and your openmindedness and fairmindedness regarding me, my commutes, my undertakings, my shifts, my dilemmas and my goal-seeking are greatly appreciated.
Some of these posts are poetic riffs, some blend fact and foe and fiction.
Dig?
All my undying and photographic and artful Love.
You know what that is.
ps: met with Jim, my nouveau advisor who fucking rocks. He told me to distill my ideas down to five items. Still and distill. Be still, no way. Knowing his audience/me he gave me a big categorical metaphor in terms of musical genres. And, dig this, I dug it down to its note-addled core.

Saturday, as I posed a wedding couple on a V-Rod Harley in the midst the of rose garden of the Middling City's Delaware Park (okay by the cop on the watch as he loves - and who really in love with a uniform, the power of firearms and the whirr of power in one's ears does not - a great fucking powerful machine), heard a familiar voice from the east, from the midst of the pink roses in the dusk. Mary Ramsey, my heartmate, soul revivor, of John and Mary fame, of one-time 10K Maniacs fame. I was at wedding B. She was at wedding A in the same dang building. As we were both en route to our respective social obligs we had a speed meeting/talk. Interestingly, just as effective.
Off to document the exhibition of Parsons Dream Weaver Mistress/Instructor Robin at Middling City Art Studios. Had a dream about it. Can I ever have a night of reverie without them attaching to this other world. I think not.
Just re-read Sam's That Time, aloud, as it should be read.
Perfection.
Love of the Perfect.

*Ding* *ding.*
Muses versus Perfect Nancy... round three.
Just marathoned, birthed a truly excellent drawing - frame & all - for the charity auction ce soir. Based on a b&w print my moi made a while back and, all intuitively, I made the drawing and then checked my cache of frames and lo and behold there was one so parfait and even a decent pre-cut archival mat in there with green inner mat (as opposed to the polymat(h)) that I nearly screamed thanks luck thanks luck thanks luck. And I continue along that thoughtal plane to here:
partaking as I do, lunging out into the energy that is the world, one is as bound to have near-death vehicular experiences as one is to locate a perfectly sized frame for a charity art auction when one is giving giving to a venerable institution worthy and musty.
And tomorrow *ding* *ding* round four or maybe five when I drop another piece to another org, Burchfield-Penney Art Center. Then a charitable break fer fucksakes.
I have embraced an old perfume fav, Calèche, a hard fragrance to wear, but fitting my Ryan Adams-besotted and autumn and change-embracing heart.
Love.

Rendez-vous'd with Beth last night and meandered through Chelsea, my main mission to see the new work of The Art Guys. Whose Middling City projet d'art via Hallwalls a few years back resulted in numerous faux advertising placards nailed into the most grime-ridden and impoverished and near-death storefronts along Main Street. These placards went up and then quietly started disappearing. I had spotted a fav, the one with the large banana and the red word THRUST, and knew it was to be mine, part of my wavering and eclectic and cherished art collection. So. One night, crowbar in hand, I wedged and screeched it off a building. Then I thought, Hmmmm, Nance, why not acquire one, too, for your beloved pal Liz. So I did. Then weeks later I was attempting to crowbar a third when a frightening and muttering man approached me and my crowbar and I split. Then Scot Fisher of Righteous Babe Records saved said building from wrecking ball and a crew put boards over the artwork and the building.
So Beth and I are in Chelsea last night at The Art Guys show. One of the Art Guys, the shorter one, said HIIIII, how are you? You stole one of our pieces.
In a joking manner.
Sara Kellner, formerly of Hallwalls, was there, and is still living in Houston and working at Diverse Works.
Then politicoe Barbra Kavanaugh's son Bryan was there.
Then we moved along to more more more shows and the last stop we started climbing some steps when I heard a small voice Hey, aren't you supposed to be in Buffalo?
It was Photi, he dated Larry from CEPA, now an assistant director at a gallery. He invited us to a gallery-sponsored fete in SoHo and, he advised, if we stuck to him there'd be plates of pot brownies.
In the interim I called Dorota who tipped me off about a Nike party and, as luck usually has me in its grasp, I was wearing a Nike shirt. I told Beth this was a message from GOD himself, and Bacchus to boot, that we should be at that party.
Flashing my left-boob-nested Nike logo did not mean less of a wait.
Once inside we tippled with sporty types on three levels until we'd had our fill of techno beats (we looked for Anthony shimmying in the corners), creative snaxx, free drinks and other inter-active artful experiences.
Love.

lucky.
unlucky.
lucky.
unlucky.
he loves me.
he loves me not.
So I'm driving to NYC, minding my own business - and driving the speed limit, for your snoopy information - when I hit a patch of water on the NJ Turnpike, sending my well-equipped Forester into a fast spin. NoNoNoNo I remember shouting, my panic mantra of choice.
As luck would have it there were no cars or trucks near me and when I hit the center guardrail with the passenger side of the car there was no severe damage to the car... or me.
I was facing traffic. You don't realize how zippy traffic is until you are facing it, the wrong way. So I had to guage when traffic wasn't a-comin' around the bend and go for a big fast fat fucking u-turn to get going again in the correct direction, after a quick breather to regain breath and steady hands.
Oh Gramma Vickie, up there, thanks for your navigational powers. You rock.
I am not checking out the traditional rock star way, in car. Not this lifetime.
Rock on.

Well it has been a while but now you can really really savour my Perfect Nancy words. I was in NYC. I was in the Adirondacks. Now I'm in the Middling City. Tomorrow, hooray, it's back to NYC.
Why interim Adirondacks experience? Because dear Andrew married the woman of his dreams. Not me. Laura. It was such a great wedding, very Andrew, with lots of music and a duet from Trinity in Boston (there were about 20 other choristers there from there) who performed one of his compositions. Later, much much later, after plenty of a really good chardonnay and great conversations of Clarkson ilk (Nan insisted that I sit with her and Will et al - primo!), I danced with Andy, Will and Max Clarkson. Who were all wearing kilts. It was contra dancing and after my last horrific experience with contra dancing I nearly ran screaming from the wedding party tent. Last experience: gig shooting a day of cultural events at former dumpsite Artpark. One of the events was a contra dance escapade and they were short a woman. They called for me. ME. I said, No really, I have to shoot, I can't follow... well, after three songs/attempts they excused me. Last night fared better and nobody was injured. I ended the evening dancing three songs with a woman from Boston named Amanda as my partner. The caller said same-sex partnerships were welcome. It was about halfway into the first number of our same-sex partnership that I noted that my partner had one hand. I was intrigued but never got the chance to ask how her hand went away. Andy's wedding shooters were unbearable. During the ceremony they were right next to Nan and Will - literally in their faces. They had bad grouping skills and I snatched drinks and a few handbags from subjects. Egads. It drives me to distraction watching shabby wedding photographers. While Andy and Laura were exchanging rings (speaking of distractions) I snuck up the aisle to shoot a few with my new digital number, the Olympus 5050. Nan hadn't seen me yet and when she noted it was me she reached over to hug and kiss me and talk to me ever so briefly. During Andy putting the ring on Laura. Oh well. But it was that sort of wedding, very casual, lots of movement throughout in the area that Andy cleared beyond the pond and garden.
I met Will's brother Austin for the first time, a musician and Volpe scholar. I told him of my Parsons School of Delight experience, and meandered over to my difficulties with (former) mentor Anthony. I described the situation. Austin suggested I think of another program, one more inter-disciplinary, challenging and more history. Not so sure about those concepts. I am appealing the final seminar grade that Anthony bestowed upon my hard summer of work. I was stunned by it, and am moving right along to another advisor I feel will benefit me and my work more. There are several others (3, to be exact) in his group who are equally perplexed by him as an advisor. Two of those three are equally upset about their grades. Grades do matter in grad school when it comes time for grants and such. And for an advisor to wallop his charges with low grades is further unproduction.
To end on a more light note.
Two nights ago, Friday, my sister and I rode up to the casino, the one in NF, NY. Her idea. We split a flask of Oban en route. I wore my lucky Sam Adams ballcap. I did well, winning about $200. I made sure that she went home with as much as she stumbled in with. While we were parking to go in I realized that I had sort of fabricated a spot and was dangling precariously into the aisle for more cars. I had my sister stand on another less-obvious spot and did a great big fast circle to get there, purposely crushing an orange safety cone. There's nothing like the feeling of crushing an orange safety cone. No, scratch that - my old practice (before the cars got nice) of arranging tossed-out Christmas trees in the middle of the late night Middling City streets to rush over them, sometimes backing over them and repeating step (always with Justin in the car), approached that. Inside there were the requisite drunks, kooks, elderlies and conventioneers. I talked to a few of them. There was a bleary-eyed Native parked at a slotmachine, his eyes so reflective that the little cocktail waitress (let's just say her nickname will never be Speedy) cut him off. Free drinks cut off.
Tragic.
All for now, love.