Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Announcing myself first place winner of the Who Began Their Day in the Oddest Manner Today Award.
Drove to what my Middling City University editor called Seneca Bluffs, at the crossroads of three sad city streets. A housing complex? A natural area? A brownfield?
Arrive and drive about and see a parking lot before what is the Buffalo River. A crusty old sailor, in vet cap underneath a naval flag on a stoop shouts out to me They're way back there.
There was a natural setting beyond the parking lot and paved area. I followed a path for what seemed over a mile. I began to get worried. I called out to the group of people I was looking for who were chem testing the soil in the area. HELLO.... and on.
No people but on some trees were new pink plastic ties.
I called my university editor, not at her desk, and left a message saying that I couldn't find the group, my contact guy and that I believed I was in a sort of Blair Witch remake.
Left the Bluffs.
No pun inserted here.
Went on to next gig.
At that gig I shot portraits of four well-known musicians.
(speaking of such... I did a phone interview with ol' Liver Lips/Marvin Hamlisch who bristled at Favored Nancy Question #3: Oh, so you worked with Michael Bennett? MH: UHHH, YEA-AHHH, I only wrote it. I mean really, fuckhead... so you fucking wrote it, that doesn't necessarily, I'd think, mean that the writer is going to be onstage palin' about with the choreographer.)
After the four ports had to do interiors of two concert halls. Requested that I get up into the pipe organ to shoot outwards. Drank a bottle of Diet Coke in the pipe organ. Thought, Wow, I bet there are shitloads of music types who'd completely freak out if they knew a photographer was swilling down soda up in this contraption.
Next gig was deeeeeep in the bowels of the Middling City Medical School where I became LOST AGAIN. This is a recurring theme, do you not get it?
You also should know that the medschool is a labrynth of old buildings connected either via basements or second floor walkways and many times when you think you're heading towards a stairway you end up face to face with a scientist in a circa 1942 lab with bunsen-freakin' burners and WARNING radioactive materials flyers taped to the door.
Now I must make a column.
Now I must write about Ol' Liver Lips Hamlisch.
Love, lost and found.

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