Off to shoot a kind of vehicular event taking place next to the baseball stadium. The event has not a thing to do with sports and usually this event takes place at the zoo, and it has not a thing to do with caged live animals either.
Speaking of such, went to see An Inconvenient Truth last night (with Jana and behind us sat Scott, Ron, Don) and was thrilled that Al Gore has what is called in the industry face time, loads of it. Yours Truly cannot get enough looking at his nose, one of the finest. There's also just the right amount of back story about Al to know how he did come to be this type of emissary. YT nearly wrote missionary but that word has baggage, to my understanding, that would fill JFK's missing luggage area and each and every terminal of the complex. Speaking of that depot, I'm missing in a strange way my weekly commute to its familiarity and points beyond. That and the hard-boiled eggs. And did I tell You. The last time I snatched up a packet of hard-boiled eggs the eggs were frozen solid. It was like an evil trick, standing on the platform waiting for the A, cracking the egg and not being able to break my fast.
Homework assignment. Go see this movie or at the very least spend time on the related web page. If not for the future of the world, then to look at Al's nose.
Time to Judy Jetson to the gig.

Outer Space Love.

This just in.
Back from the gig, a pitstop of sorts to disemmiate the images at large. Well, not so large as they're electronic information, all 1's and 0's, not even an image as yet.
Saw my former division director Bill Hooley et al at the shoot, from when I was cultural and performing arts chair of UUAB out at UB. He reminded me of all the old high times, cast of characters, how he had wanted me to succeed him as the director. Shudder to think how I could have gone down the admin rather than photog path. Then there was that time in Philly when I had had another bout of thinking I was an admin person only to realize Uhhh, Nope. And then I escaped a seminar, called Dave Harrod from a payphone and he rescued me from that Bad Idea in a jiff, and on the back of his motorcycle all that Bad Idea just blew away.
Forgot to mention that on the answering machine there was, a few days ago, a message from a man I've never met that went something like this, edited hearily as it rambled.
Thanks, Nancy, I want to thank you and Jennifer for the novenas for my mother. She passed, it was a bad end, Hospice was great, thanks again for all your novenas. (giddily) I'm starting an Italian-American Women's Club, you know, I like women a lot more than men. I've decided it's time to settle down. And on. And on.
I do not know this man and I would not know a novena if one bit me on mine arse.
There is another Nancy Parisi in the Middling City, about, I've heard, 20 years older than YT. We once banked at the same bank, Permanent Savings Bank. This confused the heck out of the do-gooders behind the counter. I was about 9 with a meager Christmas Club account. I'm sure she had more than I. This, You see, was in the passbook days of yore. When you were forced to speak to the do-gooders.
All and out.

To be filed under L, like as in Like I needed this nonsense.
And if I didn't just have a bizarre threat of having a gun pulled on me by a perhaps post-partum nutcase this past spring (You may recall John, get the GUN, FREEZE, etc.) while galomphing happily in the snow at Kennedy's house.
Search back in epinw and You will find it. Onwards.
There I was, You know, minding my own business, settling into laptopping at the teahouse. Tea was sipped once, twice, and then all heck is breaking loose.
The tenant calls. Brinks calls. Tenant calls again.
He tells me that whilst he was bounding down the stairs the door to my space opened - and then, as paid for, the VERY LOUD ALARM blasted through the air.
He mutters something about thinking the alarm was his alarm clock and how he ran back up to check and then down again. If you heard this (usual) alarm you would find this ponderous.
He does think to call me, however and I say these things - Stay there, I'm ten minutes away, cops will be coming.
I arrive.
There is a cop car in front of the building, I see tenant at side door, his door.
I open my door, enter, am moving toward the keypad when I am about five feet away from a member of Middling City's finest, gun drawn. Not pointed directly at me but up in the air.
We both express air from our lungs in surprise. He then tells me I was very close to getting shot and why didn't I not enter or yell out. Because it looked like you were talking to the tenant who should have told you that this was a false alarm, that the door set off the motion detector in my apartment. Because this is my home. And again, I knew this was a false alarm, the tenant knew this was a false alarm.
This same scenario unfolded several years ago when Dorota and Jason stayed upstairs for a week and the crap lock on my door was not truly locked down and the door popped open, sending the cops over - but not indoors, with guns drawn.
Major diff today was the tenant not explaining this all to the officer, who entered my space and walked all through it inspecting for foul play.
So the tenant scrams (more on this later) and the patrolman and I are standing in the space discussing my photographs, him all questions, eyes.
This is the very same day that one of my colleagues informed me that this tenant has a very beer-guzzalicious blog that has him in some hot waters at his place of temp employment. Had I seen his blog I might have opted out of handing over the keys.
Any more episodes of odd and impaired judgment, I have told him, any brouhaha, will result in an end to this chapter.
Onwards. Time to enjoy some girlies, including b-day girl Lauren.

Patio Love.
NOT lanterns, as that Canadian rockstar geek of yore sang of decades ago.

Feels so real, I got the steering wheel.
So sang those bitchin' gals of punkrock, L7, about one excellent femme, Shirley Muldowney, racing legend.
Let us just say that today I spent the usual large amount of time in the car but the dessert if You will of vehicular interaction was had during the golf tourney Yours Truly was paid to doc today out at the lakeside, sort of, club, where I still have a few pals who work, who make the magic happen. I was speaking to Jana as I arrived at the country club, wending down their hillock driveway, anticipating. I nearly wrote c.c. in lieu of country club and the memory bank sent up kid years with my dad pronouncing from the front seat that our family exurb country club had a sign up - C.C. - for club closed along their weed-edged access road, met with our squalls of half-horror . . . and half-knowing that dad did this to harangue us and that it amused him to hear our ardent vociferations.
Onwards.
I said goodbye to Jana, ditched my car somewhere, and, like a super hero morphing from pedestrian to caped alterself switched from 2-handed driver to Intrepid Journalist and, concurrently, grinning golf cart go-getter. Let us just say that that Go-Kart was put through its paces today. Like Shirley, I gunned the little motor, I did not let up on any of the curves, I zigged and zagged amongst the old and wise and young and wispy trees, I took hills like a trooper, thoughts merged to what if, what if I roll this damned thing, but I kept it moving. Oh, sure, I jumped a few curbs but nobody was injured, no lenses were jolted from the bag, nobody was hurt, no screams. I was so thrilled to have the wind whizzing past my ears, flattening my eyebrows to my head like racing stripes, I wanted to share the moment with my beloved sister who was always by my side, my accomplice, when we slipped off as my parents enjoyed cocktails with other clubbers after dinner, to forage for carts with keys left in ignitions, to floor the pedals and make off into the dusk. My sister would not be at work and chances are she would not answer her semi-neglected cellie so off I sped and told her about it later. I am still smiling. I saw yellow finches. I made beautiful pictures.
To update the semi-oft-repeated quote of Winston Churchill.
Golf is not a ruined walk in the country but a good, thrilling, somewhat perilous ride in a Go-Kart with pesky pedestrians wacking a ball about.

Love of Muldowney.