Minding my own business at an art op last evening I was approached by a burly boy grad student who wanted, he said, to give me a video tape. Why do I get a present, I asked, and how many of these tapes are you giving away? He said 50. I said Well let me shoot you handing the tape to me. Then he handed me the tape, saying There are instructions inside the tape that you have to follow.
What, I asked, like get naked and run down a busy street?
Smirking all the while he handed it to me as he slid it open revealing that he was putting a 'subtle curse' on me, à la The Ring. How... unoriginal.
Well I didn't watch the video at midnight, I have as much subtle curse upon my head as the next photog and HOLYSHIT, I just made Dorota-style coffee that might just eat the enamel off of my teeth.
Onwards to weekend photo and swilling ops.

The day's last gig is shooting a Middling City band who doesn't quite pack the nominal punch of, say, Anal Pudding. But Last Lemming is still a fab rock name.
Opted last night to not shoot The Vines and am focused on rock things ahead. I heard The Vines show did not sell well. Could it be as they were so hyped at the beginning of the year? Because many possible audience members cannot distinguish between The Vines and The Hives.
Vines: cuter boys.
Hives: more screaming.
Oh, the fucking chair project was jettisoned. It was not simply a fiasco but a flaming fiasco, as I am wont to say.
In lieu of handpainted and shellacked wonder they're getting a handframed and non-shellacked photograph and damn well better love that.
Over and out.

Over-charitied out once again and find myself painting a chair for the annual theatre benefit whereby community members paste do-dads and découpage chairs. I'm of the découpage and hand-painted school of chair charity. Which means this: it's 9PM and frantically I'm slapping paint on a Moroccan sort of stool before I burn the edges of a Conflagration black & white photo and then paint flames up the six or eight legs. When it's done it'll be a real looker, a true keeper. Oh, did I mention that they want it there at noon tomorrow? With time travel backwards and forwards the poison polyurethane will have PLENTY of time to dry over the photo.
Taking a break from underside coat of paint number one. If I crank the forced air heating up to 90 it should be dry in a few moments.
Over and chair out.

Met up with Reese and his lady friend after a couple of freelance gigs and asked them if I smelled like coconut. Reese leaned over, Nope, why.
I explained that after I got extremely chilled while making two student athletes run past again and again a craggly coach for a college mag cover shoot that I popped into a tanning parlor on a whim, for a truly suburban experience I've never had before.
!
When I saw lobster man come in and then the Marlboro man I nearly ran screaming.
The girl at the counter could not believe that a tanning virgin was on the premises and everyone had to take a look at my untanned hide.
It was free.
It was eight minutes of roasting on a hard plastic bed slathered in Afro-Sheen.
As I left I saw a tanning phone booth and read the warnings on the wall.
UV rays. Holy shit, what did I think I was doing, my northern arse microwaved after all these years of avoiding anything resembling the sun.
So I have that to report.
Rays of love.

Tonight is a glorioso hipsteroso event, the rescheduled Jayhawks gig, and Reese Campbell, according to an answering machine message from earlier, is en route with a gal pal. Many people are pumped up about this show. I will be there, with camera on neck and a bell or two on.
Baldie Billy Corgan and new bandmates - Zwan - were good but I preferred Queens of the Stone Age who had six times the charisma. Arrived a bit late for their permitted songs 3, 4 & 5 due to ultra-icy driving and meeting up with a Boy Colleague on the way in. Mulville was on his way out, grumbling about the contract that Zwan wanted us press photogs to sign.
I don't sign those any more, he said, and went back to the Middling City News' downtown orifices.
What he didn't notice, I don't think, was that my dashboard was festooned with a Middling City News Let Me Park Here Motherfucker sign, swiped from Lead Boy Colleague on one ballsy occasion.
So I'm tardy for QSA set and chugged up to the barricade during song #6.
One of the student/security guys told me so so I shuffled off to the bleachers and shot them from there, actually a great angle. Waited until a wash of yellow and white lights hit the stage and shot away, slunked down next to some pot-gulping students so nobody would see me.
During QSA there was (no lie!) a 500-pound person/woman seated before me about four rows completely rocking out, whipping her head all over the place and sort of flapping her arms. Her enthusiasm was contagious and the scrappy guy seated to her right began to do the same.
While watching her gyrations two big guys carried a limp male student's body from the crowd.
Now here's the part where I thought Wow, Nancy, you are one vet/pro/jaded/hardened person. I watched the proceedings, the guys laying the body on the ground a few feet from the feet of the gyrating lady, saw them working on him and I looked up and away back to the band.
Turns out the guy had just passed out and after he was conscious again some cops took him away.
All for now and one for all.
Misguided love and all.