Blame it on the Genius Bar.
Techie Jason urged me, after my laptop fiasco, to take the day off so to speak. Fearing that any wrangling of info on the laptop would result in smoke and flames and that horrid scent of burning electronics, I blogged and emailed on other computers placed here and there on the landscape.
Taking the advice emanating from the Genius Bar I skillfully avoided working on the thesis show timeline of digvids and instead walked the rather long walk to the movie theatre to see the Frenchie Elevator to the Gallows at that theatre way over to the east, past the Bouewerie (as they spelt it in the days of yore). Movie good. And the crowd was delightfully not full of popcorn munchers and the young guy in front of me even took his cellie outside the theatre to answer his calls. Amazing. Even at Film Forum you are coping with people arriving late, parking their arses wherever they can, crunching.
The movie is shadowy and Jeanne Moreau looks haunted and elegant throughout.
Following the shots of gai Paris I needed to have some vino - for who can participate in looking at gai Paris sans expression of the powers of Bacchus. Of adult possiblilties in the form of liquid inspiration and possible subsequent revelation.
So I headed to Rivoli, where I've had good luck with inspiration and revelation in the past.
I sat at the bar, reading old research papers and notes by Yours Truly. Even some poetry I had forgotten and some I did recall. In the readings of the research I realized it is not urban theorist Jane Jacobs I need to read but Lacan.
All about looking, The Gaze. If what I'm doing in my digvid Art work is studying loci of gazing, people moving throughout art spaces, I sure as hell need to read about the study and remarks of looking.
All right, enough of headiness, on to more rock & roll matters at hand.
Keren Ann, the francophile who also habitates the loft, meandered out of her room mid-song-write to say Hi to me and Jason (uhh, that'd be Duval, Jason Duval, the swain of Dorota - not the Mac store geek) who were hanging in the common area. She emerged with bottle of cognac in hand and a smoke. She shared the cognac and regaled us with a most happy story.
She had just been to Electric Ladyland to look into studio spaces and asked to see a storage area that was mentioned in passing. She persisted as they said it was nothing but she wanted to look.
In her French accent that is most beautiful and makes the heart pang for some long walks in France, she told us that she stepped into the room and told the man Music needs to be made in this room.
The man said that the room had been Jimmy's apartment.
Thee Jimmy.
Oh, come on, you know, Hendrix, fercrissakes.
So this is going to be her space.
Soon I am off to head up north to do some digvid shooting in art places as I have this vision that I want to see in the camera, on the computer.
Until then.

Electric Love.

THIS JUST IS:
AND YES, I AM SHOUTING.
I AM AT JFK. WHICH I LOVINGLY REFER TO AS THE GUGGENHEIM OF THE FAR ROCKAWAYS AND MY FLIGHT IS DELAYED ABOUT AN HOUR. IN LOVING PROTEST I AM SINGING ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES WITH HEADPHONES IN PLACE UNTIL THE PLANE NOT ONLY ARRIVES, PARKS AT GANGPLANK, BUT HAS US ALL MERRILY NESTLED INTO OUR GENEROUSLY-PROPORTIONED SEATS OF LEATHER. OH, ONE MORE DEMAND. WE ALL GET THE SNAZZY NEW LEATHER HEADPHONES FOR FUH-REE, NO DOLLAR REQUIRED. SHE'LL TURN ONCE MORE TO SUNDAY'S FLOWER AND DIE BEHIND THE DOE.

I mean really.
Sometimes I do surprise myself.
I have scouted out numerous, excellent spots for reading and wi-fi reportage at Parsons School of De/de/de but this nouveau spot really surpasses the others. And, just in case you are a fellow student, I refrain from GPS specifics.
The good news.
I arose at 5AM today (that is like so not the good news) to be at the Apple Store in SoHo at 530, at the advice of Mr. Security Man just on duty for his third shift manning the portal. He advised Yours Truly thusly: Get here then for a line will begin at 6 - AND I like my coffee extra light with two sugars. Thought: how NYer of you. So I arose, I trekked, I got his coffee for Karma's sake and entered the joint. I said I have your coffee. He said Oh, I was kidding. I said Well, this is for the sake of Karma, it'll bring me some Luck.
I wait a while and then speak to Jason at the Genius Bar who looks very grave when I explain how the PowerBook tumbled last night. All the other Geniuses begin to look on at the tragic scene. He begins careful analysis, advising me at some point to get another machine. That's when I had my comicbook moment and felt the colour drain from my once-pleasant, now early-AM and tech-addled face.
He tries one more thing.
He removed the sad little 12" PowerBook's battery and futzes.
Jason says Your Airport card was half out.
More futzing and then and then and then
he gets the fucking thing to turn on.
ON!
2x more and then I am ecstatic and then met with his cautiousness, telling me that he thinks the Logic Board or Mother Board may be cracked, to back up my entire iLife on an external HD as one day the PowerBook might just have had enough.
We are on shaky terrain, me and the PowerBook.
Not me and Jason, for I hardly know the guy. We said our goodbyes and I left, telling Mr. Security the somewhat good news.
Then on to floating through the streets until The Shiney Apple sprung back to fruition for another day.
Back to seminar.
Back to the odd reality of school.
I wrote in my notebook:
At what point do I tell the others that this was all, this past twenty-six months, for a story I am doing. An expose.

Exposed. Love.

For the love of Godot, the vlog project (and that IS pronounced PRö-JECT, fercrissakes) is fraught with one tech/geek complication or fiasco after another. Not to inundate You with all sorts of miasmic lingua geeka but Yours Truly not having the slammin'est v. of Final Cut means no simple exporting to compressor to make all the pixel molecules all tight and slow and tiny so that any Tom, Dick, Harry, Evelyn can watch the goddamned digvids I pump out for grad school explorations and such at the click of a button. Deepest sigh. Onwards.
I have the URL anyhow, if that is any consolation to YT, and, really, it is nice to feel there's a launch (or crash) pad of sorts but then. Where are the goods.
www.njpdigvid.blogspot.com
When You arrive there just might be virtual orange safety cones, a flagman, some smoke, maybe a little bright flame, some confusion. Under construction, if you will.
Next week is the week slated that I am to have a happy reunion with my camp friend Elba Rosa Cruz whom I have not seen in a long while. Who I shared many et al and hi-jinxed moments deep in the dense woods of Maine.
And this is a public query for JW,Esq. who may or may not be in this neck of the woods. It is now or soon and this space following is to say Call, don't be a stranger, see you on a nearby barstool, etc.
Got a fabulosic phonecall today from a politico's right hand inquiring if I'd like to in fact work again with an AD from NYC who I hit it off with, was it okay to pass along the number. Umm, yup.
There were several who bemoaned the fact that YT did not have an annual hoopla rich in pyros for the wack holiday that happened yesterday.
Mark these words:
Once the grad school experiment (lovingly heretofor ref'd as the GSE) is kapoof things will be changing dramatically. And I do mean drama, a return to Perfect basics, sans the financial cloud of tuition, travel, books, pencil expenses, what am I forgetting.
Dramatical.
As the colleague says, Can't wait for the old NJP to resurface.
She's swimming back to the shores of what is lovingly sometimes referred to as non-GSE reality.

GSE Love.
Sure, yes.

Missed their Friday night gig at the Middling City's famed Nietzsche's but got to see them, the men of Vinnie Barbarino Experience, at yesterday's rock and roll wedding at the landmark downtown = Shea's.
During their soundcheck I was most disappointed to not see oversized 'fros and Timmo's lime green suit. When they truly began, after the dinner/pre-first dance there they were, all gussied up. They were a little decibled for the wedding majority but many danced to their set list of wedding clichés.
Shea's is now redubbed The Wonder Theatre.
Read a wall plaque about its founder, Mr. Shea, who was raised in my post-industrial and hardscrabble neck of the MC woods. Somehow he turned his OFW and iron worker smarts into theatre love and building and such. I imagine that his ol' OFW pals must have hid in bushes and beat the pansy-assed crap out of him for giving up roughnecking for velvet seats. But this is just a working theory.
So, for the wedding, contrary to what I discussed with my Boy Colleague Advisor, busted out the new rig and experienced the sometime joy that we photogs experience when working a perfect new, full-throttle machine.
As the BCA says, It's sick.
The pastor at the wedding looked like he could have been a brother of David Byrne - same height, same black limpid eye pools. He introduced himself as Pastor Mike. Pastor Mike was a bit intense, he was very pleasant and pseudo-easy-going until I asked The Position Question. How will they be standing, where will you be standing, Pastor Mike. And then explained to him that, according to my calculations I'd like to be standing behind him. Pastor Mike's face changed. I've seen this Man of Cloth Facial Change before and I am ready, armed with cool reason and an internal version of Paint Melt Stare.
You know, Nancy, weddings are sacred . . .
(thought bubble *are you fucking kidding me, get over your self Pastor Mike*)
. . .
Shot from behind him and he never knew a thing.
Later, during the eat time, he wandered over towards me and this would be the point where he'd sidle and complain, post-act. But instead he surprised me whilst drinking a diet cola.
You look so alone over here.
(*shudder*)
Just taking a bit of a break, Pastor Mike.
Onwards.
Time to head to the suburbs for back-to-back gigs and then more more more.

Back-to-back love.