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.