Friday, August 13, 2004

Note to self:
Being hung-over in JFK is bad for the head as the booming PA system, always indiscernible and bass-heavy, rattles around the mind like a coconut bouncing about in an elevator falling through its shaft in space. Now that's an analogy to remember. Not ©'d, yet, so use it, love it.
Met up with JW,Esq. at Gotham for high times and softshell crab and wine and more wine last evening.
Dougie Fresh called so we met up with him at the joint where JW,Esq.'s dj pal was to be doing his thing. The joint so over-chilled I not only felt the sea monkeys swimming back into my left knee, but asked the barlady to turn the damned chill down.
Afterwards the three of us meandered over to the East Village and I revisited my halcyon days on E7 between A & B. Discovered the age-old shithole on the corner not only hasn't changed a bit but has a photo booth - where we put our rock and roll graphic knowledge to good solid use, making images that rival the best of any album cover. Some post-teens were next in line and they were such ditzy girls that I kept sticking my hand in giving my famed Rock On! salute which Lead Boy Colleague adopted around 1997 or so. (as if the PA system were not miserating enough now there's Paul McCartney's insufferable voice warbling through the air. ow.)
My digvids yesterday were received most positively and I did have the butterflied insides when I saw one of the four for the first time. Equivalent to the sloshing in the trays and the coming up of a magical image of silvers and other toxins.
Time to wend my way to Gate 01. And yes, I can assist should the crew need my buff ass to help should we need to ditch the plane fast and ferociously.

Ditches of Love.

Thursday, August 12, 2004

Thinking of nothing and shooting stars.
Post wired seminar wrap-up, the wrangling together of dangling concepts and links as well as heated repartée regarding laptop and cellphone use in public green spaces (the tossed-in salty ingredients, if you will, into this unchallenging bouilliabase was that such conservative banter teeters on the fascistic - and my additional shocking utterance that to some of us the wailing of babies is as offensive, for example, as chatter into a cellphone is to some), I escaped to Lincoln Center on a rec to see The Naked Spur, part of a retro. Starring James Stewart, an actually enthralling western whose landscape is masterfully rendered by Anthony Mann (like a back country rogue he, too, has an alias: Emil Anton Bundmann) back when the world was Technicolor, shot in Technicolor and there were shoot-outs. Wait a second, there still are shoot-outs.
So following all the boy action and guns and the like I was sorely disappointed that the ending was most girlie and smoochie. Yes, I will follow you, stranger, to god really knows where and marry you. *barf*barf*barf*. My eyes rolled like credits, despite this nonsense it was primo.
After leaving the movie I walked into a happening happening happening, replete with spontanteous dance, stringy students from Julliard, Indian lady dancers, painted faces, a man holding a stuffed sun on a pole (can not we ever have a fucking festival without these Slaves of Whimsy), a slight dose of mayhem. Insert here my wish against wishes that artsy school had this sort of enthralling energy. Watched a photog from a distance, one of those hobbyists who fantasizes that he's part of a more seasoned and serious pack. These sorts usually tow a few unnecessary props. This guy got it all wrong and wore his backbrace outside his shirt, I think to signify that he works damn hard and has the battered spine to prove it. So I walked amongst the revelers which inspired me to ponder where I am, like where I AM, man, and then stood in front of The Met's schedule thinking which I'd go see and further if I should buy tix to the Bill Viola staging of L'Opéra in gai Paris in early pringtemps. Rain came down to rinse away my joie and it was back to art for crit's sake. Returned to loft to work on the digvid and spoke with JW,Esq who had an equally challenging day, his involving those difficult to pinpoint planes, amorphous flight plans, a sidetrip to Maine, etc. As he stated Our biorhythms are in synch - in synch with minor discomforts. He pointed out that I'd found myself in yet another Perfect scrape. Namely, there I was/am face-to-face with the PowerBook and it needed to work with me, not against me, to spew art forth from the cockles of its electronic intricacies to match mine own.

Matched Love.

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Minding my own business, as You can assuredly mind Your own, so many things happened today.
Most notably is that I am going to see my music-savvy attorney in the Shiny Apple. But, to be fair, I do not know the musical proclivities of mine other attorney. And, not surprisingly, JW,Esq tells Me - ME!, bedraggled yet savvy urbane gradgirl - about some hip-hoppening gig here that we will most undoubtedly pop into after dinner on jeudi.
Was most fascinated today by the terrorist-ready armed men standing at attention outside and around the Forbes building, right next to Parsons School of Deconstruction.
Phillip and I puffed away as I watched one of the attentive kevlared men attentively watch girls jiggle by. I meandered over and stated, patriotically: Umm, excuse me officer, but my homeland security is at stake here. Could you puh-leez refrain from checking out the derrières and the frontières of the ladies for one fucking minute.
I pointed out to Phillip that all a terrorist had to do to get Forbes would be to drive recklessly (like any ol' cabbie) down Fifth, wrench wheel at appropriate moment to the right, jump curb (one of my absolute specialties), careen down sidewalk about 50 feet, drive through green scaffolding outside Forbes's joint and do their business. Mr. Boobie Guard and his buddy would be fairly ineffective I am sure should that transpire. The Parsons School of Detachment door/security man told us the armed people were out there as there had been a Threat. When I left after the critique (not a reaming, as I had imagined after the snappiest of snappy emails I got from Misery Seminar instructress, the verysame who thinks I've done no class readings and am a general flaked-out distraction to one and all and recourse is to not recourse until said course is fini) of my artist statement, the AK47 holders were gone.
The scaffolding and the Forbes building remained.
All back to status code yellow, or perhaps a nice soothing seafoam green alert.
As all you loyalest of epinw readers/groupies know I am a gigantic fan of the Wild Animal in Urban Setting tale/newstory. So today in my beloved Post was yet ANOTHER story about a beast in the Shiny Apple. This was a most challenging snippet of a story (with byline no less - but is Laura Italiano really a flesh & blood & sweat & tears reporter, You be the judge) and it took me a few read-throughs to catch its nuances. It centers on The mother of Harlem's notorious Tiger Man. The mother is 70 and her son kept a tiger - Ming - in his pad. Here comes the best part, a quote floating out in space, disconnected from logic, from Antoine, the son: She doesn't know whether to be happy or sad.
Who, I ask, is happy or sad. Ming. The mother. Linda Italiano. The girl who was bitten by the tiger. The woman cop who was recently injured in her struggle to capture another wild cat last week in the Shiny Apple. Fact check please.
My mother always told me to believe in myself, Antoine added.
I ask You, believe in what. The ability to keep a 250 pound tiger in a Harlem apartment, undoubtedly flinging raw chickens through a doorcrack. Apparently Antoine traveled with Ming to South Carolina. And he had Suspicious bites at one time, which he was treated for, on his legs. Conclusion, if there could ever be one in this convoluted story:
Antoine tearfully pleaded guilty last month to keeping a deadly wild animal, in a deal that got his mother off the hook.
Do You feel like there are details that slipped through epinw cracks, down its slippery slope.
If I were Lou Grant, as he was in Mary's from bell bottoms to cheeseball pantsuits show (even though it was a television station), with scotch in the drawer and a song in his heart, I'd be shouting Italiano, your ass is on the line, go out and get me another TIGER STORY with more scarring, scaring, details. And bring a photog - and clarity - this time.

Grant Tough Love.

Monday, August 09, 2004

Today's JetBlue landing on the JFK strip awoke me rudely. And then one of the attendants informed all of us buckled-in people that we'd be Taxiing for a few hours. I shuddered to think. Now in Marquet having the day's first tankard of java, reading up on what is happening in the world and just re-read my artist statement for perusal by the theoretical instructress. Last night had Kennedy read said statement over and over to his vast amusement. Economy of language nuthin', he pointed out the flotsams, the jetsoms.
Slipped in to the Middling City Sonic Youth gig for a moment Saturday night and found myself standing between my bandmates, Ben and Scott. Behind me were more Middling City band and art types and in the space of mere minutes I had seen a dozen quality citizens.
With a votive candle, with untrimmed wick, set a wicker basket in my house's back room ablaze which I tossed out the back door and then fired upon it with garden hose, all to the wonderment of Extra, my stray cat pal.
Onwards to eating, walking, learning, musing.

Love's Muse.